DC PLACES ISSUE Gregg Shapiro   THE FORTUNE COOKIE Once, I opened a fortune cookie in a Chinatown café on H Street only to find it empty. A clam with no pearl, a magician with nothing up his sleeve. I made up a fortune that went, "Drink from the well of life, but beware of the algae." The cookie was as hard to digest as the improvised fortune. Once, I met a lawyer who seduced me with words, then his hands. A smooth-skinned, smooth-talker who made my ears blush, my stomach do flip-flops. He tried me on the roof of his DuPont Circle high-rise, found me innocent. The next morning, I opened a novelty fortune cookie for breakfast. It said, "Lawyers do it in their briefs." Once, a fortune in a cookie ripped in two, each tattered half contained in the cookie's folds. Carefully, I retrieved the two-part fortune, fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. Jagged cookie quarters lay on the table, uneaten. "You have a split personality," was what the fortune said. Once, delirious from hunger, I neglected to tip the ancient man who delivered egg rolls and shrimp fried rice to the house on Warren Street. The food was hot, filling; satisfied my craving. I washed it down with green tea, stored the leftovers. The fortune cookie was stale, as difficult to open as a vault. It said, "Don't press your luck."   Gregg Shapiro is a pop culture journalist, poet, and fiction writer who lived in Washington DC from July 1985 through January 1988. His interviews and reviews are nationally syndicated in a variety of regional LGBT publications. His collection of poems, Protection, is forthcoming from Gival Press. He lives in Chicago with his life-partner Rick and their two dogs, Dusty and k.d.   Published in Volume 7, Number 3, Summer 2006. To read more by this author Gregg Shapiro