I walk down the street, minding my own business, picking up a recalcitrant cigar butt whenever the occasion presents iteself -- and find people staring at me. Why?
Like any average American male with Argyle lip makeup, diving fans and gray homborg, I am puzzled. I ask myself: "Albert" (this, of course, is not my real name, which is another reason why I am puzzled), "why are these people looking at you? Is it because you are so handsome? So debonair? So continental in your manner?
"Or have you been sitting in green paint again?"
"Antonio," I ask myself (Antonio is not my real name either, but by now I no longer care), "how would these people like it if you stared back at them? How would they like it?"
And then I answer: "By gad, sir, they'd not like it one whit!"
Does this stop me from staring back? It most certainly does. At heart, I'm a coward. But every dog has his say, and though I may not stare back, I can dream about staring back. Which explains why I'm here.
One day, after finding a particularly nice butt outside the Waldorf, I was feeling particularly bold. I thought: "I may look peculiar to them, but then, they look peculiar to me. (At the time, it did not occur to me that they looked peculiar because someone had cold-creamed my monocle.)
In fact, the people I meet look not only peculiar, they look downright impossible. What, I asked myself, could be more important for world peace than to preserve for the future the way the world looks to me, from inside my Elizabeth Arden eyepiece? I could think of nothing more important, and so, armed with wigs, hats and a fresh supply of eyebrows, I betook me to my friendly, neighborhood photographic studio.
I thought of the people I had met during the past year. Just ordinary people like the folks next door. There was Twombly Parrington-Harrington, famed bird watcher and third baseman for the N.Y. Confederates, consistent last-place winners in the East Asia Cooperative League. There was Mistinguett Pomerantz, dynamic boss of Pomerantz, Pimerantz, Proton and Neutron, the world's most unpronounceable advertising agency. Mistinguett was so wrapped up in Madison Ave. that even her pen-wipers were made of grey flannel. And there were others -- many others. I might almost say, too many others.
I thought of these people and I tried to recreate them as they appeared to me -- the supremely average man. And the results -- well, you can see them on these pages.
And if, someday, you are walking down the street and you find a finger under your shoe, please don't stare down. It's only me, looking for a cigar. And by the way, leave the band on. I'm fussy about brands.
