Only darkness has the power

I spent an hour at the DMV yesterday morning, which, as these things go, isn't an inordinate amount of time to be trapped there, nor was it particularly hellish. I'm not quite sure when the New York City Department of Motor Vehicles first got its rep as the Empire of Obfuscation and Sadism in Triplicate Form*, but I do know that it's been somewhat reformed.

I arrived at the DMV five minutes after it opened and was greeted by a line of about 60 people just outside the elevator doors. Soft hits of the 70s and 80s were piped in from the speakers. Periodically, the more incredulous among us would ask the person standing in front of them, "Am I really supposed to be standing in this line? I only need to..." and the person standing in front of them would nod and shoot them a "Who the fuck do you think YOU are?" look.

The entrance to the DMV is a standard glass door. The exit, inexplicably, is one of those floor-to-ceiling turnstiles that implies that you're not merely leaving, you're being furloughed. Yesterday it was in need of some WD-40. Everytime someone left, it made a grinding-creaking-KACHUNKing noise that put me in mind of an industrial guillotine.

I had already prepared for my trip to the DMV by downloading and completing every conceivable form they might ask me to fill out (hmmm...."Registering Farm Equipment"....better do it just in case) so by the time my number (C529) started blinking on the LCD bingo screen, I was confident that I'd be done in a matter of minutes.

(I was also begging God that I'd be done in a matter of minutes, because I had a desperate need to take a dump. Maybe it's the bureaucracy, or having to write my full name 117 times, or perhaps it's the promise of using the most horribly defiled restrooms in the five boroughs, but whenever I get called for jury duty, or visit the police station**, or have business with the DMV, I find myself seized by the need to defacate.)

For the first time in my life, divine providence smiled upon me: five minutes later I was done, and as Stevie Nicks' seminal "Edge of Seventeen" blared from the loudspeakers, I KACHUNKed my way out of there, hopped on the express, and managed to get to work at 9:55.

Riding up in the elevator, eagerly fecund, I noticed a sign: "Notice to Tenants: On Tuesday we will be doing work on the water supply. From 10 am to 3 pm you may experience an absence of water pressure. We apologize for the inconvenience."

By the time the doors of the elevator opened, I had already begun unbuttoning my trousers.

I'll spare you the rest of the story, but suffice it to say that I beat the clock by just under :30.

*When I was a kid, my parents' city friends--the ones who didn't run to the hills (like my folks) during the early 70s--used to come up to visit us just to go to our DMV. It was a kinder, gentler DMV than what they were accustomed to: There was never a line, the office was not a cavernous multipart drop-ceilinged nightmare with meandering lines of cretins (it was a small anteroom in the lovely neoclassical courthouse building on the town square), and the lady behind the counter was actually nice. "Hold on a sec, hon," she'd say when you'd go to register your vehicle. "Lemme see if I can find some license plates with your initials on them."
**On Very Special Occiasions.