The City Rejected Me

I felt that my time in the suburbs had made me soft. My belly felt too round, my hands too used to going without fists. The city rejected me. No longer was I another pigeon or newspaper, drifting through the dirty night unnoticed.

First, I couldn't find parking.

Then, I couldn't find the dance club towards which I was headed.

Then, a fairly attractive but thoroughly crazy transsexual started following me, and, like I'm some sort of tourist chump, s/he managed to con a few bucks out of me.

To top it all off, I was scared. In a city.

I finally got to the dance club, threw back a double-shot of rum for the loas, and realized two things that cheered me up:

1. I'd never actually been much of a street rat. Even when I was living in the bad parts of town, I was sort of a goofy suburbanite.

2. I'd just been elected the President of Norway.