I wish I could say that My Confrontation-Free Day was a complete and total success. Sadly it wasn't. I did what I could, trying to keep things in perspective and take deep breaths and think creative thoughts like "What am I going to get out of this situation by turning this into/entering into this confrontation." Actually that last thought was never so clearly spelled out in my head, but it was the idea that I was trying to work with. I probably never took any deep breaths either, but I did have to try to calm myself on the subway when two girls entered and proceeded to comment very loudly on every little aspect about the ride with a sort of Kings Highway Brooklyn accent, as in "Okay, if the train's not gonnah move can the fuckin' doors open so I can walk home faster than the train is going to get there?"

And I was doing pretty well with my new confrontation-free attitude. Last night when the power went out in half the laundromat and my laundry was about six minutes away from finishing the spin cycle I didn't freak out. I didn't even complain or suck my teeth. These things happen, and the guy who works here is doing what he can to take care of things. I'm just going to continue to sit here and do what I can to finish up this crossword puzzle, that was my attitude. And even after I went home and looked out the window (I'm across the street from the laundromat) and the power still wasn't back on I didn't get frustrated. And when I went back at 10:30, two hours after this ordeal had begun and the power still wasn't on and the guy didn't know when it would be back on and possibly not until tomorrow I just said well okay. He said that when the power was back up my laundry would be washed and dried and I could pick it back up. So even though I was doing this laundry largely because I was down to my emergency underwear. (Everyone I talk to seems to think that this would mean the ones with the holes in them but actually, since I'm a boxers kind of guy it means the two pairs of briefs that I accidentally bought one time thinking they were boxer-briefs. After that there's no where to turn but to the pair of silk boxers my friend Mike brought back to me from Singapore with a pattern of women's shoes all over them (?!) which creep like a motherfucker.) If I can keep my cool through all that what can't I keep my cool through?

You see, just the other day the fact that I really can't resist being baited came to the forefront of my attention. I was already having a bad day when this guy walks up to me as I was calling moviephone in the lobby of the New York Public Library. "Are you making a cel phone call in the New York Public Library?" he asked me condescendingly as I stood there holding my cel phone open. He looked like a kind of nutty, dumpy Tobey Macguire, and all the "Freak!" bells were ringing off the hook in my head but when I answered in the affirmative and he replied "Well I think that's just sad,"or some such, that's all it took, I was hooked in. No other choice than to defend myself and how there was nothing wrong with the call I was making. Even after he'd begun to make his exit I still couldn't let it go, having to ask who it was hurting, and drawing him back in. As I was thinking that evening about how easily this guy had baited me and how I just walked into the confrontation as if I was looking for it, I got to the corner of Flatbush and Seventh Avenue. There were a lot of cars backed up over the crosswalk, not moving because of traffic stopped at the next light down the street. I waited for the light to turn green, or rather to turn and then I began crossing the street. There was one more SUV still in the box that hadn't made it to the other side of the crosswalk. I could have waited for him to cross in front of me, but I'm an adamant believer in pedestrian rights and so I started to cross, believing that a) you shouldn't pull out into the box if you don't know that you're going to be able to make it all the way across to the other side, and b) when I have the right of way, you gotta wait for me. So I've begun crossing, in front of this guy's SUV, and so he starts to try to weave his way around me, but I weave and continue to step in front of his car. So he leans on the horn. So I gesture towards the walking man made out of white lights and he, now behind me and driving through the crosswalk begins to yell at me loudly. Since it's freezing out, his window is up, and so I can't really hear a word he's saying. I think I got the gist of it though, and decided to share my own views on the subject with him, making an obscene hand gesture involving a single raised finger in order to prove my point.

Thing about this second encounter, I realized as soon as I'd gotten across the street, was that it could have been avoided. Even though I'm an adamant supporter of pedestrian blah blah blah, I could have just let him drive cross in front of me and be done with it. But suppose I decided on principle to cross. I still could have let him lean on the horn, or yell at me through the window, and just continued on my way. It's worth noting that my yelling back at him accomplished nothing anyway. His window was up, and if I couldn't hear him too well he probably wasn't able to make out the finer points of my argument. Also, with big gloves on he was probably unable to grasp the full meaning of my hand gesture, and so the point it attempted to clarify was lost as well.

After this, feeling that I was already wound up enough, I decided to try for a new, confrontation-free me.

And I was doing pretty well with it, as the example above about the laundromat demonstrates I think. My commute into work was confrontation-free, in spite of all the opportunities provided to confrontation seekers every day on the New York subway. Even more than that, I was keeping my cool, not getting upset because the train stalled at a station or someone stuck a briefcase into my back. The trains are crowded, how is getting worked up about it change anything?

What does all this have to do with pizza, you might be inclined to ask. Well, in fact it has had nothing to do with pizza up to this point, but I'm getting to that. This is all just back story. Should I have started the story in the middle? (Oops, getting kind of close to getting confrontational there.)

On the lunch-hour of My Confrontation-Free Day I decided that I'd head out to Tuscany for pizza. I think that I was heading out pretty late as it was, undecided and uncertain as to what it was that I was going to want to eat. I had won, from the cap of a bottle of Coke, a "Free 20 oz. Coke" the day before. I'd gotten the bottle from a vending machine in the service corridor at my office, so there was little chance I was going to be able to claim my free Coke there. I have tried in the recent past to not buy any products manufactured by the Coca Cola Corporation, for reasons of their being involved in union busting and related murders in Colombia and Guatemala. And I'm ashamed of admitting that I allow myself to slip and buy their products nonetheless, especially after doing a Google search under "Coca Cola, Unions" so I could locate the above link. But I do. I suppose that I thought that it would be some small blow then to actually cash in the cap for a free bottle of Coke because I'd be getting their product without giving them any money. So I brought the bottle cap along with me when I went out to buy lunch, thinking that I might be able to cash it in at the pizzeria.

I'd run into some difficulty the night before trying to get ah old of my free Coke when I went into the bodega across the street, and had explained to me in Spanish why it was that the owner couldn't honor the bottle cap. I don't buy my soda from Coca Cola, I buy it from a wholesaler, so I can't go back to him with it. He had to explain to me what the word for wholesaler was, but other than that the conversation ran pretty smoothly. It seems odd to me that the guys over there have no problem remembering that I speak some Spanish but they can't remember that I don't ever want a plastic bag since I'm only walking back across the street with whatever, and that's how they learned that I spoke any Spanish. "No quiero bolsa." "No quieres bolsa?" "No."

So when I head out to get my lunch late in the afternoon that day I realized that I might run into some problem getting a bottle of free Coke from the fine folks at Tuscany. I headed out of the building determined to avoid confrontations, to see what could be done if I were to try and let thing roll off my back, or to let other people have their way without any question. Walking down 5th Avenue at lunch hour went without incident, and even crossing 57th St. at the corner of 5th, which can be tricky because you have two large masses of people rushing at one another across the whole width of the crosswalk, was beyond mention. When I got down to 55th St. though, I saw that G-d was testing me, because there was what would surely be my first trial. The church on the northwest corner of 55th & 5th is undergoing renovations, and they've blocked off part of the sidewalk there on 55th. Rather than just direct everyone to the south side of the street or construct one of those covered walkways they've put up a series of barricades, about the width of a person and not much more, south of the outer wall that defines the area under construction, leaving a narrow walkway to get to the sidewalk beyond the church. I'd crossed through this area before on my way to Tuscany, in single file usually as I'd be traveling with others. When I'd get close to someone coming in the other direction I'd turn my body at an angle slightly and keep walking. If the other person did the same there'd be no problem and we'd both be able to pass comfortably. Sometimes people (men) wouldn't turn their bodies at an angle, making it so that I had to flatten myself even more against the wall in order for the both of us to pass. When I saw this was going to happen I'd always turn myself a little bit outward, and lean in with the shoulder somewhat. Not enough to really bang into someone, but just enough so that I'd felt as though "I'd shown them!" or something equally ridiculous. In truth, it seems all the more ridiculous as I write this, having to put it into words as such.

So I started down the walkway, and who should appear at the other end but a nice looking middle aged lady. When she and I got close enough to one another I pressed myself completely against one of the walls so that she could pass unhindered. Hearing her sincere and somewhat surprised "Thank you!" was really all the satisfaction I needed to continue. So when I got to the other end and there were three men coming towards me I turned myself almost completely sideways as I walked and we all passed one another with ease.

I got to Tuscany and ordered my pizza and discovered that I was going to run into an unexpected problem. It seems that Tuscany doesn't carried any soda in 20 oz bottles. They've only got the cans, and I didn't really want to try to trade down as a man at a local grocer suggested I do once when I presented a coupon good for a full quart of Starbucks ice cream. He suggested that he could only offer me a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Are you kidding? So I just took my pizza and left, now realizing that I was going to have to deal with the added disadvantage of trying to get a bottle of free Coke from some place where I wasn't going to be buying anything, and in that area most of the places that would have Coke are also selling something or other for lunch.

But I had to try. In brief I ended up going to four places that had 20 oz bottles of Coke and none of them would let me redeem the cap. Most of them were downright rude about it too. The woman in the first place acted as though I was trying to rip her off or that I'd offered to buy a sandwich at a dollar less than she wanted to sell it to me for. The man in the newsstand, once he found out that what I wanted wouldn't even look at me. He just shook his head no and looked back down at whatever he was doing when I appeared. One guy was nice enough though, and apologized, explaining that he bought his soda from a wholesaler, and not from Coke directly, so he couldn't get the money back for the soda. I wasn't being confrontational about it at all though, I wasn't making snide comments back to the people who were rude to me. If they didn't want to give me the soda I just said "okay" and moved on.

When I walked into D & S Market Place at 34 West 55th St., I noticed that there was a cooler not far from the door and thought I might try a new tactic. I looked in the cooler and while they didn't have 20 oz bottles of Coke with similar caps (the ones that gave you a chance to win were stamped with gold type) they did have Vanilla Coke with the same cap, and Vanilla Coke suits me just fine. So I took the bottle out of the cooler and walked up to the register. When I got there the woman began to ring me up but I told her that the cap said I'd won a free Coke. She asked to see the cap and I showed it to her and she said "okay" in a pleasant, smiling fashion, and I took my Coke and left. Hurrah.

When I got back up to the office and sat down at my desk to eat, the pizza from Tuscany had already gotten cold. Not that that should have come as any surprise to me. I was walking around to all those stores with the temperature well below zero and then the cold wind to boot. I had a bite of the first slice thinking that I would probably just put it into the toaster oven that we have in the kitchen to heat it up, but realized that it wasn't really cold, just not warm at all, and that it still tasted delicious. The bites came away cleanly, and Tuscany is never cheap with their cheese or their sauce. It's good pizza with a big flavor, tangy sauce, and the dough is excellent, hinting at olive oil or perhaps a bit of garlic. It's not thin at all, but manages not to overwhelm the slice with a doughy flavor or texture, but rather holds the whole thing together. I ate the second slice without heating it up as well, even though it had pepperoni on it. Both slices were excellent.

Since the free bottle of Vanilla Coke that I'd gotten from the store had the same sort of 1 in 12 wins free Coke cap, I decided to see if I was a winner once more. I'd hoped to continue my streak of free Cokes, but nothing doing. There were just a bunch of numbers and letters under the cap. I went to the Coca Cola web site to see if I'd won anything with them, but after I'd registered using my standard fake registration name (FIRST NAME: Fuzz LAST NAME: Duzzer EMAIL ADDRESS: fuzz@duzzer.com) I found that I couldn't get onto the part of the site where I could find out if I was a big winner. The fire wall they have up at work regularly prevents us from getting access to aspects of other people's sites like that.

I wish I could tell you that My Confrontation-Free Day ended here. That I had a pleasant ride home on the subway, got home and had some dinner, did a little reading, and went to bed, slept peacefully. Sadly this isn't what I can report. The ride home on the train was fine, and the walk back to my block was also fine. I decided to stop off at the laundromat though and pick up the laundry that I had to leave there last night as a result of their power outage. You may recall that I'd been told that my laundry would be washed and dried when the power came back up. But when I went to pick up my laundry it turned out that nothing had been done with my laundry at all. I wasn't in the least bit pleased about any of this and asked the man why this hadn't happened, reminded him of what he'd promised and I discovered that he was telling me a different story altogether. According to him he'd said that he would "do my best" to get the laundry done. The idea that he would try to get the laundry done rather than saying plainly that it would be done became the crux of a loud and explosive argument that followed. I lost my cool. I didn't go looking for a confrontation, it just showed up on my doorstep. I am glad to say that at some point I was able to accept the situation for what it was, realize that arguing further wasn't going to get me anywhere and decide to remove myself from the argument. I also realized that I still had to do my laundry, sitting as it was soaking wet in a large black plastic bag. So I went home to drop off my coat and returned to the laundromat and did the laundry. I didn't argue further with the man, but I did tell him, without raising my voice or my temper that I really didn't appreciate that although last night, when everyone else was all over his back about the power outage, I didn't give him the slightest bit of flack about it, and even told him that I understood that it wasn't his doing and that he was doing all he could to rectify the situation, but that tonight he was lying to me, telling me that he hadn't ever promised to wash and dry the laundry. Surprisingly, he told me then that yes, he had promised to take care of the laundry for me (and for all the other patrons in the same position as I was the night before) but that the owner had told him that all he could do was to pay the cost of the doing our laundry again in the same machines.

Since then I've tried to stay out of even small confrontations and territorial battles, choosing instead to try to let things pass. I'm not sure how long this is going to last or if it will allow me to let go of resentments and the petty squabbles that re-play in my head. I do hope so though. It might give me more time to write about pizza.