copyrighted to me, motherfucker
Storytime kiddos!
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Window Dressings
A girl walks down the street and passes a Wearhouse Records store. Britney Spears winks vacantly back at her and the girl walks on. A man asks her for money but she doesn’t have any change; this makes her sad. Entering the mall, the smell of seven cultures assaults her nose. The Cajun and Thai food court restaurants share the same kitchen. Now that’s working together. She walks past Victoria’s Secret and knows it immediately. The secret is in the fact that there is no secret. The models have been airbrushed, everyone knows that. The clerks are so happy and helpful they have to be fake. Right? The girl walks on. She checks the information kiosk clock. 3:33. A part of her brain acknowledges that this is the second time today the clock as read that. 6:66. She is not the Anti-Christ, but thinks it anyway. The security guard glances over her, but it makes her nervous anyway. She has never stolen anything in her life, but she will, it will change her life. She will think she’s a terrible person for about a month, then come to terms with it, but the change has already happened. In the meantime, she is enjoying the simple nature of humanity, and the pleasure of not being noticed. Still she walks on.
A homeless man asks a girl passing on the street for some money. Her face crumbles and he feels bad. He is surprised at not only her reaction, but the fact that he feels anything for others anymore. His wife left him five years ago for her boss, taking the house in the divorce. He lost his job three weeks after it was finalized. His son hadn’t talked to him for four years before that. It was an effort to remember the good times. It was more of an effort to realize there weren’t that many he had enjoyed when they happened. He will die within the year, the accidental victim of a gang shootout. As his blood pools beneath his ruined body, he will bless his wife and son both. He never understood what “finding God” meant until that moment. Until then, he will live on the street, huddling in doorways until the summer he thinks will come. Do the seasons still change if you die?
A Victoria’s Secret sales associate looks through the window at a girl walking past. She is arranging thong underwear in a tasteful flower-like arrangement. Her next project is folding g-strings into butterfly wings for the display window. She smiles like she’s had an application of Vaseline while she does it. Her dreams are of modeling for Vera Wang, but her only offers so far have come from startup porn sites. She hasn’t dropped that low. Yet. Her sigh goes unnoticed, even by her. Her mother told her she should marry rich. Her father said she should be a nurse. Her boyfriend (ex-, now, but what can you do) told her she should do whatever she wanted to do. She took that at face value until she caught him with his ex. Now she looks on it with an almost unhealthy amount of cynicism. In four months and three days, she will run into a woman who works for Calvin Klein. Cards will be exchanged and she will get a call three days and two hours later. This will be the chance she’s been waiting for, and she won’t throw it away. This will make up for her quitting the job at Victoria’s Secret because her boss sexually harassed her. She will also quit the strip club she was hired at just the night before. Before that happens though, she will continue folding other people’s future underwear, and feeling happy that she’s not working someplace trashy. Like Fredrick’s of Hollywood or Forever 21.
A security guard scans the mall patrons seeing, for a split second, the girl walking by. His job is to look for suspicious persons, shoplifters and loiterers, everyone else is forgotten almost as soon as he takes his eyes off of them. He wants to go home; his wife is in the last stages of pregnancy and he wants to be there for her. Thy need the money, though. He scratches the back of his neck and glares at a tree. He never really agreed with the practice of having trees in a mall. He figured it was cruel to the tree; it was unnatural and limited its growth. He wants his child to grow up without those kinds of restrictions. Maybe he could finally convince his wife to move out of the city. He is a humble man of modest means, and also a good man. His son will grow up and become senator of their state. He will outlive his son, who will mysteriously end up dead. He will be shot on the job, but retire happily. The rest of his life will be uneventful. To everyone except himself. In the meantime, he idly scans the crowd and daydreams of forests, opens skies, and a job that doesn’t require a nightstick or a gun. He would have made a great farmer.
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Window Dressings
A girl walks down the street and passes a Wearhouse Records store. Britney Spears winks vacantly back at her and the girl walks on. A man asks her for money but she doesn’t have any change; this makes her sad. Entering the mall, the smell of seven cultures assaults her nose. The Cajun and Thai food court restaurants share the same kitchen. Now that’s working together. She walks past Victoria’s Secret and knows it immediately. The secret is in the fact that there is no secret. The models have been airbrushed, everyone knows that. The clerks are so happy and helpful they have to be fake. Right? The girl walks on. She checks the information kiosk clock. 3:33. A part of her brain acknowledges that this is the second time today the clock as read that. 6:66. She is not the Anti-Christ, but thinks it anyway. The security guard glances over her, but it makes her nervous anyway. She has never stolen anything in her life, but she will, it will change her life. She will think she’s a terrible person for about a month, then come to terms with it, but the change has already happened. In the meantime, she is enjoying the simple nature of humanity, and the pleasure of not being noticed. Still she walks on.
A homeless man asks a girl passing on the street for some money. Her face crumbles and he feels bad. He is surprised at not only her reaction, but the fact that he feels anything for others anymore. His wife left him five years ago for her boss, taking the house in the divorce. He lost his job three weeks after it was finalized. His son hadn’t talked to him for four years before that. It was an effort to remember the good times. It was more of an effort to realize there weren’t that many he had enjoyed when they happened. He will die within the year, the accidental victim of a gang shootout. As his blood pools beneath his ruined body, he will bless his wife and son both. He never understood what “finding God” meant until that moment. Until then, he will live on the street, huddling in doorways until the summer he thinks will come. Do the seasons still change if you die?
A Victoria’s Secret sales associate looks through the window at a girl walking past. She is arranging thong underwear in a tasteful flower-like arrangement. Her next project is folding g-strings into butterfly wings for the display window. She smiles like she’s had an application of Vaseline while she does it. Her dreams are of modeling for Vera Wang, but her only offers so far have come from startup porn sites. She hasn’t dropped that low. Yet. Her sigh goes unnoticed, even by her. Her mother told her she should marry rich. Her father said she should be a nurse. Her boyfriend (ex-, now, but what can you do) told her she should do whatever she wanted to do. She took that at face value until she caught him with his ex. Now she looks on it with an almost unhealthy amount of cynicism. In four months and three days, she will run into a woman who works for Calvin Klein. Cards will be exchanged and she will get a call three days and two hours later. This will be the chance she’s been waiting for, and she won’t throw it away. This will make up for her quitting the job at Victoria’s Secret because her boss sexually harassed her. She will also quit the strip club she was hired at just the night before. Before that happens though, she will continue folding other people’s future underwear, and feeling happy that she’s not working someplace trashy. Like Fredrick’s of Hollywood or Forever 21.
A security guard scans the mall patrons seeing, for a split second, the girl walking by. His job is to look for suspicious persons, shoplifters and loiterers, everyone else is forgotten almost as soon as he takes his eyes off of them. He wants to go home; his wife is in the last stages of pregnancy and he wants to be there for her. Thy need the money, though. He scratches the back of his neck and glares at a tree. He never really agreed with the practice of having trees in a mall. He figured it was cruel to the tree; it was unnatural and limited its growth. He wants his child to grow up without those kinds of restrictions. Maybe he could finally convince his wife to move out of the city. He is a humble man of modest means, and also a good man. His son will grow up and become senator of their state. He will outlive his son, who will mysteriously end up dead. He will be shot on the job, but retire happily. The rest of his life will be uneventful. To everyone except himself. In the meantime, he idly scans the crowd and daydreams of forests, opens skies, and a job that doesn’t require a nightstick or a gun. He would have made a great farmer.