Awake.
Unsure why, grappling for pants, his brain suddenly realizes that that grating hissing noise he didn't realize he was hearing is a shower. His fingers settle on his pants and he grabs the belt. He snags the pouch of Lucky Strike and begins to roll a cigarette.
This isn't his place.
It dawns on him very gradually that he isn't entirely sure where he is.
Still, nothing to panic about. Not like it's the first time. He finishes rolling the cigarette and lights it, rolling off the couch to look (futilely, it would turn out) for his shoes. Having not managed to find them by the time he located the door out of the house in the kitchen, he makes his egress, figuring he has more shoes at home.
Anticipating a longer walk than he would generally prefer (which, let's face it, at 8 AM was no walk at all), he decides the best thing to do is to get a quick caffeine injection. Since he has most of the town between him and a pillow he recognizes, there should be no difficulty in getting some coffee.
It all feels familiar somehow, though he'd never been to that house, never slept on a stranger's couch, never walked this particular avenue of his tiny town, though he knew the area. A shiver runs through him, subconsciously; probably just the chill.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
I Feel Like I've Remembered This Before
Goddammit, but college students are irritating little shits. It seems I finally have the contempt for students of higher learning that they have for their high school brethren. Clearly it's been building for years, the fact is that I'm older than most of the people with whom I hang out, but my own immaturity has tended to cancel the effect. Now that I'm not in school, now that I'm 25, now that I'm living on my own (with my girlfriend), I discover (well... rediscover) my loathing for these idiots.
I suppose the cause of my current rancor is the fact that my idiot roommate decided to have a party, like students do, in our place last night, with exactly 57 seconds warning. That's cool. And sure, our places has walls like paper (mostly to be expected in housing that students can afford), and sure college students stay up late and are generally loud, but here's the thing... by 3:00 you need to shut the fuck up and, for example, NOT drunkenly kick doors in the house at which you're partying waking anyone in a two-block area.
And of course, double standards, my favorite. Hold on to your chairs, ladies and jellyspoons. My roommate's boyfriend, who was drunk, but not falling over fucking sideways like she was, he was still relatively cogent (probably because he figured he *had* to be), was, after the girl had finally sent most of them away around 3:45 in the morning (after I came downstairs and made them all feel like assholes), trying to help her find something, and commenting casually that she loses things all the time. Not in a ha-ha way, not being mean, just a commment, inciting her to roar down the stairs and start yelling at him (joy!). So now they're yelling about god knows what, hooray, and I retreated to my room where Abby was still sleeping, my little industrial lathe (the noise that girl makes when she's sleeping is incredible). I can hear her shrieking at him about how she always pays for everything and this and that and whatever. I also hear him asking if she has set an alarm for today (which she had not) and him helping her get that taking care of.
Cut to this morning. Just a little bit after Abby left for work, I hear from across the hall, "Well why the fuck didn't you wake me up when the alarm went off? You're trying to sabotage me! That meeting with my adviser was really important" "Well then why didn't you get up when it went off?" "I didn't hear it. You got up and walked around!" "Yeah, I prodded at you for a couple of minutes." "Well why the fuck did you turn it off?? You got super drunk last night, and drank all my shots and now you're trying to drag me down with you!!"
Elation!
I can hear them smoking now (well, I can hear them coughing), so they must have made up.
God, college students are dumb.
I suppose the cause of my current rancor is the fact that my idiot roommate decided to have a party, like students do, in our place last night, with exactly 57 seconds warning. That's cool. And sure, our places has walls like paper (mostly to be expected in housing that students can afford), and sure college students stay up late and are generally loud, but here's the thing... by 3:00 you need to shut the fuck up and, for example, NOT drunkenly kick doors in the house at which you're partying waking anyone in a two-block area.
And of course, double standards, my favorite. Hold on to your chairs, ladies and jellyspoons. My roommate's boyfriend, who was drunk, but not falling over fucking sideways like she was, he was still relatively cogent (probably because he figured he *had* to be), was, after the girl had finally sent most of them away around 3:45 in the morning (after I came downstairs and made them all feel like assholes), trying to help her find something, and commenting casually that she loses things all the time. Not in a ha-ha way, not being mean, just a commment, inciting her to roar down the stairs and start yelling at him (joy!). So now they're yelling about god knows what, hooray, and I retreated to my room where Abby was still sleeping, my little industrial lathe (the noise that girl makes when she's sleeping is incredible). I can hear her shrieking at him about how she always pays for everything and this and that and whatever. I also hear him asking if she has set an alarm for today (which she had not) and him helping her get that taking care of.
Cut to this morning. Just a little bit after Abby left for work, I hear from across the hall, "Well why the fuck didn't you wake me up when the alarm went off? You're trying to sabotage me! That meeting with my adviser was really important" "Well then why didn't you get up when it went off?" "I didn't hear it. You got up and walked around!" "Yeah, I prodded at you for a couple of minutes." "Well why the fuck did you turn it off?? You got super drunk last night, and drank all my shots and now you're trying to drag me down with you!!"
Elation!
I can hear them smoking now (well, I can hear them coughing), so they must have made up.
God, college students are dumb.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Dispatches from the Middle
"Apprehensively" is perhaps too lighthearted an adverb to describe the general feeling I have about being in my hometown. It's really much closer to foreboding dread. The end of something and the beginning of something wretched, damning, inevitable.
Not that I don't constantly feel like I'm transitioning. For no reason. Perhaps I should blame LSD.
In any event, home I am, and my reportage thus far follows.
Is there a real human being somewhere on planet earth that feels a real, deep, emotional connection to any piece of art depicting, say, a pair of empty chairs on a beach looking out on the ocean, perhaps with a drink glass of some sort sitting nearby? There happens to be just such a piece of "Art" in the bathroom of my girlfriend's house, and the question was posed to her shortly after my noticing it. She informs me that my exact phrasing was, and I'll hold to this, "What a banal expression of desire."
It's such an empty, trite little gesture. Are you supposed to look at it and go "GOD! I wish I were in the Bahamas RIGHT NOW."
My lady gets a pass for having it because, in her defense, she and her sisters picked it out to match the colors of the bathroom when she was like 13. The problem is the "artist" or, more correctly, the "shill" who felt the need to communicate that, to inflict the world with their mediocrity.
More on Mediocrity later.
......
Often, indeed, more often then I'd prefer, I find myself in a group of people I know poorly if at all. There's no one in particular on whom to lay the blame for this, it's as often my own fault as that of my woman or a friend. But the situation is thus: at this point in my life, hanging out with a group of losers and idiots in a anonymous living room as they discuss the general problems they're having, (Deep breath now: "Jeff doesn't have any money, he's manic, I mean, he works like two days a week driving a cab and he makes a little money, but he lost $200 like a week and a half ago so now I have to come up with the rest, cause he was paying for me, when we together, but what was I, going to keep fucking him just so he'd pay for my bus ticket?") makes me feel like I'm slipping into a short story by Bukowski. Which, frankly, isn't a warm and fuzzy feeling unless I've been drinking.
That I'm 25 and have no patience for this bullshit does not bode well for my peace of mind in the future. I just feel like I've been pulled through a series of random interchangeable bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, houses, houses, houses, since I was 18. Oh look! Jimi Hendrix poster! Wow... psychedelia... Camus and Chuck Pahlanuik? How... expected!
Not that I don't constantly feel like I'm transitioning. For no reason. Perhaps I should blame LSD.
In any event, home I am, and my reportage thus far follows.
Is there a real human being somewhere on planet earth that feels a real, deep, emotional connection to any piece of art depicting, say, a pair of empty chairs on a beach looking out on the ocean, perhaps with a drink glass of some sort sitting nearby? There happens to be just such a piece of "Art" in the bathroom of my girlfriend's house, and the question was posed to her shortly after my noticing it. She informs me that my exact phrasing was, and I'll hold to this, "What a banal expression of desire."
It's such an empty, trite little gesture. Are you supposed to look at it and go "GOD! I wish I were in the Bahamas RIGHT NOW."
My lady gets a pass for having it because, in her defense, she and her sisters picked it out to match the colors of the bathroom when she was like 13. The problem is the "artist" or, more correctly, the "shill" who felt the need to communicate that, to inflict the world with their mediocrity.
More on Mediocrity later.
......
Often, indeed, more often then I'd prefer, I find myself in a group of people I know poorly if at all. There's no one in particular on whom to lay the blame for this, it's as often my own fault as that of my woman or a friend. But the situation is thus: at this point in my life, hanging out with a group of losers and idiots in a anonymous living room as they discuss the general problems they're having, (Deep breath now: "Jeff doesn't have any money, he's manic, I mean, he works like two days a week driving a cab and he makes a little money, but he lost $200 like a week and a half ago so now I have to come up with the rest, cause he was paying for me, when we together, but what was I, going to keep fucking him just so he'd pay for my bus ticket?") makes me feel like I'm slipping into a short story by Bukowski. Which, frankly, isn't a warm and fuzzy feeling unless I've been drinking.
That I'm 25 and have no patience for this bullshit does not bode well for my peace of mind in the future. I just feel like I've been pulled through a series of random interchangeable bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, houses, houses, houses, since I was 18. Oh look! Jimi Hendrix poster! Wow... psychedelia... Camus and Chuck Pahlanuik? How... expected!
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