Part 2: The Diner

Continued from... https://mtearfullyyours.blogspot.ca/2018/01/part-1-train-station-steps.html

Part 2: The Diner

The diner stood like a forgotten relic, a grease beast from the 1950’s, leftover in a wilderness of sleek, stretching skyscrapers. Inside, repellent homey smells of burnt toast and bitter black coffee snarled towards Michael’s nostrils. Overbright artificial lighting made plastic booths glisten with primary colour starkness, and 8 x 10’s of long-gone 1950’s cool kids lined the walls. Bud crashed into the first available booth like he owned the place.

“What would you like?” He grinned.

“Coffee, black, unless they have sugar cubes. Then I’ll take it with sugar cubes,” Michael replied.

“It has to be cubed?”

“Loose sugar makes me uncomfortable. It gets everywhere. I like things to be complete, in one piece,” Michael explained.

“Ah.” Bud nodded.

Michael drummed his fingers on the laminate table and looked around anxiously. A waitress leaned over the cash counter and was counting out bills, her scarlet nails fluttering from wrinkled president to wrinkled president. Nails ready to scratch your heart out, nails ready to dig into your back; Michael’s mind wandered. She turned around, dressed in a ruffled cotton apron, her blonde hair tousled in a low-slung who-cares ponytail. A shimmer of grease danced over her upper lip; American grease. As she approached the table, her hips swayed with bored sexiness, or maybe that was just her walk. Michael felt like an old perv.

“Hello. Two black coffees please... and if you have them, sugar cubes,” ordered Bud.

Her candy apple lips twisted into a smile-scowl, and she nodded and snapped her bubble gum, like a one-dimensional tacky diner waitress cliche, but what more could we ever know from this snapshot? Her other dimensions remained unknown, mysterious, and so she fell into a long procession of Sartrean waiters, with movements too precise, movements too predictable. Michael’s eyes darted away from her like frightened mosquitoes, predatory at first, and then, with an annoyed wave of a hand, fleeing and flustered. He let out a massive sigh.

“Well sunshine, tell me why you don’t like your job,” queried Bud.

“Umm... well I don’t want to seem ungrateful – you know it is an income,” Michael started, unsure if he was softening things or making them worse.

Bud put a finger to his own parched, wind-split lips as if to silence Michael by proxy.

“I know all about these things,” he began. “Do you think I’ve always lived like this?” He gestured towards his scruffy countenance. “I worked for years. I have a business degree. What does that even mean? I’m damned if I know but it was a boring form of torture.”

“Boring torture sounds familiar,” laughed Michael.

“Yes, yes – see you get me. I really wanted to study human behaviour, human minds. No, no – not psychology – because that’s just quick to tell you what’s ‘wrong’ with everybody,” he paused... “Do you know what’s wrong with everybody, Michael?”

Michael shrugged.

“You do! What’s wrong with everybody, is that we are made to feel like something’s wrong with us if we are unsatiated by everyday life. Well the crazy ones are the ones who are satiated, if you ask me. Anyway, I wanted to study philosophy... but I bet you’re wondering why I didn’t.”

Michael wasn’t really wondering.

Sartre’s waitress returned, and forcing a smile, placed two saucers and mugs on the table with a dainty clink. The coffee carelessly swirled and overpoured onto the yellowed saucers in disjointed pools: disappointing real life scenes. And then – a spark of hope as the waitress returned with a small glittering pyramid of sugar cubes. Not all was bad.

“It was because of a girl,” Bud continued seamlessly. “I knew I could make money in business... and I wanted to make money to give her a good life. She had eyes, cinnamon eyes... and we dated in college. I did the whole laying my dreams at her feet thing...” he trailed off and sipped his coffee.

“It didn’t work out...?” Michael asked.

He was slightly curious, but had also started to feel antsy about the meeting he was missing, and began to fiddle with the phone in his pocket. Impending files and piles of orders and disordered emails tied around his neck like knotted scarves. Did he really want to hear this man’s life story? A pang of guilt washed over Michael again, as Bud surveyed him with puppy dog sadness; he would stay for one more soapy dishwater cup.

“No. She didn’t want me in the end. So, there I was, trapped working a job I hated, without the girl I loved. And I lived that way for years. I never found anybody else. Then one day, in the eloquent words of my psychiatrist at the time, I ‘snapped,’ or – as I see it – had a moment of clarity. I quit. I could no longer live that life, making a boss I couldn’t stand rich, and paying taxes to politicians I didn’t trust. I quit - and lived off whatever money I had left, and that soon disintegrated – and then, here we are...” he spread his hand out demonstratively.

“Wow,” started Michael. He wasn’t sure if the man was insane, or gutsy, or prophetic.

“I couldn’t live for someone I loved, so I live for myself. I can’t say it’s easy, at times it feels fucking impossible – but I don’t belong to anyone, or any system.”

“And that’s why I despise my job, if you were wondering...” began Michael, “Because I don’t care. I only care because it puts a roof over my head, or food in my fridge, but I live in beige, mundane, systematic decay. I feel like I never had any say in the matter, like I just fell into life, and am forced to accept it as this.”

“But people respect you, eh?” Bud asked.

“Do they? Or am I just a drone sitting at a computer, hurling my way through middle age with nothing to remember except desks and meetings?”

“They call me a filthy old rummy,” Bud interjected. “And I don’t even drink rum...” he sighed.

Michael laughed and thought, “fuck that meeting.”

“They, they, they,” moaned Michael, “They say I’m a boring old guy now.”

“Well most people respect boring because they’re that way too – or are they just conditioned to be so? There is something freeing about seeing how pointless life typically is. It comes on, slowly, as a dull ache, doldrums, then as soon as you’re aware of how your life has turned out – it’s PAINFUL. And then, suddenly – you take that pointlessness and feel free. Well, what else can you do with it?” Added Bud.

“I’d rather be miserable and make my own rules than be miserable under someone else’s rules,” replied Michael, thoughtfully. “You know, I used to play guitar, and I used to hitchhike. It was fun.”

“The last thing they want is anyone to have fun. Fun is uncontrolled... fun is loose sugar,” Bud winked.

Michael smiled and crushed a sugar cube with the back of his spoon. The sugar exploded in little dazzling particles, all over the table.

Bud slapped the tenner down, and Michael took his phone out of his pocket, and left it behind in the booth.

Found Poem

I was reading Yelp reviews for 2 star motels and noticed they have their own strange poetry - and decided to try to write a found poem based on the reviews I read for a hotel in Hollywood. 

I am a woman alone.
Broken,
With jagged foundation.
Your worst nightmare.
But in reality,
I'm a multitude of colours,
Stars, and
Filthy glamour.
Nobody knows I am
Unguarded,
Easy to enter by anybody -
A low-hanging tree.

People come and go all night
And all day;
Careless people -
They never stay.
They just want your money:
Thieves,
Nocturnal druglords,
Parents,
Transvestites on Saturday nights,
Kids doing drugs.
Even the highlighted backs of shuffling cockroaches
Stay Away.

I ran out in
The wee hours of the morning,
With absolute apathy and desertion
In the cheapest silk
You could buy.
My feet were black.
It seemed like not existing.
I decided to just head back home
To an unmade bed,
And sheets filled with dust.

I am a woman alone
And I would like to save some unsuspecting souls
From any grief...
Reality?
This place is a joke.
Just stay away -
And pretend this place
Never materialized
In your sphere of consciousness.
In broken pieces,
I am surprised I made it out alive.

April in Portland

Trigger warning for depression/anxiety... stream of consciousness, I wrote whatever came to mind.

I don’t go out much. It comes in bursts like ravenous binges... At home, I hide – in rooms: I hide my feelings; I hide from people. And then, I go to a new city, and I binge on going out. I want to walk down unknown streets, and see different buildings, different people. I stuff the buildings and the people into my face like food, because I want to take it all in. I don’t really know what home is... I think home is a feeling.

The rain-soaked streets call for my feet, and the stones glisten so black I want to touch them through the soles of my shoes. I’m out of my mind for once and it’s a nice place to be, and the cars zoom by and the buildings rise towards the sky and I know I’ve spent my whole life feeling like a hostage to life. That’s what we are, hostages... I know I’m afraid to live and I'm afraid to die... so I spend a good deal of time worrying about both.

Homeless people snatch my attention, not because I’m afraid of them, but because I see the broken bits of myself in them. I could easily end up homeless; I’ve lost jobs because of my depression and anxiety. I know this. One man slow dances a junkie’s waltz by himself while another holds onto a shopping cart filled with junk, but that junk could be the world to him. I give them bits of money when I can. One woman with glazed, baggy eyes chatters with an invisible soul, - invisible to us, but perhaps her reality is reality? How could we know? Trash pours onto the streets and people sit in it - they don’t know what else to do.

Anyway, I feel more comfortable with hobos than the people with perfect jobs and kids and retirement funds and mortgages and family dinners and gender reveal parties. And more than the homeless people, I love the pigeons, they walk with such purpose amongst the food carts, daring and dashing for greased-out crumbs to sneak in their beaks. Their eyes dart like madmen’s and I admire them: they can fly wherever the hell they want.

I like the streets because otherwise I just see time. I want to think of time as it is in my mind – I can go back and forth and it pours in different lengths, sometimes it spreads sideways. Time is subjective, even if it’s measured evenly; when you are sad time barely moves, and when you are happy it falls through your hands like sand. But time also scares me, because it moves on its own. In this way, I enjoy the streets, because they are a semi-distraction from time, which taunts and haunts me – as days and months and years stretch out before me like dead, cold cement. I imagine myself in front of a firing squad over time, and I never know what the squad will fire at first, or next – my looks, health, or mind, and this is how aging feels to me.

Sometimes I've wished to die young – only if it's sudden, and yet, I simultaneously realize I am afraid, and want to live til I’m 90. At times I want to fall in love, yet I never want to talk to another person again. I want to travel everywhere, and at the same time – I want to hide in a room.

I have been walking to this same huge bookstore every day. The sign is faded in that ugly way signs fade, where they go kind of yellowish. When I walk in the door, it smells like books... of course it does. But the paper and ink smell like other people’s thoughts and feelings - and for a change I’d prefer that to my own. The books tower up to the ceiling, reaching, and in a lifetime you could never read them all. I want to climb into a book, and become words – someone else’s words... and maybe one day, someone might pick me up, blow the dust off of me, and love me, in spite of my yellowing pages and splintered spine.

I want to know the hope people feel that makes them want to get out of bed and exercise, or have children, or dance at a party and all that typical garbage. I wonder why I’m writing a piece like this. Exposing my own thoughts isn’t safe but I still do it, because I think it is the only way... and I know life isn’t always safe... if you open yourself in this way, people attack you. The worst is when they tell you what you are feeling when they don’t even know or understand you. I think though, sometimes you must walk down the darkened street people tell you to avoid, and I believe self expression falls that way as well.

I avoid men’s eyes on the street and most of them pass by me like bland sandpaper. The women passing by seem to represent what I long to be, young and beautiful, or what I fear becoming as I age, thanks to a lifetime of body-shaming media that has taught me to hate myself in every possible permutation. But all these people, they have souls and thoughts and consciousness – yet they walk as if in shells.

As the people walk by on the street, I wonder why my mother had me, or why my father seems so content with building a house, and doesn’t hope for more – some otherworldly more. The-wanting-the-eternal-more sits under my skin and unravels and itches at any given moment, making me uneasy. I hate myself for my depression, because it feels self-absorbed, but I also see a world in pain that makes no sense to me; I feel helpless and hopeless with hurt for that too. External life seems like a see-saw hell show and people who appear content - are they the confused and the crazy, the illogical – the ill-lucid?  It's not me – with my antidepressant prescription, surely. I want to say life’s pointless, but sometimes I feel things that tell me it’s not.

So, I just order my coffee, and shut up.