wednesday.
It was wednesday but the week felt like it had just started. He woke up in his bed and his shoulders were sore. It was cold in the room.
‘I mist be getting old,’ he thought as he crawled out of bed and into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee.
It was right about then that it kicked in-
He was getting old.
The pot finished brewing. He poured a glass of coffee, washed down a multivitamin with it, and cracked open the morning paper.
‘Goddamned, sore back.’
____________
thursday.
He was standing in line at the grocery store with a hand basket full of bread, soy milk, lettuce, granola, deodorant, and garbage bags. He’d been there 3 times already that week.
‘Why don’t you just make a list and come in once a week?’ the unattractive night cashier asked him. She’d also been there three nights that week. At least.
‘Organization isn’t one of my strong points.’
‘You should try making a list.’
‘It’s not that much of a bother. I don’t live that far from here.’
‘You should try making a list.’
He shrugged. His total came to $13.20. He paid it in cash. And that was Thursday.
____________
friday.
He was at the library looking for a copy of Albert Camus’ the Stranger. He had found two copies already, but they were still in the original french text. As he did not speak french, this wasn’t going to help him.
He hunted down a librarian who ended up taking him back to the fiction section and showing him the same two books he’d already looked at.
‘But I don’t speak french,’ he said.
‘We have translator books upstairs,’ she said pointing in a non-specific direction. The librarian was a little past middle aged and heavy set. She was wearing an unattractive blue blazer with a gold plated rose pin attached to the lapel. Her hair was gray, curled, and shoulder length. She had bad looking teeth.
‘I don’t want to speak french. I just want to read the Stranger.’
‘Well, those are the only copies we have.’
The librarian looked impatient and acted as though he was wasting her time.
‘Have you ever read The Stranger?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t speak french either.’
‘They’ve translated it.’
The librarian walked off in a huff. He shrugged and walked over to the card catalouge. Maybe they had something else he wanted to read.
____________
saturday.
Alaskan Walleye Pollock.
That was what he had for dinner. He baked it in the oven with a lemon pepper marinade and served it up with a heaping, steamy, serving of vegetables and a slab of wheat bread from the bakery.
It was a good meal. He felt satisfied in a way he hadn’t felt satisfied in a long time.
For desert he drank a bottle of shiraz, smoked a cigar, and watched the stars by himself on the porch.
He was suprised at how well he still knew his constellations. He could remember them much better than, for example, where he’d left his car keys at. Or where he’d spent money at during the last week. Or his final semester of college.
Alaskan Walleye Pollock.
There were leftovers in tupperware in the refridgerator. There were leftovers too. He stared at Orion’s belt for awhile and thought about fishermen.
____________
sunday.
He woke up very early and went for a mile and a half jog around the neighborhood. He saw several families leaving for church. The last family he saw were all dressed up in suits and ties and nice Sunday dresses.
He thought people had forgotten about doing that.
He certainly had.
____________
monday.
While shaving in the bathroom he thought about the possibility of growing and wearing a mustache.
This had been an earnest idea and he wondered how the mustache would look on him.
He tried to recreate the look with shaving creme but came out looking like a character from a spaghetti western.
He finished shaving and decided it best to not grow facial hair for the time being.
____________
tuesday.
He got two late payment notices, one bank statement, a credit card application, the current issue of Playboy, and a letter from a girl he hadn’t seen in a little over two years.
It was the most mail he’d received in seven months. He hadn’t received that much mail on his birthday.
He shredded the credit card application, swallowed a lump in his throat over the late notices, flipped through the Playboy stopping to inspect the centerfold- a red head, and then sat down and read the letter from the girl he hadn’t seen in a little over two years.
It was a cheery letter. It was funny and happy and made him a little bit sad. She’d been a good friend.
The bank statement was stable. He didn’t have a lot of money, but he had enough to get by with.
He took a walk through the neighborhood and whistled a jazz tune that was stuck in his head.
____________
wednesday.
There were three messages on the answering machine. One of them was from his sister. The others were from his mother and a girl that he knew.
‘Why don’t you ever pick up your phone?’ his sister asked very accusingly. He had been at work when she called him at four in the afternoon.
‘Would you like to have dinner with your father and I on Sunday?’ his mother had asked. ‘We’re having turkey and stuffing.’
He made a note of that on his calendar. He liked turkey.
The girl he knew was calling just to see how he was doing. ‘I don’t see you enought anymore,’ she said.
And that was true.
He’d become quite a hermit. The rest of the world wasn’t as interesting to him as it had once been. The time he spent by himself was comfortable. That had been his way since he was very young. Fierce independence had always been very important to him.
He listened to his messages again, put a record on the turn table, and took a nap that ended up lasting all night long.
____________
thursday.
He saw a retarded man buying candy from the Knights of Columbus outside the grocery store and realized they were charging one dollar per candy bar, when one could just as easily buy three of the same sized candy bars inside for one dollar.
He bought a newspaper. A meth lab had blown up in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. The cookers had bought the ingrediants inside the Wal-Mart, started making the drugs, and then exploded the RV they were working out of.
He thought about the candy bars again. The similarities were very present.
____________
saturday.
‘How do you wind down after work?’ a co-worker had asked him. ‘You never seem very wound up to begin with.’
He shrugged. He didn’t know how to answer that question.
‘Just lucky I guess.’
‘You’re too laid back.’
Was there such a thing? He didn’t know. He didn’t really care either. In fact, the only thing he cared less about was that schmuck’s opinion because he found that person to be a genuinely irritating person.
____________
monday.
At work, someone did not understand the meaning of the word ‘duplicate’. They were recording a customer’s trouble and had been able to reproduce the problem completely. They had the exact same results as the customer.
‘I can’t duplicate the problem,’ the co-worker had told him.
‘You were able to get the same resutls?’ he asked, completely confused.
‘Yes,’ the person responded, matter-of-factly.
‘Then you have duplicated the issue.’
‘Oh.’
He went back to work, not annoyed, but humored. He really needed a new job.
____________
tuesday.
At the edge of the drive way he saw a bird that had been hit by a car. The bird’s wings were smashed and it was chirping loudly and rapidly. He grimaced at the sight of it. The broken wings and painful sqwauking sounded not dissimilar from human torture.
He couldn’t drive over the poor thing to put it out of it’s misery though. He would not be part of that act of euthanasia. Not because he disagreed with the idea, but because he didn’t have the stomach to do it.
____________
wednesday.
He was out jogging and a poodle started chasing after him. It was yipping, and jumping, and barking at his heels. After two blocks of this, he stopped suddenly to carch his breath and continue laughing.
The confused poodle stopped too. It yipped twice, wagged it’s tail, and walked back down the block leisurely.
He swore he heard the dog say ‘thanks, pal.’
You’re welcome.
____________
thursday.
He slammed his fingers in the door of his car and tore some skin right off at the knuckles. Three minutes later it stopped bleeding. Five minutes after that it stopped hurting. He did a load of laundry, made dinner, and fell asleep on the couch with the TV on.
____________
saturday.
He called in sick to work.
He he had a case of the brown bottle blues. It wasn’t contagious, but it also wasn’t pleasant.
He went for a walk and felt better. He came home from that walk, knowing that he wouldn’t have to be at work and felt even better than he had felt before.
____________
sunday.
He smoked a joint before work. He was giggly the entire ride there, but at the very least he felt good. It was his secret.
Twice he caught himself staring at the light fixtures, trying to seperate the colors from the flourescent light bulbs.
‘How are you today?’ his Superviser asked.
‘I’m great,’ he said. ‘Fantastic.’
‘I’m taking a break. Come outside with me.’
They went outside to his Superviser’s car, where an altoids tin was pulled out from under the seat, revealing another joint. His Superviser lit the joint, took a long drag, and passed it to him.
‘Thanks.’
‘I knew you were high when you came in. You weren’t very obvious about it, but you looked too happy to be here.’
‘I was happy to be here.’
‘Because you were high.’
‘Yeah.’
They walked back into the building, both of them now sharing the same secret.
Now, his Superviser made exactly one dollar an hour more than he did. As this was a low paying job, that was not a high wage, and if they were both pouring concrete for a living, they would have been making more money.
Why weren’t they doing that?
He read the Help Wanted Ads like Baptist preachers read Revelations. He made just as many red ink pen circles.
____________
monday.
People always complain about Mondays, but when you don’t work a standard work week, you start to realize that Monday really isn’t a bad day-
They’re all bad days.
Some of them are just worse than others.
The only ones worth having are the ones off, and they’re over before you realize it. Time flies when you’re having fun, you know?
