Crotch Crosswalk

Tonight, I was getting dinner from the crotch—it’s not as dirty as it sounds, so please stick with me. The crotch was a notoriously busy Y-intersection with crosswalk signals that sometimes took so long that the ice cream I bought on the right leg would melt by the time I got home on an oppressive summer day. Most people preferred to detour over a block into the hospital where the cardiology unit had a bridge with fingerprinted plexiglass over the left leg and it was debatably faster, seconds if at all, and often nurses would yell at me for pungent carryout so I’d rather wait.

The crotch was also central to several bus routes with stops on the knees, love handles, pits, and ears. I like to give the drivers the benefit of the doubt; the traffic lights turned red without any yellow so unless they wanted to skid through the zebra paint (they didn’t), the intersections were busy even when I had the right-of-way. I was always tentatively stepping off the curve as if testing the bath water and often finding it too full of sharks.

When it was clear, I had to frogger across, dodging delivery guys on their mopeds who seemed brave like diplomats with immunity so what did a few manslaughter charges matter?

It always seemed busy too. Like America had rush hour where the guy leaving at 4 got home in time to take his kids back into the clog for McDonald’s, but the guy leaving at 4:30 was stuck crawling along till he was a vestige of road rage and the guy getting off at 6 was getting home at about the same time so the economically minded should have stayed till 6 to get that extra bit of pay, if they were on wages. But Korea had a different work flow. It seemed staggered so there was never a block of traffic getting so acquainted with their neighbor’s bumper that it felt a bit lewd. Instead it flowed throughout the day and the pedestrians were the only ones waiting long stretches for things to clear up since occasionally a car, not even the city bus, would blow through the light and, not wanting to feel left out, so would those behind him and that’d take up the entire WALK signal.

~setting to create plot

~possible plots: car accident, late for whatever, (cute-)meet at crosswalk, others