24 Hours: Boston

Restaurant portion sizes are ridiculously huge. I usually deposit half of the meal in my stomach and, after the waiter/ess neatly packages it, I discreetly and seemingly accidentally deposit the other half somewhere public where I know that it has a good chance of ending up in some famished homeless person’s stomach. Rewind to yesterday afternoon. I have a couple of hours to kill in between two meetings so I stop by a bagel shop. I’m not even hungry. I’m just bored. I order a sesame seed bagel with smoked salmon, red onion, lettuce and cucumbers. Half of it ends up on the steps of the Boston Archdiocese where I see a gathering of homeless people hanging out. “Where are you?” Bro asks me when I’m on the phone with her a few minutes later. “I just left the Boston Archdiocese.” “Did anyone try to molest you?” “No.” “What are you doing over there anyway?” she asks. When I explain that I left the bagel on the steps she asks, “why didn’t you just walk up to one of the homeless people and ask, are you hungry and then give them the bagel?” “Because, a few years back, I once offered this guy my leftover food,” I confess, “and he looked at me like I was stark raving mad. I thought that he didn’t understand so I held the food out in front of him and said slowly: Here. YOU. Can. Have. The Rest Of. MY Food. Oh, he got totally pissed off and offended because it turns out that he wasn’t even homeless; he was just a really sloppy dresser.” Bro laughs. “Your life is just too odd. These kind of things only happen to you. You’re like that guy on that show Curb Your Enthusiasm.” We finish the telephone conversation and find my way back to Mags’ new place in the middle of Boston. Later that evening, she and I follow our clam chowdah and lobstah dinners with drinks and dancing. At the bar, a slightly younger, extremely attractive and disarmingly charming Irishman from Dublin hits on me the whole night through. At closing time, we politely kiss each other goodbye and go our separate ways. What’s the point in taking it any further? He lives in Boston and I live in New York ... but ... I did give him my cell phone number … you know, just in case he’s in desperate need of a tour guide the next time that he’s in New York City ...