The Relative Merits of Alcohol

My studio is in the building on the Northwest corner of Union Square. On the ground floor, the front doors are flanked by Starbucks and McDonalds.

So it was, the other day, that I stepped out the front door into the zoo that is Union Square on a Greenmarket day. As I crossed the sidewalk, I looked down at my hand, which was literally covered with red and yellow paint. As I did so, a woman next to me cried out, "Oh my God! Do you need some alcohol?"

My first assumption was that she was offering to buy me a martini. Which, although she wasn't really my type, seemed like a pretty good offer, given the year I've been having. Then I realized that she thought I was bleeding.

"It's just paint," I explained.

Later, replaying the scene in my mind while actually having a martini (if a Tanqueray on the rocks with four olives is, really, a martini--which, by the way, I'm suggesting it isn't), I determined that there's no such thing as just paint.