5.28.2007
PRIVILEGE
SETTING: A small room full of fake Chanel and Kate Spade purses. It is somewhere beneath an unassuming store on Mott Street in Chinatown--through a small door, down a stairwell, follow the barely-lit tunnels, etc.
PLAYERS: A disinterested Chinese guy. A Midwestern family, who clearly don't speak Chinese. Four twenty- and thirtysomething Asian people, who obviously do.
MF MOM: How much is this? (Holds up purse)
CG: Fifty.
MF SON: What?
MF DAUGHTER: Really?
MF SON: Fifty? You're kidding. It's thirty down the street, I shit you not.
CG: Fifty. (Picks at teeth)
MF MOM: We'll be going then.
MF DAD: Yeah.
MF SON: Let's go. (Pauses) We're out of here, cause it's just thirty down the street.
MF MOM: Yeah, we are leaving.
(Seconds pass. Nobody moves.)
MF SON: Let's go down the street--where it's thirty.
CG: Thirty.
MF MOM: Okay! (Counts out wad of cash)
AP 1: Sorry, how much is this?
CG: (in Chinese) Speak Chinese?
AP 2: (in Chinese) Yes.
CG: (in Chinese) If you speak Chinese, then five.
***
SETTING: Shoe store on Upper West Side. The kind that sells very long white tees and overly colorful hooded sweatshirts.
PLAYERS: A salesman and a young man holding a rainbow-motif'd Nike running shoe.
SM: Size eight-and-a-half. That's all we have. You're holding it. I'll get the other.
YM: Yo, this is it? I know I'm not paying full price.
SM: Hey...are you Muslim?
YM: Yes I am. As-salaamu Alaikum, my brother.
SM: As-salaamu Alaikum, my brother.
YM: Nice.
SM: Okay--how about sixty then?
YM: Nice.
Labels: ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS
