So this week, not content with being strange enough as it already is, decided to become a bit stranger.

A few days ago, someone e-mailed to let me know that I have been the center of a discussion over in Ping-to, a gay Taiwanese website. Me, the center of discussion? At a gay Taiwanese website? What could this be about? Apparently, someone had posted a few of my photos there, and there has been this heated debate raging about whether or not I am gay. I was curious, so I checked out the discussion thread. Too bad for me, it was all in Chinese, and since I couldn't understand it, I decided to try translating it with Babelfish.

Well, the translation engine wasn't savvy enough to handle colloquial Taiwanese, but through the flotsam and jetsam I picked out references to "last of the ten Heavenly Stems" and "clam partner." I certainly hope I'm not the clam partner in our relationship.

Anyone able to translate for me?

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My cellphone has been ringing off the hook recently. Well, not literally off the hook, seeing that it's a cellphone, and not that recently, since I didn't get any of those calls today.

It's been ringing with strange numbers I don't recognize, and with many others with caller ID block. Maria, for instance, left a message where she slowly repeated both her phone number and her name (Mah-ri-yah) four times. Just in case I didn't get it the first three times. Call her back, she said, please. She needed the money.

Ann called at 7am one day sounding like she'd just gotten back home from a night out on the town chewing broken glass. "Call me back." Crunch, crunch. "Yeah, call me back."

Gail left a message on Saturday. She sounded by far the most exotic, her voice all breathy and as seductive as she could possibly be. "Yesss, this is about the nuuude modeling. Yesss, if you could pleassse call meee back. Ohhh." I almost threw up.

So naturally, I began looking for the ad in the paper to see what would drive these women to pose nude for me. Soon enough, I saw it, a 2"x1" rectangle buried deeply in the depths of the classifieds. And there, in bold letters:

NUDE FEMALE MODELS
Wanted for conceptual and fine art photography
Leave name and number

And there was my phone number, more or less, including the typo. I was intrigued. Then I looked further down the ad.

$25 per hour

Twenty-five dollars per hour for just sitting there? That was a lot of money. At that rate, I almost called up to audition, myself. But then again, I reminded myself, they only wanted women models. And well, uh, it was my number.

Rats.

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Everything seems to be so stressful these days. Everything seems to be going wrong. Renovations are taking longer than they should: the plumber keeps pushing off my project weekly, the contractors are delayed, the electrician did something funky, unexpected costs keep popping up. Work is absolutely nuts: long hours and ridiculous deadlines are mixed in with impossible clients and zero motivation. I just today found out that my credit card wasn't properly linked to my online banking, and now I owe a lot more than I originally thought on this month's payment, and my brokerage account that I opened two years ago is not really open because of a screwup at the bank.

And now... Today I've been getting random calls on my cellphone all day long from women who are answering my ad in the local newspaper. My ad in the local newspaper? They want to model for me. Nude. You know how sometimes you can guess how ugly some people are just by their voice? Let's just leave that comment at that, shall we? Why oh why is this happening to me? Why oh why can't they be cute boys with angelic voices instead?

Who is playing this cruel joke on me, this cruel joke called life?

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I saw him on 66th yesterday, huffing and puffing with a gigantic black Nike duffel bag strung across his back like a backpack. He wore a ski cap that looked two sizes too small for him, and big blond curls spilled out from under it and onto cheeks red from exertion. His lanky body lurched with each step he made, and he balanced with two long and equally lanky black poles on either side of his body. He tried to appear as though not tired, but the condensation of his breathing betrayed exhaustion as winds whipped snow around him.

I watched him in amusement yesterday afternoon as I made my way back from Tower Records on Broadway. It's always a funny sight when you see someone skiing through the streets of Manhattan.

Clack, clack, clak. He moved slowly, and I kept pace with him, me walking on the sidewalk and him cross-country skiing on the road. Soon enough he stopped to rest, and I kept walking, crossing the traffic light at Amsterdam moments before they turned red.

It was then I saw the pair of them, two others in matching green jackets, both on skis and giggling as they glided towards me. I stopped as they passed me by, and turned around to watch as the cross-country skier crossed their path. Eventually, the lanky skier met up with them going the opposite direction, and with not as much as a greeting or a sideways glance, both parties passed in silence into the swirling snow. It was as though it were the most normal thing in the world, skiing the streets of Manhattan.

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Sign at the gym today:

Close to my apartment? Close to my heart? Closer than it already is? Great! My mind raced with the possibilities. Nah, I thought, this was too easy.

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When I was growing up in Trinidad, we didn't have much in the way of imported goods. Well, the country did, but my family and I didn't have easy access to them. Most Christmases, the government would allow the import of apples and pears into the island, and we would run out to get them, eating them slowly and completely, and savouring the taste of mysterious, faraway America. When no one was looking, I would stare longingly into the refrigerator at these exotic fruits, daring myself to steal a bite or two. This is how I came to think of apples and pears as Christmas fruits.

It was always an extra-special treat when someone visited America or Canada and brought back something. As a child, I would sometimes get a huge lollipop, one of those with the gigantic swirls of colour peeking at you through the plastic wrapping. I would keep it in the refrigerator to protect it against hungry tropical ants, and it would last months and months as I rationed out a lick or two every week. It was several years later that someone introduced my brother and me to Snickers bars, and that soon became our new favourite. "Bring us back Snickers, please," we would sing. And we would make the half dozen or so bars last the entire year, delighting in the foreignness of it all.

It's funny how imported things taste so much better than their local counterparts when your options are limited. Now that I've been here in America for many years, much of the novelty has worn off, but I still get a thrill every time I am offered the opportunity to try something brought in from another country.

So it was with an eager smile and absolutely no hesitation that I accepted a cup of Brazilian coffee at work this morning. I was preparing my usual tea in the kitchen when one of my colleagues walked in and offered to fix me a cup with some ground beans he had brought from his native São Paulo. Certainly! As I sipped the delicious concoction, I examined the bottle of ground beans he offered up for my inspection. "Indústria Brasileira," the label said. I smiled. Yes, it made it taste all that much better.

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Every once in a while, often when I least expect it, I happen across something that reminds me of my father. Tonight I was walking back to the apartment from the gym, my scarf wrapped snugly around my neck, my hands happily gloved and pocketed warmly into the depths of my coat. It was right outside Lincoln Center, about ten feet away from the bus stop on Columbus, where he stood, his back towards me as I approached. He was playing the harmonica.

I took the earphones out of my ears and walked slowly past him, careful not to disturb his performance. When I had walked about fifteen feet away from him, I stopped and turned around. He kept playing, the notes wailing into the city night sky. I didn't recognize the melody, and yet I could not tear myself away from the scene, deeply mesmerized as I was by the strangeness of it all. I stood there a minute or two before he turned to look at me. I tried to see his face, but the cap he wore cast deep shadows from the streetlight above, and shielded his features from me. He kept playing while staring at me, weaving note after glorious note as though alone in a concert hall. I smiled.

My father played the harmonica. I had forgotten this over the years since his death because he played it only when I was a young child, and not as I grew into adolescence. It was my mother who reminded me, just last year, that he used to play. "Your father used to play harmonica," she said. And she put her hands to her mouth, blowing and motioning her fingers as she remembered. She told me the story of their wedding night in the tiny village in rural China, when my father played his harmonica into the night, and she sang. He was the best player in the village, she said, and everyone sat in awe as he played and she sang, song after song after song. I imagined rice paddies and ponds and children running about barefoot as my father played, and ten thousand crickets listening in silence as both melodies rang out in counterpoint, the young newlyweds in wonderful bliss.

It was this strange déjà vu that fell over me as I listened to my private concert tonight, my thoughts reaching back into the recesses of my mind, remembering vague fragments of memories of when my father played to us as children.

Soon enough, I reached the fountain at Lincoln Center, and I stopped, staring into the underwater lights and the water dancing high above me. I thought of my father again, the notes of the stranger's instrument barely audible by then. I'd like to think that the stranger tonight saw me smiling and that he appreciated a grateful audience. I don't know why, but I'd like to think he smiled back at me.

Thank you stranger, for bringing back such a wonderful memory.

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I made the final trip to the dentist today to crown the root canal. The procedure was quick at just thirty minutes, and with no need for anesthetic, it was fantastically painless. At five o'clock, he motioned me to sit up.

"Well," he said.

"Oh, we're done?" I asked. I had expected to be in the chair for at least an hour more, and I had thought my face was going to be numb. "That's it?"

He smiled. "You want more?"

"Well," I said, "I mean, I have all these other teeth. We could go do root canals on all of them if you'd like."

He laughed. "You know, Patrick," he said. "You look really familiar. I can't place you, but you look really familiar to me."

"Well, I've only been here oh, maybe five hundred times this year," I said.

"Well…" He looked at the records on the wall. "Well, I've only seen you one, two, three, four, five times this year. But no, I mean your face looks really familiar, like I've known you a long time."

"Well, maybe in a prior lifetime," I said, trying to suppress the urge to stare at his strong, bare forearms and his clear, unblinking eyes. He is rather handsome, after all.

He grinned. "Yeah."

We made some idle talk before I headed out the door. "Well, try not to make your next dentist trip eleven years, okay, Patrick?"

I laughed. "Sure, George. Sure. Eleven years is a long time."

He extended his hand, and I shook it. "See ya, Patrick," he said.

My imagination was going wild at this point, and I thought that his handshake lingered just a tad too long for a casual goodbye, but I stared into his eyes as we each reached forward to say goodbye. "See ya, George," I said.

"Just don't wait another lifetime."

And just like that, he disappeared behind the doors.

Yes, it seems I may have just a little crush on my dentist. You think he'd be suspicious if I scheduled say, a few dozen more root canals?

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I stepped into the elevator at noon today and said hello to the three other passengers travelling with me down to the ground floor. The man, perhaps in his fifties, was unremarkable, and I noticed nothing about him other than that he was wearing construction boots. The younger woman, who I assumed to be his sister, stood at the back of the elevator and smiled a pleasant hello in return. In front of her was an elderly woman, standing as straight and dignified as she could with the help of a walking stick, and dressed warmly to shield against the cold New York winter.

"I haven't brought a tissue with me," the older woman said. And she turned around and peered into the eyes of the man. "I haven't a tissue."

"I told you, Ma. We'll get a tissue when we get to..." The man glanced at me. "When we get to where we're going. I told you already."

The old woman looked away and stared at her reflection inches away on the shiny elevator doors. I caught a glimpse of her eyes as she turned slowly again to face forward, and an uncomfortable familiarity struck me. There was an emptiness in her eyes that matched her mass of hair gone silver white with age, and which swirled about her head like forgotten memories of a lifetime long gone.

"Why isn't your husband coming with us?" she said.

"Because you told him not to," said the younger woman. "Remember?"

The last word seemed to sting the younger woman as she said it, and she shuffled uncomfortably. "Remember, Ma?" She said it as though pleading. Please say you remember, please don't make me repeat myself a thousand times.

"Oh. Yes. I remember." The older woman cast her eyes downward and stared at the reflection of her shoes, shiny and black. "I remember."

But her words were unconvincing, and as the elevator doors opened, she turned her head slowly to me before walking out. I don't remember, her eyes said to me. I don't remember anything.

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