The Corner

We worked across from each other. At 7AM each morning we would take to our posts: a street corner only a few blocks from Midtown. Days dragged. Like the dials of a clock the hours would tick, tock, tick tock away, until eventually coming full circle. Though we each equally hated the boredom, we soon came to realize how much we needed it.

It was clear from the moment I saw him that we were each hiding from something deeper. The corner, our corner, was our safe zone. With time, the very thing that had at first seemed like our prison contorted into something different. The more often we met on that corner, the clearer it became that this was our escape. As we watched the outpouring of characters walking past, we allowed our thoughts to wander with the quick shuffling of feet—running away to some place unbeknownst to us. Suddenly, we had been set free.

We needed that daily dreariness; needed something to keep us numb; needed a way to become immune to our realities. Our corner became the solution. Standing there, in the center of a constantly moving crowd, we became nearly immobile—only doing the specific job required of us and nothing more. No thinking, just doing. An ideal escape. To us, their realities always seemed more depressing than the dullness we were subjected to. Unlike them, we had made the choice to get lost in a desolate world.

57th street and 6th avenue—that was our corner. A busy one, overcrowded with the swindling rich and the overtly poor. An even mix of the penniless, permanently trapped in the depths of their crazed minds, and the rich, who had greedily taken it all away from them. The rich, the poor, and then us— stuck somewhere in between. We were neither rich nor poor, neither alive nor dying. We simply were. We were surviving, and that seemed to be enough. Yet, to a certain extent, it didn’t matter who you were walking down those streets. Everyone ignored each other anyhow. We were all equally nobodies in a city full of supposed somebodies.

He was different. More gentle than I; more patient. He seemed to handle the escape better than me, executing his mechanical tasks with a certain grace that I, no matter how hard I tried, could never achieve. I both envied and adored him for this. I only wished to be as capable as him of filling the bleak escape with touches of kindness towards those who seemed to deserve it the least.

We each had our own respective posts. I was a hostess, showing the abundance of over-privileged Manhattanites to their tables. He stood just outside the restaurant—handing out senseless flyers to scornful passersby. Right this way, I’d say, with a fake smile plastered on my face as I guided my customers towards their over-priced, mediocre meals. Most of the time, I didn’t even receive so much as a smile for my assistance.

I’m not sure he ever saw me standing across him on that corner. But I saw him. As I took to my post each morning, already annoyed at a customer or manager, I became mesmerized by his expression. It calmed me. We had the same customers, and yet, despite their rudeness and consistent dismissal of the flyers he handed them, he exuded a tenderness towards each of them. I couldn’t feign friendliness for more than five minutes before someone managed to piss me off.

I loathed the people that walked past him and into my restaurant. The hate was palpable— visible past my fake smile and high pitched greeting telling them to enjoy their dinners. What I really wanted was to scream straight into their botoxed faces. To explain to them the intricacies of class division and how insignificant one's bank account was when it came down to judging a person for who they were. But I restrained myself and put my mask on instead. Welcome! Let me show you to your table.

As he handed out his flyers, accompanied by a simultaneous smile, they walked right past him and towards me. They didn’t need his flyers for discounted fur. Each morning, afternoon, and night I would watch them walk past him and towards me with their gold watches, European suits and pretentious faces. They saw him as a nuisance, yet another person they had to actively ignore. And yet he didn’t seem at all affected by their demeanor, for he was never really there to begin with. In his mind, he was in a happier place, a place that was solely his own. A place their money could not afford.