Once a Clark Kent, always a Clark Kent

The plane lands, I make my way to the phone booth for the great transformation. Goodbye sweet demeanor, hello metal-twisting, people-punching ms. fast-mouth, pushing her way to the front of the line.

Well, not exactly. First, what's this about a "sweet demeanor?" Not too long ago I was at a restaurant in Madison where my eating companion and I engaged in a joke before a poor, gullible waitress (I didn't start it, I swear!). When she found out that it was a tease, she displayed such hurt and bewilderment that we left with tails between legs, each blaming the other for being the meaner of the two. My only regret? That we didn't fully pull it off. Not too sweet, is it?

As for the metal-twisting, people punching bit-- not true either. When I land at La Guardia I am flooded with such effervescence that the immediate recipients of this ebullience, the cabbies, wish I would just shut up and stare at the decay around me. There's nothing worse than a chippper passenger straight off a flight from the Midwest to make 'em want to slam that little Plexiglas window between the front and the back-seat rider. With a bang.

What I like about being in New York though is this: no one stands out. Everyone is as weird as the next. If I limped along with a reptile wrapped around my neck no one would even notice. Complete anonymity in small doses is a good thing.