Yesterday afternoon I was wondering down Mulberry Street, where I encountered a man handing out candy stamped with cartoon mushrooms. I gathered this was connected to the giant pile of pulsh, adorably demonic Japanese ‘shrooms I spied through a nearby storefront, so I decided to investigate. I made my way past the sculpted tumble of stuffed mushrooms, beyond a post-nuclear soft-drink refrigerator stocked with mushroom-printed aluminum cans, and down a flight of stairs to a plate of biscuit-colored mini-mushrooms labelled “EAT ME.” I plopped one into my mouth, thinking that free snacks ought to be incorporated into conceptual art more often. As the super-sweet candy dissolved, it released a sugary cloud of powder that somehow lodged in my windpipe. I couldn’t breathe.

Red-faced and panicky, I made a dash for the exit and worst-case-scenarioed-it down the street onto a 6 train just as the doors whirred shut. I realized I had unconsciously steered myself toward home. Better to die unobserved in my studio apartment if I could manage it, I guess.

I slumped across from the loudest couple of tourists in Manhattan. Doughy and middle-aged, but giddy and dressed in spangly denim, their cocktail-fueled screeching filled the car. I stared at the toe cleavage on one of them, who’d crammed her plump digits into a tight high heel, in a zen-like effort to quell the unsatisfied coughing fit. One of them, a frosted blonde whose face furrowed like a pug’s, handed me a camera. “Can you take our picture?”

I was still convulsing, and it was hard to hold the camera still. “When were the subways built?” Toe Pudge asked as if this was information every New Yorker had at hand. “Around 1900,” I choked. “1900, that’s impossible,” Pug-Face said. “They didn’t have subways back than. How would they run?” I stared at them, feeling myself turn purple. “Steam!” said their friend. They all found this uproriously funny, laughing with their faces pointed at me. “Steam!” Toe-Pudge squealed, kicking her porcine feet. They were still cackling as I fled the car at Astor Place, hacking out the last of the mushroom-candy dust.

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