Please, don't touch me.

I had gone to the same grocery store on an almost obsessively regular basis for 12 years. Convenience was the primary reason, but this was also the one place, in and amongst all the other grocery stores, bodegas and green grocers in the neighborhood, that carried everything I was ever looking for.

One Sunday morning a few short months ago, I stopped by to pick up that week's ration of milk, juice and cat litter. While standing in line, I noticed the cashier. I don't often come to recognize cashiers, even after 12 years, but this one I knew, sort of. She always seemed to be in a mood, always seemed a little cranky and short-tempered-yet for some reason, she was always very nice to me. Not that we ever really chatted or anything like that, but she was never anything less than pleasant during the transaction.

After she rang up the total that morning, she asked, quite unexpectedly, "So what's your book about?" This startled me. I don't go parading these things about, preferring to remain as anonymous as possible in my own neighborhood. Letting people know what you do-whatever it is-leads to nothing but trouble. That's my thinking anyway. I have no idea how she might've found out. It was clearly an innocent question, no big deal at all-but that didn't stop me from becoming very nervous.

"It's, ummm?" I began, then quickly conjured up a one-sentence plot summary (which wasn't all that hard to do).

After she gave me my change, I told her I'd give her a copy. In spite of my reaction, she'd been kind enough to ask.

It was a completely innocuous interaction. Very simple and very human. Yet the panic was still on me as I walked away with my bags, and I left the store thinking I can never come back here again.

I get weird and paranoid that way. It happens with stores, with bars, with panhandlers, street vendors and people in general. After talking with an individual in what is by all accounts a very pleasant fashion, my immediate impulse is to take whatever steps are necessary to avoid them for the rest of my life. I've been known to change my schedule or walk blocks out of my way to avoid people I've spoken with once. I'm not sure why this is-it's stupid-but I just get that way.

But I couldn't do that with the grocery store-it was convenient, as I said, and it had everything. A few days after that first conversation, I went back into the store, grabbed the groceries I needed, saw the cashier again, and passed along a copy of the book, as I said I would.

"I'm not going to ask you what you thought about it," I told her, quite honestly. "If you don't like it, you can sell it somewhere, and that'll be fine."

As I left the store, I thought once more that I'd never be able to go back there again. Passing the book along nailed it. I was just trying to be nice, but I was afraid it would backfire on me. (I'm not even sure what that would entail. All I knew was that somehow it made things worse.)

For a while, I didn't go back. I stopped at the Korean grocers, the 24-hour store eight blocks away, and a series of bodegas in between to scrounge together the items on my meager grocery list-all the items I could normally pick up at one spot.

There was no reason for this sort of behavior on my part, of course. It made no sense at all. I just become extremely nervous when it comes to things like "human contact."

Well, a few weeks later, on a groggy, foggy early Sunday morning, not much feeling like trudging that extra eight blocks, I once again found myself in the same grocery store. When I walked in, I noticed that there was a new cashier on duty.

I made my rounds, gathered the items I needed and brought them to the register. The cashier told me how much I owed, and I handed her a bill.

I stood there with my hand out as she passed me my change. Then, in a move that had me quite befuddled for much longer than it should have-it was one of those situations where, being a little foggy-headed to begin with, it took me an unusually long time to realize what was happening-she began tapping my palm with her index finger.

I stared at her finger tapping my palm, wondering what it might mean, why it might be happening, and how very strange it all was. Then she said, "He's talking to you."

"Huh?" I started, looking away from the tapping finger and up at her.

"He's talking to you," she repeated, nodding over my shoulder.

I turned, and there stood the store manager. He'd been working there as long as I could remember.

"Congratulations!" he boomed. "I didn't know you wrote."

"Ummm?" I said, very confused now. First the finger, now this. "Yeah? That's?that's what I do."

"I recognized your picture."

I looked back to the cashier in fear. She still had some of my change. She pointed at her face. "Your picture," she translated. "It looks like you."

"I?" I began, then I trailed off, and stared at the manager, frozen in place.

"I started to read it," he said, "but she took it away."

"Well?she?" I began, not knowing what to say, "I?Hope you like it."

"But she took it away."

"Oh."

I reached for my bags then and bolted for the door, feeling bad, hoping I didn't come off too rude, knowing I probably came off less rude than completely insane. Again I burst through the front door thinking, I can never come back here again. I really, really can't.

I rushed the groceries home, poured myself another cup of coffee and lit a cigarette, trying to calm down. This was all real stupid. They were just being nice. I just didn't want to have to talk to someone every time I went to the goddamn grocery store. It's great when people in places like that are pleasant. It really is. You meet a pleasant person at the checkout, it makes all the difference. But when pleasant takes that extra step-say, when someone learns your name-then I freak the hell out.

Later that afternoon, I had to step out again, this time to go to the drug store. That was the only place in the neighborhood that sold small bottles of root beer, and I had quite a hankering for some root beer. Nothing to worry about there. Everyone was always rude in the drug store.

Once I approached the street the drug store was on, though, I could see something was wrong. The police barricades, the booths-it was a goddamn street fair. One fucking day a year it happens, and I always hit it. Time was, before the beer ban went into effect, that I loved street fairs. Now they generally had the same effect on me the scene in the grocery store did.

No big deal, I thought. Just a block. Just a block and across the street. I'll get through this thing just fine. Fine and quick.

But when I hit the corner, the first thing I saw was a table where someone was offering up cheap bootleg videotapes and DVDs, so I had to stop and look. After a few minutes, it was clear they didn't have anything I couldn't pick up from my regular bootleg store at half the price, so I moved on down the block toward the drug store, and that bottle of root beer.

Ahh, what the hell, I thought. Now that I'm here, maybe I'll get a funnel cake or something.

I hadn't yet found a funnel cake dispensary, though, before a middle-aged Asian woman materialized in my path. She was pointing off to my right, toward another booth.

I was still a little out of it (the coffee hadn't accomplished much), so I stopped, then turned to look at what she might be pointing at. Something was happening there at the booth, I could tell it. There was a man, and he was moving something. I think that's what it was. The details weren't clear, and they didn't yet make sense to me.

Suddenly the Asian woman's hands were on me. She was grabbing onto the shoulder muscles at the base of my neck, and squeezing.

This took me a while to figure out, too, especially because my attention was focused on trying to figure out what was happening at the booth. Her string hands continued squeezing my shoulders. Finally, I twisted away from her iron grip. "Please don't do that," I said.

She looked at me, a little shocked, then pointed again toward the booth with the man and the thing.

"Massage, massage," she said.

"But? I don't want a massage." The fact that my shoulders were all knotted up from the scene in the grocery store was beside the point. Christ, I have trouble enough talking to people normally-lord knows I have trouble with unexpected massages from strangers in the middle of the street.

"Massage," she repeated.

Part of me wanted to suggest that it simply wasn't appropriate to go around grabbing the necks of unexpecting strangers. Another part really, really had no interest in finding out whether or not she was offering release.

"No, thank you but?no," I said. Her face fell, and I scampered away from her grabby hands, took the next corner, and decided to go without that root beer I was so looking forward to. Instead, I headed back to the apartment, feeling dirty and violated, where I locked the door behind me, deciding to spend the rest of the day inside.