#2-1 (breadcrumbs)
"a strong and warm wind from the south: a big fish in a small pond, a stubborn blackberry seed stuck in my teeth."
There are times where I like to daydream about an imagined future where - and this could be many decades or centuries after today - where somewhere, anyplace, those who remain at least somewhat literate will sit and drink coffee and either consider or discuss certain times in my life as some universally-lauded author, one of the greats of the 21st Century, by then the stuff of cached and obscure websites or dusty tomes. I would like people to tackle subjects like "the common and re-reoccurring themes of his Blue Period" or "the quality of his work during his Missouri years as opposed to his later years in the south of France."
It beats me, why I think about these things. A byproduct of desperation while navigating through more uncertain times, or just a matter of the years flying by. The simple answer would have something to do with me just being a little bit odd, just like I've always pretty much been odd and perhaps it should just be left at that. Whatever the reasons really are, however, for the sake of argument should this self-indulgent fantasy of mine does indeed come true, and if I had my choice, those people in the future would be the nerds, bookish and sensitive outcasts from whatever society takes the place of this one. Then it wouldn't be all for naught because there's a chance for my words to be able to resonate way deep inside of them, somewhere. All of this would have meant at least something then, whatever it is that this life has been. It's just that, well, I suspect I have a pretty good idea how the universe works, at least from all that I've seen, and if I manage to have this miracle of people recognizing my name at all after I'm dead and gone I doubt I'll be able to attract my favored demographic as well.
No other author has been able to achieve that, going two-for-two, not really. It's gorgeous in Excelsior Springs and I'm in my living room and sitting in my old chair and daydreaming about joining the canon of American Literature. Curls of smoke illuminated by rays of light coming in through the blinds and I sit: my life being weighed on a scale, my mortality, some reason why I was supposed to be here in the first place. I should be doing something else but I always should be doing something else. Charlotte and Emily Bronte were able to pull both off but they were probably about the only ones out of all of us who ever deserved it.
The pursuit of enviable riches is something I've really never been interested in; definitely not the reason why I left the insurance company. After never having an abundance of money for my entire life the time came where I had simply, and very peacefully, forgot about the things I was supposedly missing. I had never considered starting my own business. Doing that felt like it would be too much hassle and too many gray areas when it came to the law of the land and banks and loans and all the x-factors, and strange as it might seem I truly liked my real bona fide office job: it paid just enough and I liked the fact that I knew exactly how each day (to the hour) was more-or-less going to be. At least there I understood what the business was all about and how it was going to be ran. I liked the people there and they liked me back, or at least the ratio was sufficient to make it somewhere I looked forward in going to every morning. My cubicle was decorated with drawings and gewgaws and whenever I ran out of pens or staples or paper clips all I needed to do was ask for more, there was never an issue of having to go to OfficeMax and budgeting the new office supplies along with everything else in the scheme of the next six months to a year. Coffee was always available in the break room, while far from being good, cost nothing. The gossiping and the rumors - because there are those things whenever a bunch of people are gathered in one place for long enough, and in abundance, always - was usually interesting.
At the end of the day I got into my car and would have a very unstressful commute back to my quiet apartment in my secret little corner of the world. On many nights my landlord John would be waiting for me with some beer and naan and we'd sit around and talk about the war, or I'd go over to my mom's house to discuss goings-on and watch cable. Everything got to a point where the only times I'd be bothered is if I would actively go out and seek someone out to bother me. If I wanted to spend my entire weekend in absolute solitude either reading or writing or just sitting around thinking I could, and I did just that umpteen times. Without any fanfare whatsoever and amidst my belated amusement my entire life had become as simple as Dad had always told me was possible (during those unbearably dramatic moments of youth when I was convinced nothing was ever going to turn out all right): you don't have to do much else except go to work and pay your bills. It can be that easy if you'd just allow it to be.
Maybe the events of my recent past will ever be discussed by people in the future, I wonder, the reason why I had left the place that had employed me for two years, in doing so saying goodbye to the comforts and assorted limitations that await someone seeking a life in the corporate world in general, in favor of going into business for myself and some of my friends. It would be nice to be able to hear what they might say, far off into the future; unaware of just how wrong they were.
Along the streets of Midtown sometimes it's almost like driving through a new city, a place I've never been to before in my life until just recently. I feel like I'm just now starting to figure out the basics: the good places to eat, shortcuts around busy intersections and slow traffic lights.
The artist's studios on Troost, called @TLAS (at Troost and Linwood Art Studios) should hopefully be completed soon. Because of the considerably lower rents we offer than what people have to pay at the Crossroads District have become used to paying in the last couple of years the units are already filling up, amazingly so considering all we've really done so far is put up a few fliers during First Fridays and posted an ad on Craigslist and none of the people can even see a finished model yet. It will be nice, too, to have this building be abuzz with creative types. I don't know how I'm going to run the art gallery that's going to be on the first floor but I'll figure it out, I guess. The coffee shop will be in our clutches soon enough. The owner of the property isn't going to renew the current owner's lease. The coup d'etat should be bloodless, with only one casualty. The pride and self-esteem of a man who was never as clever and likable and ultimately as merciless as we; he will slink into his pre-owned sport utility vehicle with his tail between his legs and drive off into the sunset or back to his parent's house in Overland Park, possibly. Then there's eighty websites and the marketing plans and the business cards and the fliers and guerrilla theater and the interpersonal drama between everyone that we know about actually everything.
The business will do fine, and without too much effort everything will fall into place. All we need to do is not let go of our common sense, and not wind up being so stressed out we can't even function, and manage not to strangle each other or having some other kind of violent battle royale. I've always heard about all the hard work that starting one's own business entails but I'm still not seeing it. I can't think of anyone else I've known in real life who has ever tried it before, the only examples I can remember offhand are the ones I witnessed while watching The Real World on MTV after it stopped being at all interesting, so many years ago. If I recall right they all had to start a business together per the agreement with the network, but they were dimwitted like the sort of people chronically self-absorbed enough to want to be seen alternately fighting and sleeping with one another on basic cable.
We are not these people, at least I hope not. We number just three, two guys and a girl, adept in our own distinct ways but deeply flawed in many others and with our own personal hurdles to overcome if not soon, then whenever. When we throw the best parts of ourselves together and keep our egos in check we can combine into one person, just one but somebody amazing everybody wants to know and feels like they should do business with, and I know it happens because I've seen it. We waltz into potential client's lairs gracefully with sharpened wits and breath mints and rehearsed lines, coming away with a signed contract. Holed up in cafés with pens and notebooks and laptops searching for Wi-Fi, taking notes, bouncing ideas off one another, our cellphones blowing the fuck up constantly. An extra shot of espresso and room for cream and sugar and we're friends with all the baristas. Everyday is Casual Friday. We're wiser through experience and still young and eclectic enough to possess the kind of energy and creativity to do things that nobody else in this city has been able to do, not this well, so we've earned the right to wear t-shirts and jeans all the time. Who would dare tell us otherwise? Three hour lunches and leaving town for a few days if we have to and mid-level managers tremble at the mere mention of our name. We get more sleep than they. We are pirates and we are ninjas too and we could beat their ass if they want to fight.
My soul leaves my body and I look down at the three of us and we're beautiful. Fascination like what a child would have, wondering how long this new plateau of my life will last. Where do I see myself in five years, or in ten? I don't know. I don't care, I don't think.
There is an end to this, too, though I don't know when it will be. Everything runs its own course in due time, eventually: situations, living arrangements, relationships of every stripe. It's October of 2007 and I'm very aware of just how fortunate I've been. I've had friendships that have thrived for over ten years, some of them borderline to twenty. I get along very well with my mom and my stepfather and I've renewed ties recently with some of the members of my extended family, letting them know that I'm still here and that I'm not going anywhere. Every negative influence and so many people who tried to pull me down to their level have been culled and cast out now, and I won't be repeating mistakes made in my teens or in my twenties. And even then I had never done anything so foolish that it couldn't be amended or simply forgotten over time. I've made no children and I make no child support payments. I don't have the kind of crushing debt that keeps other people down into some kind of modern-day serfdom.
What if, my bank account could grow large enough during the next few years or so and I could have some land somewhere way out and quiet and calm, with a woodsy house with many windows, all of it surrounded by trees, a friendly alpaca or long-haired pygmy goat or two. A room devoted to nothing but books and reading more books, a simple television and a computer that I can write with and communicate to the outside world at my discretion. If at all possible maybe a lake nearby deep enough to sit in a little rowboat and fish all day if I wanted to, never to keep and kill but maybe to look at and admire for a moment and throw back in the water. I used to want to be happy, that was the goal above everything. Happiness, though, is too fleeting to keep for very long, we shouldn't. It's a field of wildflowers surrounding you and a butterfly resting on your arm or your head for just a moment only to take off again to a different destination just as soon. Hoarding away happiness is selfish; I've come to understand that there's only a finite amount of it to go around in the world. After our business is over and done with, whether it's a happy ending and everything is settled amicably or perhaps some kind of emerging philosophical divide that splits us apart, in the end I think I'd just settle for being far enough away from everything that has ever bothered me.
That's where my daydreaming ends; my musing only takes me so far and the future is unpredictable, always in flux. There's another website I need to finish. My cousin wants me to take her to the amusement park. I've been invited to a bachelorette party and I don't even know why. I need to fax something to an office but there isn't a fax machine around. I'd have to leave my apartment but I don't want to. And the other day I sent a text message because she gave me her number again just before I finished my two weeks' notice, because without me even bothering to notate it in my day planner it became that time of year already. Because I don't even really know why.
THE CORN MAZE IS OPEN AGAIN! CHEERS, JASON.
The years before she used to laugh whenever I mentioned this place, in the way that I've been known to do where something so fundamentally hokey and camp is definitely the most totally awesome thing in the world like, ever, and I happily defy anyone to challenge the assertion even though everybody knows that no one in their right mind possibly would, or could. I do this with other things: ugly shoes! Bad paintings of dogs with unnaturally big eyes! Fried walleye! It's one of my qualities I have that she likes, maybe the most. She asked me to take her one time and I told her I would most definitely but our schedules proved not to be compatible and by the time we had managed to figure everything out it had closed down for the year.
U BETTER CALL ME WHEN U GET A CHANCE. It was her.
Immediately I thought about doing just that; apparently she wouldn't mind talking to me and maybe she actually does want to talk to me. She'd ask me how the new job was going, and I don't really know the answer to that question, at least not where I could put it into words. I guess I could just about make up whatever I wanted but I wasn't sure as to exactly what kind of impression on her I felt like I needed to make. Do I want her to think I'm more successful and not at all the loser she took me for, or just happier where I'm at now and I'm never going to look back, or maybe that my life is great now but just doesn't entirely feel complete without her in it? When I ask her how she's doing and she talks about the job being a drag as usually and she mentions her new boyfriend, because there always is a new boyfriend, will she say it in a way that will tell me to back off or would it be some kind of subtle suggestion for me to attempt to show her I can do better for her than he's doing? Can I possibly expect to do that by taking her to a maze? Also the visceral reaction I get whenever people do things like replace the word "you" with the letter U, it doesn't matter if it's just a text message. Yuck.
I WILL, I wrote two days later, ONCE I FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET OUT OF HERE.
I don't get text messages while I'm roaming and I'm always in roaming. I knew she wouldn't really be able to read between the lines, understand the sentence for the many other things that it means. I could see her receiving it, wherever she was, and probably not thinking too much about it. I wasn't anywhere near the corn maze off Highway 210 near the Missouri River, although I'd really like to be. There was too much to work out between us and neither one of us really wants to try. Growing old by myself only seems depressing now if it would be among those who aren't. Dying alone doesn't look so bad as long as the soundtrack doesn't include the roar of cars driving by, endless commercials, the piercing screams of emergency sirens.
*****
The future intellectuals (nerds), aforementioned, will never know: I was waiting for the elevator to arrive on the fourth floor; it was at the fifth to pick up someone, and I knew exactly who that could be up there because I knew who stayed there for lunch and brown-bagged it and who ate out every day and what time they went, but after a sleepy half-day of sitting around surfing the Internet and talking to various people my senses were dulled, it had slipped my mind. I thought about making a run for it before the elevator arrived and maybe take the stairs instead but I felt I was confident enough to handle it, this time. The door opens and she's in there, talking to her friend in her department about the great new relationship she was in. I look over and cast a tight-lipped smile and she doesn't look at me in a way that I know, this is on purpose. Her friend has this look on her face that seems to be trying to communicate with her telepathically, to tell her she's being cruel for not shutting up, and then she looks at me and says something with her eyes. I'm sorry, probably, but I guess you had your chance you know. I'm trying to think about something else while I'm hearing something about probably going to Memphis with him next weekend and his brother and his wife have a boat. I really wish I had a cellphone I could look at, maybe an imaginary text message, but I have no props at all to help me. Tunnel vision. I watch the little light above the door move to THREE and then TWO and my hands are in my pockets and one of them is fiddling with my car keys and then ONE and after so long, finally, we're released.
Without a word we walk away briskly, in different directions, with purpose. I wasn't sure what I felt like eating or maybe nothing at all. The weather was getting warmer out and I put my sunglasses on. A wind busy blowing leaves and discarded scraps of trash around. Quiet just like always other than the low hum of cars and trucks driving down the Interstate that was just over the hill and the flagpole that wasn't set tight enough banging rhythmically against the rim of the base in a low, hollow tone. Maybe Wendy's, or maybe Chinese. Or maybe just Starbucks. Iced americanos don't have any fat and barely any calories at all compared to the iced mochas I used to love all the time and I don't need that, and I've spent too many years of my life with my head in the sand about that shit and look at where it got me, now. It's a strange experience and one entirely new, my clothes are too big and I can't afford to replace them. I looked at the shirt I had on that day and it was slowly turning into a dress and I realized just how pitiful and broken down of an individual I had become.
No pining away for her, Stupid. The things that she could have been because she couldn't. There was no yearning for me to talk to me while in the elevator. I didn't even mean to turn her into some kind of vehicle for my own self-pity but I did it anyway. Instead of making these experiences a learning experience, something healthy, self-pity is all I had left in my arsenal. The sun illuminated my faults, they became the songs of the birds in the trees that have bloomed too soon. The girl in the elevator knew them; everyone did. It was in the way that people talked to me. How they handled me. All the times I would go over to somebody's desk, acting as I do, all the times people would laugh and say "boy you're something else" and I'd go on to the men's room or out to have a cigarette or to the vending machines for a Diet Coke. My supervisors could have done something but they kept me around for their own amusement and even then it would probably only be a matter of time. There's only so long these things can last, not in these circles. I could see the end, clear as day. I wasn't at all like them, never to be, and I should probably stop pretending that I could ever be as grounded and reliable, as corporate. Tonight I'll go out maybe down to the city and maybe I'll get drunk. It doesn't matter if it's Tuesday. I'm only telling myself that it's just Tuesday.
I wasn't going to move up in the company and I didn't even want to move up in the company. Every time they had the Associate of the Month meetings I would sit there and pray (to nothing in particular, my ancestors, The Force) my name wouldn't be the one to be called, the Casual Day stickers and the plastic trophy and the $50 gift card up there sitting at the podium wouldn't be mine. Finally I hadn't any notions at all left of proving to myself that with hard work or determination or "elbow grease" I could reap some kind of reward, accolades so artificial in their sentiment, a certificate pinned to the cubicle wall, the sheet of paper that had clip art of party hats and scattered shreds of confetti and some kind of WordArt that says YOU DID IT! WE'LL MISS YOU! and the hurried signatures of everybody else in the department. I thought about it maybe happening and a shiver up my spine and a lump catching in my throat, the necessity of pretending a great big absolutely fucking nothing at all would actually be important to me. No pining away for her, Stupid. No waking up in the morning and the very first thing that crosses your mind is how you wish your alarm clock were waking her up, too. Maybe we'll hang out tonight, maybe we'll go get drunk; what I need more than anything now is to hear him tell me that the only way his business is going to work out is if I join him and Aniko, just one more time.
A torn and emptied bag of Sun Chips inflated and carried along by the wind through the parking lot, keys unlocking my car door and inserted into the ignition, a tiny thought about maybe being brave enough to face the rest of my life, one more time.
There are times where I like to daydream about an imagined future where - and this could be many decades or centuries after today - where somewhere, anyplace, those who remain at least somewhat literate will sit and drink coffee and either consider or discuss certain times in my life as some universally-lauded author, one of the greats of the 21st Century, by then the stuff of cached and obscure websites or dusty tomes. I would like people to tackle subjects like "the common and re-reoccurring themes of his Blue Period" or "the quality of his work during his Missouri years as opposed to his later years in the south of France."
It beats me, why I think about these things. A byproduct of desperation while navigating through more uncertain times, or just a matter of the years flying by. The simple answer would have something to do with me just being a little bit odd, just like I've always pretty much been odd and perhaps it should just be left at that. Whatever the reasons really are, however, for the sake of argument should this self-indulgent fantasy of mine does indeed come true, and if I had my choice, those people in the future would be the nerds, bookish and sensitive outcasts from whatever society takes the place of this one. Then it wouldn't be all for naught because there's a chance for my words to be able to resonate way deep inside of them, somewhere. All of this would have meant at least something then, whatever it is that this life has been. It's just that, well, I suspect I have a pretty good idea how the universe works, at least from all that I've seen, and if I manage to have this miracle of people recognizing my name at all after I'm dead and gone I doubt I'll be able to attract my favored demographic as well.
No other author has been able to achieve that, going two-for-two, not really. It's gorgeous in Excelsior Springs and I'm in my living room and sitting in my old chair and daydreaming about joining the canon of American Literature. Curls of smoke illuminated by rays of light coming in through the blinds and I sit: my life being weighed on a scale, my mortality, some reason why I was supposed to be here in the first place. I should be doing something else but I always should be doing something else. Charlotte and Emily Bronte were able to pull both off but they were probably about the only ones out of all of us who ever deserved it.
The pursuit of enviable riches is something I've really never been interested in; definitely not the reason why I left the insurance company. After never having an abundance of money for my entire life the time came where I had simply, and very peacefully, forgot about the things I was supposedly missing. I had never considered starting my own business. Doing that felt like it would be too much hassle and too many gray areas when it came to the law of the land and banks and loans and all the x-factors, and strange as it might seem I truly liked my real bona fide office job: it paid just enough and I liked the fact that I knew exactly how each day (to the hour) was more-or-less going to be. At least there I understood what the business was all about and how it was going to be ran. I liked the people there and they liked me back, or at least the ratio was sufficient to make it somewhere I looked forward in going to every morning. My cubicle was decorated with drawings and gewgaws and whenever I ran out of pens or staples or paper clips all I needed to do was ask for more, there was never an issue of having to go to OfficeMax and budgeting the new office supplies along with everything else in the scheme of the next six months to a year. Coffee was always available in the break room, while far from being good, cost nothing. The gossiping and the rumors - because there are those things whenever a bunch of people are gathered in one place for long enough, and in abundance, always - was usually interesting.
At the end of the day I got into my car and would have a very unstressful commute back to my quiet apartment in my secret little corner of the world. On many nights my landlord John would be waiting for me with some beer and naan and we'd sit around and talk about the war, or I'd go over to my mom's house to discuss goings-on and watch cable. Everything got to a point where the only times I'd be bothered is if I would actively go out and seek someone out to bother me. If I wanted to spend my entire weekend in absolute solitude either reading or writing or just sitting around thinking I could, and I did just that umpteen times. Without any fanfare whatsoever and amidst my belated amusement my entire life had become as simple as Dad had always told me was possible (during those unbearably dramatic moments of youth when I was convinced nothing was ever going to turn out all right): you don't have to do much else except go to work and pay your bills. It can be that easy if you'd just allow it to be.
Maybe the events of my recent past will ever be discussed by people in the future, I wonder, the reason why I had left the place that had employed me for two years, in doing so saying goodbye to the comforts and assorted limitations that await someone seeking a life in the corporate world in general, in favor of going into business for myself and some of my friends. It would be nice to be able to hear what they might say, far off into the future; unaware of just how wrong they were.
Along the streets of Midtown sometimes it's almost like driving through a new city, a place I've never been to before in my life until just recently. I feel like I'm just now starting to figure out the basics: the good places to eat, shortcuts around busy intersections and slow traffic lights.
The artist's studios on Troost, called @TLAS (at Troost and Linwood Art Studios) should hopefully be completed soon. Because of the considerably lower rents we offer than what people have to pay at the Crossroads District have become used to paying in the last couple of years the units are already filling up, amazingly so considering all we've really done so far is put up a few fliers during First Fridays and posted an ad on Craigslist and none of the people can even see a finished model yet. It will be nice, too, to have this building be abuzz with creative types. I don't know how I'm going to run the art gallery that's going to be on the first floor but I'll figure it out, I guess. The coffee shop will be in our clutches soon enough. The owner of the property isn't going to renew the current owner's lease. The coup d'etat should be bloodless, with only one casualty. The pride and self-esteem of a man who was never as clever and likable and ultimately as merciless as we; he will slink into his pre-owned sport utility vehicle with his tail between his legs and drive off into the sunset or back to his parent's house in Overland Park, possibly. Then there's eighty websites and the marketing plans and the business cards and the fliers and guerrilla theater and the interpersonal drama between everyone that we know about actually everything.
The business will do fine, and without too much effort everything will fall into place. All we need to do is not let go of our common sense, and not wind up being so stressed out we can't even function, and manage not to strangle each other or having some other kind of violent battle royale. I've always heard about all the hard work that starting one's own business entails but I'm still not seeing it. I can't think of anyone else I've known in real life who has ever tried it before, the only examples I can remember offhand are the ones I witnessed while watching The Real World on MTV after it stopped being at all interesting, so many years ago. If I recall right they all had to start a business together per the agreement with the network, but they were dimwitted like the sort of people chronically self-absorbed enough to want to be seen alternately fighting and sleeping with one another on basic cable.
We are not these people, at least I hope not. We number just three, two guys and a girl, adept in our own distinct ways but deeply flawed in many others and with our own personal hurdles to overcome if not soon, then whenever. When we throw the best parts of ourselves together and keep our egos in check we can combine into one person, just one but somebody amazing everybody wants to know and feels like they should do business with, and I know it happens because I've seen it. We waltz into potential client's lairs gracefully with sharpened wits and breath mints and rehearsed lines, coming away with a signed contract. Holed up in cafés with pens and notebooks and laptops searching for Wi-Fi, taking notes, bouncing ideas off one another, our cellphones blowing the fuck up constantly. An extra shot of espresso and room for cream and sugar and we're friends with all the baristas. Everyday is Casual Friday. We're wiser through experience and still young and eclectic enough to possess the kind of energy and creativity to do things that nobody else in this city has been able to do, not this well, so we've earned the right to wear t-shirts and jeans all the time. Who would dare tell us otherwise? Three hour lunches and leaving town for a few days if we have to and mid-level managers tremble at the mere mention of our name. We get more sleep than they. We are pirates and we are ninjas too and we could beat their ass if they want to fight.
My soul leaves my body and I look down at the three of us and we're beautiful. Fascination like what a child would have, wondering how long this new plateau of my life will last. Where do I see myself in five years, or in ten? I don't know. I don't care, I don't think.
There is an end to this, too, though I don't know when it will be. Everything runs its own course in due time, eventually: situations, living arrangements, relationships of every stripe. It's October of 2007 and I'm very aware of just how fortunate I've been. I've had friendships that have thrived for over ten years, some of them borderline to twenty. I get along very well with my mom and my stepfather and I've renewed ties recently with some of the members of my extended family, letting them know that I'm still here and that I'm not going anywhere. Every negative influence and so many people who tried to pull me down to their level have been culled and cast out now, and I won't be repeating mistakes made in my teens or in my twenties. And even then I had never done anything so foolish that it couldn't be amended or simply forgotten over time. I've made no children and I make no child support payments. I don't have the kind of crushing debt that keeps other people down into some kind of modern-day serfdom.
What if, my bank account could grow large enough during the next few years or so and I could have some land somewhere way out and quiet and calm, with a woodsy house with many windows, all of it surrounded by trees, a friendly alpaca or long-haired pygmy goat or two. A room devoted to nothing but books and reading more books, a simple television and a computer that I can write with and communicate to the outside world at my discretion. If at all possible maybe a lake nearby deep enough to sit in a little rowboat and fish all day if I wanted to, never to keep and kill but maybe to look at and admire for a moment and throw back in the water. I used to want to be happy, that was the goal above everything. Happiness, though, is too fleeting to keep for very long, we shouldn't. It's a field of wildflowers surrounding you and a butterfly resting on your arm or your head for just a moment only to take off again to a different destination just as soon. Hoarding away happiness is selfish; I've come to understand that there's only a finite amount of it to go around in the world. After our business is over and done with, whether it's a happy ending and everything is settled amicably or perhaps some kind of emerging philosophical divide that splits us apart, in the end I think I'd just settle for being far enough away from everything that has ever bothered me.
That's where my daydreaming ends; my musing only takes me so far and the future is unpredictable, always in flux. There's another website I need to finish. My cousin wants me to take her to the amusement park. I've been invited to a bachelorette party and I don't even know why. I need to fax something to an office but there isn't a fax machine around. I'd have to leave my apartment but I don't want to. And the other day I sent a text message because she gave me her number again just before I finished my two weeks' notice, because without me even bothering to notate it in my day planner it became that time of year already. Because I don't even really know why.
THE CORN MAZE IS OPEN AGAIN! CHEERS, JASON.
The years before she used to laugh whenever I mentioned this place, in the way that I've been known to do where something so fundamentally hokey and camp is definitely the most totally awesome thing in the world like, ever, and I happily defy anyone to challenge the assertion even though everybody knows that no one in their right mind possibly would, or could. I do this with other things: ugly shoes! Bad paintings of dogs with unnaturally big eyes! Fried walleye! It's one of my qualities I have that she likes, maybe the most. She asked me to take her one time and I told her I would most definitely but our schedules proved not to be compatible and by the time we had managed to figure everything out it had closed down for the year.
U BETTER CALL ME WHEN U GET A CHANCE. It was her.
Immediately I thought about doing just that; apparently she wouldn't mind talking to me and maybe she actually does want to talk to me. She'd ask me how the new job was going, and I don't really know the answer to that question, at least not where I could put it into words. I guess I could just about make up whatever I wanted but I wasn't sure as to exactly what kind of impression on her I felt like I needed to make. Do I want her to think I'm more successful and not at all the loser she took me for, or just happier where I'm at now and I'm never going to look back, or maybe that my life is great now but just doesn't entirely feel complete without her in it? When I ask her how she's doing and she talks about the job being a drag as usually and she mentions her new boyfriend, because there always is a new boyfriend, will she say it in a way that will tell me to back off or would it be some kind of subtle suggestion for me to attempt to show her I can do better for her than he's doing? Can I possibly expect to do that by taking her to a maze? Also the visceral reaction I get whenever people do things like replace the word "you" with the letter U, it doesn't matter if it's just a text message. Yuck.
I WILL, I wrote two days later, ONCE I FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET OUT OF HERE.
I don't get text messages while I'm roaming and I'm always in roaming. I knew she wouldn't really be able to read between the lines, understand the sentence for the many other things that it means. I could see her receiving it, wherever she was, and probably not thinking too much about it. I wasn't anywhere near the corn maze off Highway 210 near the Missouri River, although I'd really like to be. There was too much to work out between us and neither one of us really wants to try. Growing old by myself only seems depressing now if it would be among those who aren't. Dying alone doesn't look so bad as long as the soundtrack doesn't include the roar of cars driving by, endless commercials, the piercing screams of emergency sirens.
*****
The future intellectuals (nerds), aforementioned, will never know: I was waiting for the elevator to arrive on the fourth floor; it was at the fifth to pick up someone, and I knew exactly who that could be up there because I knew who stayed there for lunch and brown-bagged it and who ate out every day and what time they went, but after a sleepy half-day of sitting around surfing the Internet and talking to various people my senses were dulled, it had slipped my mind. I thought about making a run for it before the elevator arrived and maybe take the stairs instead but I felt I was confident enough to handle it, this time. The door opens and she's in there, talking to her friend in her department about the great new relationship she was in. I look over and cast a tight-lipped smile and she doesn't look at me in a way that I know, this is on purpose. Her friend has this look on her face that seems to be trying to communicate with her telepathically, to tell her she's being cruel for not shutting up, and then she looks at me and says something with her eyes. I'm sorry, probably, but I guess you had your chance you know. I'm trying to think about something else while I'm hearing something about probably going to Memphis with him next weekend and his brother and his wife have a boat. I really wish I had a cellphone I could look at, maybe an imaginary text message, but I have no props at all to help me. Tunnel vision. I watch the little light above the door move to THREE and then TWO and my hands are in my pockets and one of them is fiddling with my car keys and then ONE and after so long, finally, we're released.
Without a word we walk away briskly, in different directions, with purpose. I wasn't sure what I felt like eating or maybe nothing at all. The weather was getting warmer out and I put my sunglasses on. A wind busy blowing leaves and discarded scraps of trash around. Quiet just like always other than the low hum of cars and trucks driving down the Interstate that was just over the hill and the flagpole that wasn't set tight enough banging rhythmically against the rim of the base in a low, hollow tone. Maybe Wendy's, or maybe Chinese. Or maybe just Starbucks. Iced americanos don't have any fat and barely any calories at all compared to the iced mochas I used to love all the time and I don't need that, and I've spent too many years of my life with my head in the sand about that shit and look at where it got me, now. It's a strange experience and one entirely new, my clothes are too big and I can't afford to replace them. I looked at the shirt I had on that day and it was slowly turning into a dress and I realized just how pitiful and broken down of an individual I had become.
No pining away for her, Stupid. The things that she could have been because she couldn't. There was no yearning for me to talk to me while in the elevator. I didn't even mean to turn her into some kind of vehicle for my own self-pity but I did it anyway. Instead of making these experiences a learning experience, something healthy, self-pity is all I had left in my arsenal. The sun illuminated my faults, they became the songs of the birds in the trees that have bloomed too soon. The girl in the elevator knew them; everyone did. It was in the way that people talked to me. How they handled me. All the times I would go over to somebody's desk, acting as I do, all the times people would laugh and say "boy you're something else" and I'd go on to the men's room or out to have a cigarette or to the vending machines for a Diet Coke. My supervisors could have done something but they kept me around for their own amusement and even then it would probably only be a matter of time. There's only so long these things can last, not in these circles. I could see the end, clear as day. I wasn't at all like them, never to be, and I should probably stop pretending that I could ever be as grounded and reliable, as corporate. Tonight I'll go out maybe down to the city and maybe I'll get drunk. It doesn't matter if it's Tuesday. I'm only telling myself that it's just Tuesday.
I wasn't going to move up in the company and I didn't even want to move up in the company. Every time they had the Associate of the Month meetings I would sit there and pray (to nothing in particular, my ancestors, The Force) my name wouldn't be the one to be called, the Casual Day stickers and the plastic trophy and the $50 gift card up there sitting at the podium wouldn't be mine. Finally I hadn't any notions at all left of proving to myself that with hard work or determination or "elbow grease" I could reap some kind of reward, accolades so artificial in their sentiment, a certificate pinned to the cubicle wall, the sheet of paper that had clip art of party hats and scattered shreds of confetti and some kind of WordArt that says YOU DID IT! WE'LL MISS YOU! and the hurried signatures of everybody else in the department. I thought about it maybe happening and a shiver up my spine and a lump catching in my throat, the necessity of pretending a great big absolutely fucking nothing at all would actually be important to me. No pining away for her, Stupid. No waking up in the morning and the very first thing that crosses your mind is how you wish your alarm clock were waking her up, too. Maybe we'll hang out tonight, maybe we'll go get drunk; what I need more than anything now is to hear him tell me that the only way his business is going to work out is if I join him and Aniko, just one more time.
A torn and emptied bag of Sun Chips inflated and carried along by the wind through the parking lot, keys unlocking my car door and inserted into the ignition, a tiny thought about maybe being brave enough to face the rest of my life, one more time.