bullet proof
October 12, 2005 / 6:03 p.m.
For some reason i guess my legs have become more muscular, to the point where the rayon/cotton mesh pants that i'm wearing seem to be almost cutting off the blood flow in my legs. But it's not merely a blood flow issue, it is also an issue of the pant legs where my thighs are not being able to move at all, as they are so tight.
It was funny. Last week i slipped in my 'better eating' goals and downed a whole package of saltines within one sitting, and so my theory the next days as my legs pulsed with the beats of my heart was that the extra salt i had consumed led to this phenomenon.
I was supposed to go on a date this morning with someone who is significantly younger than me. When we talked on the phone last night she was typing on her computer, i could tell, and she paused and goes 'You're really 26?'
and then through the bad connection i still sensed and awkward pause, and i said 'Yes.'
'Why, do people lie about that?'
'Yes.'
I don't think, however, someone would lie about being in the too old category if they were about to go on a date with a teenager. Would't logic hold that you would say something like, 'Oh, yeah, i'm 21.'
Anyway, this morning i had two things set for such an earlier morning so that i wouldn't sleep in. One, my alarm clock for 7:40, which was to wake me up with 50 minutes until i was supposed to meet her. Enough to, in my mind, take my time taking a shower, eating my Nature's Path Ultimate Slim Organic cereal with low fat soymilk, apple, vitamins, etc. and getting out the door.
The other thing i had set was my cellphone, which was to buzz at 8:00 and remind me with a little note on the display with the name of the coffee shop that was nearby and the time i was to be there.
Although, if i was waking up that early, logically i would be thinking about leaving the entire time leading up to it, so that i wouldn't need to remind myself again independently that i had to be somewhere in the near future. But i did it anyway.
The phone buzzed at 8:00, and the again at 8:02 with her saying something about not being able to make it, although the connection between us is always garbled. It didn't matter, however, because as soon as i saw she was calling i knew exactly what it meant. I could have just picked up the phone, actually, and not even put my head to the receiver, and just waited 10 seconds, and then said 'Oh, no problem. It's okay, it's kind of early for me anyway.'
My tv controller was put down carelessly at my side a few days ago in what i didn't care to remember was a portion of the couch that had had some water spilled on it a few moments prior, and was still soaking it up. Face down, i picked it up again and it had apparently absored in itself a portion of the water that was feeding the couch beforehand. I pushed the buttons and rubbed them down, and little burbles of water barely the size of a pinhead would come up and become smothered around the plastic surface with my finger spreading it. I tried to click different channels, but it was useless. There was no point. Nothing would happen. Except for intermittent signals being sent to the tv if it was pointed right whereby the volume would immediately dive to zero and all the pressure or clicking wouldn't do anything at all. No channels, no up volume, no muting, simply random dives and stays for the sound.
I was watching the last few episodes of the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm this morning, and the controller came to life momentarily in order to send the volume diving to zero and send me pausing the show with the dvd controller, running to the tv to manually turn it back up, back to the couch to rewind to where i missed, and then after a few times actually taking the batteries out so that the life of it was certainly dead and in my own hands.
At least it has a life of its own. Once all that internal water, which i could never get the end of by pressing the buttons, goes away/dries up, i'm assuming things will get better and channel surfing will again be possible.
I was sitting a few moments ago contemplating the measureability of the quality of life decline that is incumbent when you don't have a working tv. Tv's, when you don't feel well particularly, are the center of your homelife really, when you're alone, and are your bedrock. And it is just so much more inconvenient with the controller waterlogged and inoperable, and your general options then being restricted to reading or DVDs. Even though you would like to think getting up and walking across the room everytime you want to switch channels is okay, you know in your heart, even across town, that it doesn't even get close to being so.
There is this man, my dad's age although appearing older, manic depressive, who comes to the support group on tuesday i go to.
Waiting by the bustop for the bus to come and take me home afterwards last night, he showed up slumping and sat really close to me as i simultaneously pointed to the banana peel beside me and said, with food in my mouth, 'watch the banana peel'.
'Oh yeah, i see that.' he said really quickly, eager to jump into his dialog with me.
I had seen him coming. I knew exactly what he was going to do and what i was in for until his stop on jefferson downtown where he got off and transferred to the 6. Namely, lots of questions and pseudo life stories.
All told in the space of bad breath territory. Not that he has bad breath, but if he did i would notice it. he was so close.
He suddenly talked with the short spanish dude with gold caps and saggy pants who had just gotten on outside the emergency room entrance with a hospital bracelet, and whom i assumed was shot in some type of drug deal. Maybe he was Becky's dealer, who she had loaned the car to in exchange for heroin. The car that i am borrowing that had a mariachi band cd in the player when i turned it on for the first time, only to throw it onto the passenger seat so i could put my granddaddy cd in while imagining who it could be that had that in there.
Anyway, John spoke spanish to him fluently, apparently trying to let everyone know he spoke spanish fluently, and was actually raised in mexico even though he was white. The dude who might have been shot just nodded and answered his questions, and then he went back to me.
But the point of talking about this man, this clingy man, was that he owns a cab and has social anxiety too badly to drive it around. At least that's his excuse. I don't know if he still owns it and it sits outside his house, dusty, unused, engine rusting slowly, pistons shedding their oily surface, etc., but all in all, i figure next week when i'm on the bench, seeing him slogging towards me to go 'So, i was thinking about something you said in there' with his stroke victim-esque face and sideways tilted head and shaggy ballcap, that i would say, after the initial pleasantries that were a warmup for the ride to jefferson, that i was really interested in riding a cab and would be interested in being his driver. That i would write about it, because i'm a writer and it's great material, better than plaid pantry even, and then i would pull out my willamette week and show him the diary of the girl who drives cabs and use it as a subtle bridge for me to endear him to the idea of it all.
We could be brothers in crime, partners, bros. It would totally be like tango and cash, except cash would be sitting outside the airport at 2 in the morning with a cheap cup of coffee in his hand listening to repeats on the radio of the shows on air america that played the day before while tango would be home jacking off to internet porn.
I'm seriously waiting for a job to fall in my lap, is the point of this. The Red Light is hiring people on the SPOT as they walk in to shop, because they look like they dress right, and i still can't go down there. There's this place called steamer's by kinko's, which has a 'help wanted' sign out for the 40th time this month, and i can't go out there.
I would really dig being a cab driver for the time being, though. And i could get john to buy me a bullet proof vest because he likes me so much and wishes he was my age and had that chance all over again, and i would seriously wear the fucking bullet proof vest on the bus and walking around downtown and when people would ask me i could tell them the truth and still be cool.