Woke up this morning to two revelations: 1. The memory of her doesn’t cause me pain anymore. Discomfort? Yes. Loneliness? Yes. Pain? Not at all. 2. Waiting for the right moment always is a bad idea.
The road beckons me again tomorrow. It’ll be a fine ol’ time for at least five days. The car will get yet another test and she’ll pass with flying colors. A friendship will be tested by 30 hours in the car together. Always fun to see how those turn out. And a city will be visited again. Every time I go, I wonder if it’ll be the last time. I can’t help but wonder that more and more now. It’s funny, life.
The bitter sweet taste of the past came calling for a little while. It’s the worst part of the times we live in. You can’t just pine over someone lost anymore. They end up in your life somehow now. Again. Maybe you get drunk and search. Maybe she gets drunk and searches, although a lot less likely.
I got my hopes up for no real reason last month. And being the insane over-analyzing fool that I am, I waited too long to even say hello. So, instead, I watched something else unfold. Sad? Yes. But I’m a classic case of sad. But it wasn’t meant to be. Never was. That’s why it was the first of many awkward endings and continuances. What would my life be without that? Sane? Boring? Normal? All those sound so awful. I’d rather be a tormented soul than a bored one. No settled life for me, as a songwriter once penned.
The hourglass curves of the lady walking by make me wonder. What was I thinking of when I left? I know exactly what I was thinking, yet I still wonder what I was thinking. If you think you’re confused reading it, imagine thinking it.
I noticed the smell while sitting at my desk. It was most definitely urine. Whose urine or what’s urine, I have no idea. But, since I was to be cooped up at my desk for the next five hours having to breathe it in, I decided to try and find out.
The most obvious culprit would be the toothless old guy a couple of seats down. He’s the old-school journo who smells like an ashtray, eats livers and gizzards from Church’s Fried Chicken every week and holds on to his 1960’s ponytail like he does to the printed word – tightly.
I walk down to his desk to spark up a conversation. I use Tim Geithner’s comment that “Default by the United States is unthinkable,” as a starter.
“Can you believe he said that?”
“Quack,” he says. Not the word, but the actual sound of a duck.
“Notice he didn’t say impossible. Or improbable.”
“We’re all doomed.”
“Agreed. You have your vegetable garden started yet. With barbed wire fences to keep out the starving?”
“Ha!”
I notice he doesn’t smell of urine. Of many other things yes, but not him.
Back to my desk, the foul stench fills up my nostrils again. God, this place is horrible. If it isn’t the rats, it’s the gnats. If it’s not the smell of bleach, it’s urine. And the pay stinks. You’d think I’d get the fuck out. But, I live at the beach…
I turn my attention to Grimace behind me. He’s a pale white version of the giant purple blob that tried to get me as a kid to fall in love with McDonald’s. It worked then. Not now.
This guy wears shirts from the 1990s with pride. I have no problem with that, as I do too. However, I have not put on over 100 pounds so they no longer even come close to covering my belly. So, every day we are graced with stretch marks and belly hair. That and he sucks on pen tops. I wonder to myself every night as he sounds like a cow doing its thing with cud how a person gets to this point?
I glance at him. It makes my blood curdle just looking upon his mass of cellulite. I walk over and spark up some conversation. He likes women’s college basketball. Much like I did. Except I just had a crush on one of the players, and followed her around the country like a 12 year old when I was 19. Thinking back on that, I wonder if I’ve paid off my debts from those trips? Probably. But maybe not.
“What did you think about UConn and Stanford losing?” I ask.
“Amazing. It was quite possibly the biggest night in college basketball for women in a long time. It reminds me of the 1994 tournament when …” I stopped listening to this manifesto on the greatness of women’s college basketball at that point. This must be how people thought of me when I was younger. Ha. No wonder I couldn’t get laid. I also note that he does not smell of urine.
Lastly, I turn to the new girl. She hasn’t spoken to me in 6 hours today. I think she’s got a crush on me. Ha! Not if I was the last immigrant grocer on earth, honey!
Anyways, she’s got allergies today and her voice is more annoying than ever. Minnesota gal with a stopped up nose. Ugh. She has been slathering on the hand lotion a lot more than usual today, and god that stuff stinks.
I do the markets page for her, tell her, and she thanks me. I don’t get a whiff of urine. Shit.
So I sit at my desk and wallow in the stink.
Then it finally dawns on me. Maybe I stink. My jeans are the ones I wore to my friend’s house the other day. They have a cat. It doesn’t like change and new people.
I go to the bathroom. Sniff my jeans. Yep. It’s me. Never think the worst of those around you, until you’ve considered it in yourself.
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