This is what occurred to me this evening when I was walking into a pizzeria on Court St. in Brooklyn. Or perhaps after I'd already arrived I'm not entirely sure it being now almost three thirty and my being both tired and having by my last count and my most recent count five drinks in me--three pints of beer and two vodka gimlets. So not all is accurate here and perhaps some a goodly portion of it far too emotional and personal. More peronsal than I am entirely ready to or comfortable putting out into the world.

I think the pizzeria is named Caruso's [150 Smith St. btwn. Bergen & Wycoff]. That's where I got my pizza tonight. I'm sorry that I don't have any photos for you fine people, but I didn't have my camera with me. I went in there and ordered two slices, Jo Ann not wanting any and Jesse still standing outside talking on the phone. Bless his heart. Whether or not he intended it to be the case he was kind enough not to talk on the phone in the pizzeria, yelling into the phone while the workers were either putting slices into the oven or watching the soccer game on TV. It occurred to me to yell "Gooooaaaaal" when I saw it on the set, but I thought that that would be about as obvious and stupid as someone yelling "Holy Cow!" upon seeing a Yankees game on a set during the period whenever it was that Phil Rizzuto (is he dead now or something?) was broadcasting. "Stupid Yanki" would go the thought.

When the pizza guy told me how much it the slices were going to cost ($3.50) I said "But how much for me?—c'mon," mugging for the guy. It took a few heart beats and then he said "For you? Ten dollars." But the point here cannot be his response as it was far too predictable and his timing was way off. I dunno. Perhaps I don't even want to include him in this equation because it was a joke that I'd been wanting to make for some time.

In fact, quite often when people tell me the price of something I imagine saying "But how much for me?—c'mon" or something quite similar, but somehow I've managed to restrain myself. Probably because I've rarely had an audience who would appreciate me making an ass of myself in this way. Although often I've thought about doing it with the guys who run the bodega directly across the street from me, and I see them all the time and there's no one else there that I know, so no audience but the players taking part. Maybe I want them to be the audience to my being an ass. Perhaps I'll resort to taking whatever audience I can get ahold of.

We got our pizza and took it down Smith Street to Roxy, where the waitress was cute I thought though again I have no photograph I can offer as testimony. Besides, what you think of as cute and what I think of as cute might be different anyways. I don't know that I would have said "cute" anyway. I think that was what Jo Ann said when I mentioned it to her that I thought the bartender that night was attractive in some fashion or other. I loves that Jo Jo. She's the best.

The pizza was, as Jo Ann suggested, nothing to write home about. I didn't regret my purchase at all but I wasn't making any "Mmmm" sounds either. A woman at the back of the bar when she saw that Jesse & I had bags of pizza said something like "Oh you brought me dinner…what did you bring me?" She was joking, but I thought then about whether or not I really would give her one of my slices. I thought I might but I wasn't sure. A large bite if nothing else.

The bartender was cute, but I didn't do anything about it. I chatted with her for a moment or two, but didn't really feel up to pushing it beyond that.

Did I mention that today is my birthday? I'm old. Thirty five years old. I don't feel much like commenting on that beyond that. I feel like I should feel older, but I don't. I feel the same age.

I paraphrased—or "riffed on" was what we finally decided—the Allen Ginsberg quote "When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?" from "America" after we'd left the pizzeria on the way to the bar. What I actually said was close to the title of this entry but wasn't probably as close to the original.

America, when I was seven or thereabouts momma took me to Pino's La Forcheta which was one door down from where it is now on Seventh Avenue and I was with two friends and there was a boy there who's face had been disfigured because his father had shown up at the home of his divorced wife and when the boy answered the door threw acid in his face. I had no idea about any of this and I laughed with the two other boys in the booth with me about his melted face and said "he's retarded!" and laughed and laughed until my mother who knew the story took us out of the pizzeria ashamed.

America I still pray God forgive me and God ease that boy's pain and I cringe when I think back at those two boys and I laughing and one of us saying though I suspect it was me "he's retarded!" God forgive me my sins please.