I walked down from the bridge and headed back uptown to find something worth doing. I felt a lot better after leaving the bridge but now I was tired. I spotted a stone bench with a Indian woman sitting on it. I wished she wasn't there because I wanted to stretch out on that bench for a couple hours and have a nap.

She looked harmless enough sitting there but she looked like the type that might get mad if I tried to lie down on her lap. Eventually she looked up and noticed me staring at her bench, but she didn't budge.

Not even an inch.

So, I walked over and sat down on the opposite end and waited for her to get up and leave since that's what most people I had encountered had done whenever I had sat down beside them.

But not this woman. She really didn't give a shit.

I began to sing quietly under the mask: some tune that I had heard on TV sometime, somewhere.

'Drugs...Drugs..Drugs...which are good...which are bad...'

She glanced over at me for a second but turned back around and looked out at the street.

'Drugs...Drugs...Drugs...ask yer mom...ask yer dad.."

Suddenly she sneezed and a large string of phlegm dangled from the end of her nose. There was an uneasy silence between us and she sat there not sure what to do since she probably didn't want to look like a pig and wipe it on her sleeve.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a flyer I had found for some stupid nightclub and held it out to her but she just looked at me like I was from Mars and let the string hanging from her nose break and fall onto the floor where it made a sound that made me want to projectile vomit right through the eyes of the mask.

I swallowed down the puke feeling and gripped the bench tightly and then...

I began to bark loudly under the mask.

"WORF! WORF! WORF!"

She turned around and muttered something but I couldn't hear her over my own barking.

"WORF WORF WORF WORF WORF", I continued.

I could see her through the perforated eyeholes in the mask...she was getting angry.

She started waving her hands around in front of my face and saying a bunch of gibberish in a language that she had invented.

I was feeling quite happy with myself. She was obviously getting upset.

Not long before she leaves, I thought to myself, and then I can stretch out on this stone bench and have a nap.

All of a sudden the woman leapt up from the bench and stood in front of me. She started to bend over backwards, arching her back- limbo-style- until her body was bent into a perfect U-shape. Her palms rested flat on the ground behind her head and then: She made the sounds of every barnyard animal I have ever heard...and then some.

I jumped up from the bench and ran across the street without looking left or right. I just had to get out of there.

A taxi blew its horn as I fled across the street with the sounds of the woman's many animals chasing behind me.

I ducked into a subway entrance and leaned up againt the wall where I waited for the first train to arrive.