According to Wikipedia:
“A guilty pleasure is something one considers pleasurable despite feeling guilt for enjoying it. Often, the "guilt" involved is simply fear of others discovering one's lowbrow or otherwise embarrassing tastes, rather than actual moral guilt. Fashion, music, and food can be examples of guilty pleasures."
For some, guilty pleasures are things like Reality TV, eating pork rinds, or the admission that they actually read stories about Paris Hilton.
I enjoy NONE of these things. My guilty pleasures lie elsewhere.
Today, I indulged in one of my favorite guilty pleasures---people watching.
Okay, I know---sure. It doesn’t sound like something one should be embarrassed about. But my people watching involves a bit more than simply sitting in the park and watching the world go by.
I listen to their conversations. Look into their shopping bags. And I have a fanatical obsession about the books that they read. If I see someone on the train reading what looks like an interesting book, I suddenly have a burning curiosity to discover the title. I watch them carefully as they turn a page to see if they tilt the book slightly, enabling me to catch the title on the spine.
Let me explain. I’m not a snoop. I would never look in your medicine cabinet, read your diary or go thru your drawers. Not only are these things sacred---but frankly, I have no interest in knowing what sort of prescriptions and over-the-counter meds my friends and family have tucked away in their bathrooms.
I don’t care much for gossip. Don’t read celebrity magazines. And have never *69’d a phone call in my life. I wouldn’t even know how to do it---well, I guess you press * and then 69. But frankly, I have better things to do.
I have strangers to follow.
Yeah, sometimes I follow them.
I don’t know why. Just something about them I find interesting and I want to learn more. Often it’s their conversation---usually with another person, but occasionally on a cell phone. I watch their interactions with other people. I watch them shop, carry out transactions, eat lunch, and do all manner of day-to-day things that everyone does.
Of course, I don’t just pick random people. But something about a person will catch my eye or ear and I just have to find out more.
I tell myself that, as a writer, this is research. That’s how I justify it. But honestly, I think I'd do it even if I didn't have a medium.
Usually, it's just nonsense. But occasionally, something interesting does come of it that I can use. A turn of phrase, a walk, an odd thing someone was carrying that instantly creates a character.
I particularly like to follow people who seem a little crazy. Not full on homeless begging for change crazy. But those people who are just slightly off-center.
I don’t follow them for very long. Maybe a block or two. Or I observe them for maybe five minutes in a store. After a few minutes, they cease to be interesting to me and I move on. Occasionally, if they said or did something particularly interesting, I make a note of it in my pocket notebook or on a piece of scrap paper.
But mostly, they turn out to be dull or repetitive so I lose interest and go on my merry way. Today I wanted to work out some kinks in a piece I’m writing. I decide to take to the streets to do a little walking to help sort it all out. And, as long as I’m walking, I might as well get something done while I’m at it.
I decide to head down to the Garment District in search of a piece of fabric. An ottoman I got for free a while ago and I’m DYING to recover it.
It’s nice and sturdy and my cat loves to lie on it---but I just can’t stand looking at that brick-colored corduroy anymore.
I walk thru the fabric shops hoping something will jump out at me as I mull over my latest script. Unfortunately, I didn’t think quite well enough before I left and really have NO idea what I’m looking for.
I spin around from shop to shop looking at rolls of fabric with a blank look on my face.
But my mind is working. Working on the script.
I decide that one of my characters should be a stalker. It’s a comedy and I start, as they say, looking for the funny. What’s so funny about being a stalker?
Ahead of me, I see a guy talking on his cell phone. Nothing really unusual about him. I just thought his jacket was interesting and I heard him give his location to the caller as being on 23rd and 5th, when he was actually on 38th and 7th.
Hmmm. Curious.
Suddenly, with nothing better to do on my day off---I decided to follow him.
I needed to get into the mind of a stalker. I needed to find the funny.
I wasn’t paying as much attention to him as I was to myself. What it was like to actually BE a stalker. I stayed a few yards behind him as he walked thru Midtown. They stop. You stop. They make the light---and sometimes, you don’t. At one point, I almost got hit by a Chinese food delivery guy on a bike as I tried to hurry across the street.
At another point, he stopped and looked in a shop window. From a few yards away, I tried to gauge what he was looking at by his position and the direction of his eyes and head. When he finally continued on, I walked up to the shop window to see what had been so enticing.
A shirt. An UGLY shirt.
I immediately began to judge his taste.
A few blocks later, I saw him run into someone he knew and they stopped to talk.
Oh great. What am I going to do now?
I stood there on the corner of 35th and 6th trying to stay out of the sidewalk traffic while he chatted away. I would have gotten closer to listen, but it seemed like a really boring conversation. Ugh---why couldn’t I have picked someone more interesting to follow?
All right, I’ll get closer and listen in.
Oh my god---it’s hockey. They’re discussing hockey. Oh, someone shoot me now.
And then---here I am, stuck with Boring Guy when suddenly an old woman pushing a shopping cart full of cats walks by. Yes, a shopping cart full of cats!
DAMN!!! Why couldn’t I be following Crazy Cat Lady? Sure, I could leave Boring Guy and run after Crazy Cat Lady---but I’ve just realized the humor in being stuck with an uninteresting person to stalk and I’m stuck here. Yeah, I’m finding the funny---but at what price?!?!
Oh, there goes Crazy Cat Lady. Damnit.
And there’s my boring ass stalking victim standing there making small talk with a man in a boring golf shirt as they discuss some boring play from a boring hockey game four months ago. And then, just when I think it can’t get any worse…
Boring Guy mentions his mortgage.
OH MY GOD!!!!
This guy is the Worst Stalking Victim Ever!!!
I couldn’t take it anymore. I left Boring Guy on the corner of 35th and 6th and moved on with my life. Surely, there’s a moment in every stalker’s career where they’re sitting in the bushes going, “What am I doing with my life?”
Or maybe not---after all, they are, by definition---a stalker.
I realize that I am not cut out to be a stalker. Way too short of an attention span.
Hey!---if I hurry, maybe I can catch up with Crazy Cat Lady. Was that a meow? No. Just a whiny kid.
Wait---is that a meow?
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