I had this idea when I woke up that I am a traveling door-to-door salesman. Not literally. I'm just some asshole you see walking along your street and you duck in your living room behind the couches so I don't come to your door. I even SAW you closing your blinds. I know you're there. But I avoid you anyways.
And then there are the regulars on the street who know me and talk to me every day. They ask me how I'm doing, invite me in for cookies and milk, let me pet their dog. Some of them even know me for my personal life and ask me things like:
"How's that girl you were talking to?" I'd reply with something like "What girl?" And then they'd say "You know! The real pretty one with the short hair and the long legs." And I'd be like... "Oh her... uhhh I guess she's alright."
Some of my regulars would tell me I smoke too much. That I drink too much. That I seem lonely. They'd buy things from me out of pity, but I suppose I could just ask for the money and they'd just give it to me anyways. I'm selling my own pathetic, pitiful self to these people, not asking for hand outs though. So I'd open my briefcase, soaked from the rain and falling apart and reach in and pull out a poetry book that I spent maybe two weeks on at the most (because I have so many vices to write about that two weeks is all it takes to write about them). I'd take their five bucks and put it in my pocket and they'd tell me to go get something to eat with that money because it doesn't look like I've eaten for days.
And then that poetry book that I sold to them would sit on their bookshelf and collect dust. They'd read maybe the first couple of chapters but it's nothing these people can't already figure out about me. Sometimes I hate the fact that I wear my heart on my sleeve.
In all reality I DO smoke too much. At some point within every hour of every day I'm filling my lungs with smoke and plotting my own demise. For some reason the thought of death, not even a painful one from something like lung cancer, doesn't cross my mind enough. I'm not terrified of what's going to happen. I'm terrified of what HAS happened and what IS happening. I suppose when I'm on my deathbed I'll be a little concerned but right now I'm not necessarily worried. Right now, if something comes up that isn't part of my everyday stupid fucking bullshit routine and it's not an improvement upon anything, I find myself chain-smoking to calm down.
This involves that pretty girl with the long legs and short hair and I getting into verbal conflicts.
This involves a member of my family being diagnosed with a disease that's going to catch up to me.
This involves my occasional case of writers block.
Anything like that.
I've also been thinking about how when I was younger I was so fascinated with dinosaurs. I think that what that taught me as a grown up is how to not be able to let things of the past that are dead and gone and rotting in the ground go. I think of people even who I was close to that passed away and I STILL can't believe they're gone and in some cases it's been years.
I'm going to be deaf by the time I'm 55. I'll still be as much of an asshole as I am now. And I won't have any friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment