The cold is penetrating my sleeping bag. I fart a drawn out, almost wet fart. I’m inside the bag, and it’s so potent it makes my eyes water. However, for just a brief instant, I feel a bit warmer. Maybe from the fart, but I doubt it. More likely it’s because of the smile on my face. Farts do that.
***
I walk by this guy on the street corner every day. He’s got a beat up cardboard sign. I guess, actually, he has two. One says “Laid off. Need money to pay my rent.” The other says “Bush lied to me. And to you. I need money. Now.”
His old lawn chair is frayed and torn. It probably doesn’t have a lot of life left in it.
He knows my name by now. Eight months of passing and saying hi, dropping some coins in his jar and swapping chit-chat can do that. It still startles some folks when he says “Hey, Randy!” to me.
His name? Joe Riggin. He calls himself Dirt because he’s dirty. Which of course allows folk to playfully call him Joe Dirt. One time someone gave him a truckers hat with a long wig attached. He laughed it up, then tossed it in the dumpster next to the old fish market that he’s staked out as his territory.
***
My feet stink.
I’ve worn the same socks for three days in a row now.
With old dirty shoes.
I can’t remember the last time anyone swept or vacuumed the floor.
Anyone?
I do live alone.
Burnt down match sticks also litter the floor, along with aluminum foil and playing cards.
No drugs, however.
Just empty candle jars, microwave dinner boxes and notepads.
***
What the fuck? It’s daylight? It should be night.
Sleep comes sometimes 16 hours a stretch. Or just fits of one hour spurts.
***
I watched he when she came into the bar. Light green dress on. The kind that lets you see up her leg for a second, then covers itself right back up before showing you too much.
Damn she has good legs. Anyone who doesn’t like a good set of sticks on a lady is a fool. If the legs hold up, you know everything else will too.
***
I found an old notepad. I opened it up because I didn’t remember where it was from. It was in a folder with some handouts and such.
As the words unfolded from the paper to my brain, I couldn’t comprehend ever having written them. But it’s clearly my handwriting. Clearly my scattered way of taking notes. And it’s about my profession. The one I gave up a life for. The one that has died and gone to hell. The one that seems to be so close, yet impossible to reach again.
Finally, I realize this is the notepad from the seminar I went to in April of 2006. A month after one of the worst moments of my life. Which, looking back, really wasn’t so god damn awful after all. If you put it in perspective of other folks’ worst moments.
I don’t remember much of that seminar. It should have been a chance to mingle with the “greats” of my profession. To network. Hobnob. Get my name out there, so to speak. It started with me in line for my hotel room. There was Woody Peele. There was Jim Litke. There was Susan Brennan. And then there was me.
I said hello. Love your work. They made pleasantries. Then I went blank. I started to wander back to my depression. And I just sunk back into line. Didn’t say a word.
Later, at a meet and greet, I saw a familiar face. We shared laughs. We got a drink. Then I slipped back into my coma. He ended up going off to talk to Stephen A. Smith. Me? I went to a table and just sat. I don’t remember much else.
Eventually, I must have gotten tired or bored or paranoid.
I woke up the next day having drank two Red Stripes and started crying.
I cried a lot in 2006. A lot in 2007. A whole lot in 2008. A little less in 2009. A whole lot less so far in 2010.
It still “matters” to me. But I don’t care as much. I guess that’s as good an explanation as there is?
I put the notepad back in a box. The words are unfamiliar and not at all reassuring. But, I still have it, and that’s a rarity. So, I keep it. Stash it away for the next time I stumble upon it.
***
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