There's a box on a chair and my headphones are on. Books piled high and a paper wide open. A vaguely hostile continence usually works fine, but the best offense has always been a good newspaper. Keep it propped up, elbows in and pages out and nobody this side of Division St. will fuck with you. When alone, always carry a Wall Street Journal; it's cheaper than mace and far more effective.

Alone, waiting for a friend at the deli on Lincoln Ave, it's all one can do to avoid the unholy crew who descend on the solitary like bass players on a drunken Lisa Loeb. Emotional rapists, I sense them, lilaceous and ribald, they hunger. I know they're out there because sometimes, when I'm not careful, one will burst through the speakers of a cell phone, bust out of a Blue Tooth and sop me up.

They do this because they've lost themselves. Somewhere between the last time they got laid and the moment they stopped caring they dissolved their identity entirely. Once, I was attacked in the Old Orchard food court but a man who wasn't so much a man but a hat with teeth. After ten minutes, this man, this deerstalker cannibal, had chewed his way though every defense and before the afternoon was over, I was pushing a cart of crap from Marshall Field's though the snow-sprinkled parking lot.

That was a while ago. I've battened down the hatches since then. Tightend the ramparts, constructed my Jericho. I've mastered the art of the "fuck off" face and can use it with devastating precision.  It's all about survival when you're on your own, and nothing spells survival better than a highly guarded fortress. Man may be a social animal, but in Chicago social is subjective.

There are only thee feet separating my booth from the bathroom and if need be, my cell phone can ring at the touch of button. I'm ready. I must be. Lest that man, that man I fear more than anyone else, corner me behind a bowl of mushroom barely soup. And that simply cannot happen.