It’s Just a Rash

September 2, 2004

I’m sure this isn't news to anyone, but there have been protests going on this week. Helicopters buzzing overhead, cops on every subway platform, and every corner. People carrying signs and wearing slogan shirts. Bullhorns and banners in every park. News cameras and satellite vans peppered here and there. It's surreal.

I was talking to a girl who told me that Dick Cheney was in her office building for some reason yesterday, and the entire building was in lockdown. She snuck out and took pictures of the cops on the surrounding rooftops. "Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good picture of the snipers," she said.

I sat at the counter of my local coffee shop today and had breakfast. Someone had left behind a copy of today's New York Post. I read an article about a special train in Penn Station that's under tight security. It's for President Bush in case he has to skip town tonight in a hurry. The article said that the train was there to whisk "Bush, and anyone else who needs to leave the city quickly" to New Jersey.

Anyone? I doubt it.

I finished the story when a guy sat down next to me. The girl behind the counter, Elisa, asked him how he was, and he said that he had just been released from jail. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

That is, he was in Herald Square for an unsanctioned protest on Tuesday afternoon. After spending a few hours on a city bus, over thirty hours within the chain-link walls of a holding pen on a West Side pier, and several hours being processed in the Tombs, he was released. "By the time I got out, I was completely covered in filthy black muck," he said.

Elisa had been all set to attend the big protest tonight, but seemed a little skittish after hearing the guy's story. "What were you doing when you got arrested?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said, "In fact, everything was beginning to die down, and I was just leaving."

Elisa grimaced.

"But the protest tonight outside of Madison Square Garden is sanctioned," he reassured her. "Just stay to the sides, and if you see cops moving in on scooters, stay out of the way. You'll be fine."

She looked at me and asked if I was planning to go.

"I'm a Type 1 diabetic. You know that, right? If I get caught up in a net and have to spend 30 hours in a holding pen, I'll be up shit's creek."

"They had medics on duty," the guy said.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. But they were mainly treating the skin rash that started going around."