Hell's Kitchen Flea Market and the Stone Penis

I got up yesterday morning, a rather bright Sunday, and ate my oatmeal sludge (an oatmeal/whey protein/ strawberry concoction that has the power to turn most people’s stomachs but just makes me stronger) out of a plastic Tupperware container. The apartment I am subletting has plates but no bowls. Not good. I mean, as a recent art school grad I know I have to live cheap and all but I would at least like to pretend that I am something and eat out of a real bowl. Being the strategic problem solver I decide the best places to look for cheap bowls are at Target, or for more authenticity, the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. So Tiff (my roommate) and I head out to Hell’s Kitchen (she informs me not to think this will happen again as she only needs a bowl, like a pathetic puppy I nod eagerly, she is New York savvy and has great fashion sense).

The Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market, well, let’s just say next time I promise to bring my camera. Like any good flea market there were antique candleholders and random assorted landline phones. But what really made Hell’s Kitchen stand out was not the “Table of Sad Compact Discs” (as so labeled because while their campy CD art make you wonder if it is pathetic on purpose, the truth it, those CDs were someone’s big deal and now they are melting in the sun while young uppity twenty-something year old mock them for bad ‘80s hair) it was not even the table of weird ‘50s Pyrex cookware displayed under a plethora of similarly dated fur shawls, interestingly enough it was not even the heavily beaded dresses, a.k.a hipster party paradise.

Nope, it was the stone dildos.

I wish I were lying. Tiff was pointing out jade Buddhas and I was wondering what someone would with a singular Buddha face, when there they were: a line of 5 rather large assorted stone penises. In my mind (which speaks through my mouth) I hypothesize that said stone sculptures are old school dildos; though I cannot imagine why anyone would utilize them as they look rather painful. Of course there is hole going straight through the balls and I tell Tiff if she had one as a statement necklace no one would question her authority.

And yes, eventually we both bought bowls (though not in Hell’s Kitchen) but at a Goodwill up the street where white bowls ran wild to the chorus of a Lil’ Wayne song.