Michelle Markowitz

However.

I am constantly on the business end of racial profiling.  Just this morning as I was dropping off my laundry it happened again.  We did our typical ritual where she says it will be ready far into the future (tomorrow afternoon) and I ask if there is any way I can pick it up tonight at closing  (11 hours from now).  She eyes me skeptically, sighs dramatically,  and says fine, she will do it, but only for her special clients.  It is our own little thing.  She asserts dominance over me, and I like that she calls me her “special client” because it fulfills a secret wish I have of being a beloved neighborhood fixture, not unlike the East Village man who walks his pig on a leash through Tompkins Square Park.  This morning was no different, but at the end she handed me my ticket with the name “Sarah Cohen” on it.

“Oh, that’s not me.  Here you go – it has the wrong name on it.”

“But that’s your name right?  You look just like-“ and then she trailed off.

So there we have it.  Apparently my exotic dusky looks are reminiscent of any other girl in my neighborhood who also has a partiality towards Ann Taylor, Portnoy types,  and dropping her laundry off last minute.