Location x 3

By Paul Ford

Ask an idiot a simple question, and see what happens.

“What is it like to live in Brooklyn?”

“I see a lot of dogs. Not so many cats, but they're there. They're watching. I have this fantasy that I'll see real big zoo animals, that they'll be rhinos on Carroll Street and apes behind them. Talking rhinos. And I have this other thing where I always check people to see if they have all their fingers. A lot of times they don't. There's a guy on a bike here with a stump arm, he begs quarters. I think there's something hot about a woman with a fake finger, though. Not like The Piano, I liked it before that. But if she's still cool with herself and she's just missing one or two fingers. There were two girls with missing fingers in my high school, but neither of them was really interesting to me. They weren't interested in me either, of course. But it took me months to realize they were missing fingers. And after that I always checked to see if a woman had all her fingers, or extra fingers. Lots of people have six fingers. That happens a lot in certain ethnic groups. I read that somewhere, but I don't think it's significant, it's just a thing like eye color. It's kind of a cool mutation. I mean, obviously it must be dormant, you don't just hatch an extra finger, it's more of a genetic slip than anything else. Your DNA says, hey, put another finger there.”

“I remember reading an article about it and they interviewed a woman about her six-fingered son and she said everyone called him "sixpack." Anne Boleyn had six fingers and three breasts, and I guess that just made everyone crazy with lust. I think they had a different approach to birth defects than we do. Like she was magical and touched by God and a witch. I like to think about people with little fuckups. The woman with the lazy eye, or my friend Scott Rahin with his leg. I wonder if Henry VIII got into that extra breast, if he bit the nipple while his thick hips shook with massive desire.”