life
September 27, 2005 / 10:12 a.m.
A nothing day, a useless and messed up day. On my way home, though, walking along the yard of fernwood middle school after the sun had completely gone down, I saw a dark blue fleece hoodie hanging over the chain link fence in the light of the street lamp, and I picked it up, quickly checked it over and shoved it into my plastic Fred Meyer bag that contained an empty bottle of sobe, a pack of whole wheat spaghetti and some Fred Meyer brand pasta sauce. It was probably left there by some 12 year old soccer player that took it off before practice and forgot to tell his or her mom that they had it there when she picked them up afterwards. When I got home I started my food on the stove, and tried it on in the kitchen, went into the bathroom, and it fit perfectly. The hood comes over my head almost all the way and looks presentable, despite my large head. Even the back came up above the belt line and did a little curve, the way I like my coats, jackets, etc. to look. So I was lucky in that way. I bet I could even sell it to Buffalo or the Red light for $8 or something. I need to wash it though. Don’t forget that.
When I walked into Fred Meyer shopping for my food, the alarm went off and everybody that was in line looked straight at me. I just looked at the ground a little sternly and shook my head while I very slightly smiled, and went right to where a pile of baskets had been stacked by customers who had loaded their groceries onto the conveyor, and I picked it up and walked in.
When I was done checking out on the Uscan, the guy working the Uscan taught me how to divide up a bill on the machine that you run your cards through when your food stamps run out on it and you need to partially pay with cash. As he gave me my change back the alarm went off again repeatedly as I stood right in its path waiting for him, and he didn’t say anything and I walked off… to the next alarm that went off on the main exit, where an elderly lady employed as a Walmart style greeter stood in loneliness, smiling feebly waiting for me to say goodbye to her.
I walked back and curtly said, “I came in her 10 minutes ago and the alarm went off. I think it’s from one of the barcodes that are in the books in my bag.”
“Okay, well, you can go then… I thought it was from the… Uscan” She had seen me standing in the alarms path on the Uscan I bet, while it went off. It wasn’t far from where she was. And she wasn’t doing much of anything, nothing at all actually.
I had already started to walk away when she said this last sentence.
I think I’ll shave tonight before I go to bed, so that I look more presentable to employers. And also I’ll have to trim the sideburns a little, as at the bottom of them towards where my jaw bends, there are longish strands that sick out past the shorter strands, and they could use a little shortening. Otherwise it looks like I don’t pay attention to them really. I only really shave the middle of my face-- my chin, my cheeks, where my mustache would be-- about once a week. In between that time my whiskers go from being completely clean-shaven to being the look of someone who was stuck on the top of a frozen mountain for two days. Which is good, I guess, that my facial hair doesn’t grow faster or more prominently than most men. As it is, the little bit of growth that I tolerate lends a bit of color to my face that isn’t unattractive at all. And provides, in addition, a bit of variety I might say as I let it grow over a week and then shave again.
Lamenting lately the way that my body has been responding to the change in diet that I have undertaken, but without really paying attention to the fact that I have a lot more energy during the day, and have pretty much put that usual 11 in the morning crash behind me in the past. I didn’t even really think about it until today, but it’s true. I have more energy, and generally feel more alert all through the day. Although, as night comes a long I’m basically useless. But that’s probably more due to other issues, like depression and the corresponding lack of desire I have to go out and be around people and groups. Probably more than anything that I’m feeling better is because it’s the fat that I’ve cut back on, all the dairy, milk, I don’t eat, all the red meat I’ve refused. The bones in my face are sticking out more, I can see as I walk past windows in the street. Yet my body really doesn’t look much different, and my clothes feel the same, fit the same. And the way this takes a toll on your body, to not eat like this, makes you account for it. It’s not natural or good for you. I used to think that you had to start your day off with a huge meal in order to store everything up for the day, but as it is I just have a bowl of flax cereal with soy milk and maybe a green apple or banana, and things are fine. Much better than, for instance, a huge greek scramble, with tons of feta cheese, four eggs, a pound or two of potatoes that have been fried in oil. That shit made me crash so fast, and my day was more or less in the hole for at least a few hours. So stupid. So regrettable what I’ve made my body endure. This whole country is fucking sad the way there are so many fat people who don’t give two shits about their health and just support the shit out of crappy food makers. We need to start voting with our wallets. If half of everybody just bought organic starting today, in a month I guarantee every single piece of produce in the store would be organic and affordable. But yet it’s not, and it’s expensive as hell. It’s just fucking stupid, all around, they way people have no respect for themselves or what they eat. Although, it is what it is.
I saw a documentary on cable access this last week about slaughterhouses. Someone snuck a camera into one and filmed how they would shock the cows, and then hold a huge silver bucket, almost like an urn, under their necks while they hung upside down unconscious and then rip their aorta open and the blood would spurt into this huge flow right straight into the bucket. And how they would grab up the baby piglets on the farm and rip out their genitals with a knife and their fingers, so they couldn’t reproduce (the ones they didn’t want to), and then throw them onto the ground, and then move onto the next squealing piglet. All without any pain medicine or any anesthesia at all. Why fucking waste the money? Or how if the piglets weren’t growing fast enough, or limped somehow, they would pick them up by the back of their legs and swing them like a rag doll a couple of times in the air in a huge arc, picking up speed, and then bash their skulls into the sleet grating on the floor of the stalls in the barn. And then do it again to make sure. All just like it was everyday business, which it was.
I ate some Cajun style chicken the other day though. It was just sitting there, juicy, having just been cooked and simmering on the frying pan with a light shining on it from overhead, all by itself, and I had deprived myself of protein to this extent for so long, eating my garden burgers and low fat soy milk and organic pinto bean burritos and so on, and I took the little singular piece of chicken up to my room on a small plate and cut a flank off of it lengthwise with a sharp knife, and sunk my teeth into it, and it was like crack. I couldn’t believe how good it tasted, after so long. The taste shot through my mouth in spurts and waves of pleasure. How good all that fat tasted, really. All I wanted to do was have another piece, and I quickly rushed down the stairs and got another one the same size, and did the same thing with it up in my room, and it only tasted slightly slightly worse.
Overall I’m not very good right now. As a sign, today I actually consider a slightly more productive day than usual because I was able to summon the courage to call the phone company and pay my phone bill for the month by talking to one of those automated lines that senses what words or numbers you’re saying by computer only. “I… think… you said… July… Two thousand….seven. Is that… Correct?”
I was going to fidget with my resume and get some bills aligned, and if I had, along with paying my phone bill, boy, that would have been a really nice day for me. I probably would have even rewarded myself with a nice hot bath. Although, I would have had to clean out all the puke remnants in the bathtub from three Saturdays ago, meeting some random girl, who I was never to talk to again, and drinking tequila grenades with her and her roommates, coming home after being dropped off by them, throwing up all over the bathroom, the walls, the floor, the cabinets, the sides of the toilet, the shower curtains. Nevermind.
Anyway.
In the central library, though, I sat walking back and forth throughout the fiction section. There was a pretty girl about my age stacking the shelves, wearing a black hoodie around her waste as she worked, with black wire framed glasses and black hair with the very tips of her strands dyed purple. I was going to say ‘Read anything good lately? I don’t know what to get?’
Anyway, I’m in a reading mood, I have the bug, as I haven’t been all year, because I read a great book by Cormac Mccarthy last week, in two days, and having that experience of reading something where you genuinely do not want to put the book down at all really makes you want to read again and read some more. And you forget that the large majority of books, especially contemporary, are so shitty and hard to pay attention to or even finish.
At the library I also got an educational dvd called ‘Life? or Meth?’ and than an Italian movie from the 50’s about an old man and the tiny dog he owns, his only possession, and him trying to find a place to live on his tiny pension as he walks around with the dog clutched to his chest at all times.
I went to powell’s then and sat there where not many people were, as the sun was about to go down. I quickly started two of the books I had checked out, and figured out they weren’t worth it, and stuffed them back into my bag. I didn’t touch the Paris Review I had grabbed off the shelf, as I had read it last time I was there, and just didn’t get around the continuing it this time. I actually spent most of my time looking out the window in reality. As I walked from powell’s to the bus mall the sky was really purple with the sun going down. I figured I would have looked gay to people had I stopped on the sidewalk and just looked up at it, and the color of the windows in the tall buildings around powell’s that were purple too, or were unique in their own colors being blended with purple. But I did notice it.
And then the sun went down.
I’m so depressed and hopeless about it right now. I want to write I hate Myself twenty times. Or something. Not really. But it sounds suitable enough. I really don’t know where it ends. I don’t hate myself, I hate my life. And my lack of everything. Motivation. Thick skin. A heart. Someone to love. Truth. It’s all not there.
I guess it’s normal. I’m used to it.
I was depressed about the fact that Lauren wouldn’t contact me or call me, and then I ran into her while I sat waiting for the bus last week, and she shouted my name out like we were best buds, like she hadn’t been ignoring my existence for the last month. I guess she realized she had to at least talk to me, and she’s an outgoing girl, so whatever. The second thing out of her mouth about what she was doing, other than working, was that she had a boyfriend and that was what she was doing a lot of in terms of time. That’s what I figured all along. That she didn’t have any use for me anymore, since we never really had any emotional connection to speak of, and she figured since every time we hung out we ended up sleeping with each other. So what’s the use? There never was any moment where we had a connection to speak of. The closest intimacy we had was when we would have sex a certain way and she said with restraint, not too loud, ungratuitously, “You feel SOO good.”
Other than that it was all nodding heads over beer and stupid stories about whatever whenever we hung out. Never any real depth to anything. But that one reoccurring instance I mention was something I liked, I can’t lie.
It is funny that I had decided that I liked her and wanted to ask her what she thought about me, and that’s when she decided to not call me or write me back anymore, probably having decided she liked this anonymous dude enough to break if off with the fuck buddy. Strange how that works. Not that it probably would have gone anywhere, even if we had agreed we were both really cool. She did kiss the side of my sweaty arm once after we finished having sex, and that was kind of an intimate moment. Or personal besides just satisfying each other anonymously. Which was de rigueur.
So anyway, just to run into her and have it confirmed to me why I hadn’t heard from her was relieving in a way. And I felt better as I drove the bus away, strangely peaceful. Maybe it was just because what I had thought was true was exactly true. And I was taking pleasure, more than anything, in my own called shot. As opposed to anything like not having to deal with her anymore, or whatever. Which wasn’t true. But still.
Bija moving back to sacramento was also a big relief for me. And is right now as I sit here and write this. It’s strange how that is. The insanity and frustration of it is just gone now. You would think it would be the other way around. And I saw it coming too, relief. And in a macabre way looked forward to her leaving this town. You can’t be in love with someone for six months, and then not be relieved when the unreality of it is exposed by that person being completely inaccessible all of a sudden. If it was in the least bit real than maybe it would be different. But it wasn’t, and that situation is extinguished. And that was exactly the case. And yet, I’m still depressed right now.
On Sunday morning, Amanda wrote me two text messages within the span of 20 minutes. One saying “Wow, you didn’t even come to my birthday party last night.”
And then the other one saying, “Wow, you did not even come to my birthday party last night.”
I guess she was adamant about making that point. I couldn’t get myself to get up and get out the door, though. I guess she was mad because I promised to show up, on top of the fact that I also refused, on Friday, to go with her to dante’s to see her 53 year old boyfriend play a show. Because, she said, girls always hit on him and she would feel bad being there all by herself, and she needed someone to come with her. And I was just the target. And I said no, but I would see her on Saturday with present in hand. And on Sunday, ha, I almost got to the library to write ‘what time does your party start tonight?’ Because I was gonna pretend I forgot what day it was. To string all this shit out yet again. But that was too late, as her repetitive barrage of text messages landed. And I would have seemed foolish to try it.
I didn’t go out at all, and the highlight of my weekend was watching COPS on Saturday night in case you’re wondering. Sadly. Depressingly.
Here’s my dad’s response to hearing I was depressed from my brother who heard it from my mom.
“Lyle, there’s no better anti-depressant in the WORLD than to do something you like during the day, wear yourself out doing it, and to come home and sit down in front of the TV and have a cold beer.”
Yes, my head did almost explode when I heard this. Maybe it’s true, though. Either way, he’s REALLY smart. Life is funny. Way to completely dismiss what someone is going through, though. Your life and shitty approach to life, not mine.
I’m gonna read a little now, or watch ‘Life? or Meth?’, and then go to bed.
XO.