Gasp

Today I went to go look at a bike for Burning Man.  I had found an ad for the bike on Craigslist, and arranged a meeting.  As I walked toward Inner Richmond to some stranger's home, I imagined the various ways I could meet my demise.  Would I be invited in, and then greeted by the reveal of a concealed weapon?  Robbed and butchered.  Perhaps there would be a gang of African American dwarves waiting for me in an adjacent room, eager to exact revenge for yesterday's post.  Or maybe I'd be held at knife-point and forced to fornicate with a pack of polygamous pygmies.  It was hard to tell what was in store, but whatever it was, I told myself I'd go down fighting.

When I was near the house, I called "Dave" and told him I was about 5 minutes away. I suggested he bring the bike out in front of the house so I could look it over and take it for a brief test-ride. Surprisingly, he agreed. As I approached, I saw the bike in all its psychedelic glory. The bike was perfectly weathered, rusted and rugged, a beautiful golden-bronze. It was adorned with precious multi-colored gems all down the frame like stegosaurus spikes. A basket was attached to the front of the handlebars, with thin tie-dye streamers hanging like whiskers from the basket's base.  Thin strips of reflective sheet metal had been perforated and threaded through the spokes in a zig-zag pattern, to create a hypnotic spiraling effect when the wheels were spinning.

With Dave's consent, I mounted the mighty mare, and began peddling down the block.  Clumsy and wobbling, I rode down the street, my ass comfortably perched on a seat that appeared to have been retrofitted with some type of fabulously plush white fur.  I think it may have been the breast of a female polar-bear. They're endangered.  It made me feel dangerous.  Just then, as I was speeding along, lost in my delusions of grandeur, a small dog, some piece of shit poodle, idiotically turned the corner directly into my path.  I quickly pulled back on the reigns of my speeding steed, but saw I was moving too quickly to stop in time.  I turned the handlebars and tried to steer around the precarious poodle, but it must've been having a stroke because it reacted by moving sideways, towards instead of away from my tires.

I screamed, it gasped.  I didn't know dogs could gasp.

A wee spurt of piss sprayed out onto the sidewalk as the dog continued to suffer some sort of slow-motion aneurism, its jaw slowly opening and closing like a swing-door.  In a last ditch effort to avoid collision with the creature, I turned sharply in the other direction and crashed into a parked car as my iron-horse and I tumbled down, grossly bending the bike's basket.  The impact set off the car-alarm, and as I lay looking at the dog, dazed and furious, as the dog appeared to be dancing dub-step to the car's sirens.  Either that or it was having a seizure.  I still couldn't tell.  Dave came running toward me screaming "holy shit dude, are you alright!?"  The, wooooooop, woooooooop, beep beep beep beep of the car presided over our conversation.  I explained that the damn dog had come out of nowhere, and at first it didn't move, and then moved into the direction of the tires, so I had to turn sharply to prevent hitting it.  He looked at me confusedly and said "what dog?"

I extended my arm and pointed in the direction of the dog, only to find that the dog was no longer there.  Baffled, I began to stammer, the car sirens thundering in my head like waves of droning madness. "Listen," I said, "there was a dog.  It was there two seconds ago.  It looked like it was having a seizure or a stroke or something.  The fucking thing gasped.  Did you know dogs could gasp?"  Just then, the car alarm came to an abrupt halt. Then the sound of a gasp.  "What is going on here," asked a voice from the other side of the car.  I got up from the ground to see who to address, and saw a blonde haired woman in her mid 40's, slightly overweight, holding a poodle.  She had the air and assumed authority of an elementary school principal.  Without waiting for a response she walked around to our side of the car, not to see if I was okay, but to inspect the damage to the car.  Luckily, there was none; the damage had been dealt mostly to basket of the bicycle, and my pride.

I told her that I had nearly hit her dog as it turned the corner and made a bee-line for my tires.  She looked at me disgusted, and then looked at the bike, furry and rusted, and then to Dave - dressed like a hippy - and back at me.  Her face bore a look of such utter contempt, I could almost read her mind.  It must have been swirling with thoughts of drug use, and rampant irresponsibility.  She reminded me of Judge Judy. She said "if you weren't driving a bicycle on the sidewalk, this wouldn't have happened."  I asked "what wouldn't have happened?  Your car is fine, and your dog is fine."  Exasperated, she spat out "my dog is not fine!  Just look at her!  She's frightened something awful."  I spat back in kind "if your dog wasn't wandering around the sidewalk without a leash, that wouldn't have happened."

Dave, trying to mediate, said "yea, I mean, both of you are at fault here.  No one is really to blame but," then she interrupted him and said "I am not at fault.  You are!"  I laughed and asked, "do you realize how absurd you sound?  You sound as stupid as your dog looks!"  The dog replied by gasping, again.  Dave looked at me as if to say "it gasped," but before he could the woman said "that's it, I'm calling the police."  Dave, clearly alarmed at the mention of the police, quickly put his hands up and pleaded "no, no, no, that's not necessary, it's fine; I'm not even worried about the damage to the bike."  She began rummaging through her purse for her phone, and said "I'm calling the police because my dog was attacked; she's traumatized for life!"  Dave told me to forget about buying the bike - it was no longer for sale - that he "wasn't sticking around for the cops to get here," and he picked up the bike and peddled hurriedly away.

I considered my options: stay and have a potentially humorous interaction with the police, or walk away and enjoy the rest of my one day off.  Seeing as the sun was shining and the skies were blue, I chose the latter, told her to shut the fuck up - and her little dog too - and then I walked away.  Seeing as I hadn't eaten since the breakfast I made after yoga, I walked around in search of food.

A quick Yelp query reminded me there was a restaurant I had been meaning to check out nearby.  It was 4:35 when I had gotten to Burma Superstar, and they didn't open until 5:00.  The Yelp reviews said to get there early, but it seemed I was too early.  Assessing my level of hunger, I decided I would be okay to wait 25 minutes.  Within minutes of sitting down on the bench outside the restaurant, the line ballooned from 0 to more than a dozen people.  Happy with my choice, given I was first in line, I struck up conversation with the two people beside me.  They told me it was their first time eating here as well, and that they had been meaning to come here for 2 years, but the line was always so long that they never waited.  Apparently it was our lucky day.  We were led in and seated next to each other.

As I sipped a Burmese ginger beer, awaiting my coconut rice and chili lamb, I looked over and said "did you know dogs could gasp?"