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Monday, August 25, 1997
My friend Chad;
The day was a complete waste.
Every effort, every intention, every endeavor disappointed. Getting to work on time. Taking a crap. Masturbation. Putting coins in the vending machines. Drinking coffee. Formulating thought. Solving problems. Everything ended in failure.
Some force held me by the back of the head and drove stakes and swords into my eyeballs. Into my chest. Jackhammers drive red-hot bits into my feet. Angry construction workers turn screws into my ass. Century-old cotton pickers pluck at me. Unexpected sneezing fits engulf my entire body.
I am bitter, and I am dark, and can see not 1 foot in front of me through an ocean of irritation and anger.
Hello, Chad;
There is a man who drinks coffee each morning in front of the McDonald's by our place of work. He is quietly apoplectic, with a hoary beard and a crazy explosion of hair. I think you have seen him. I have walked near to him a few times and can tell you that he stinks like putrid seawater.
He drinks his coffee and stares straight ahead, never flinching or reacting to noises or confusion.
But lately, we make eye contact. I drink McDonald's coffee some mornings, too, and sit a few tables away from him. He sees me looking at him.
This morning, we made eye contact again, and I said loud enough for him to hear "I don't think this beverage is real."
And I offered him a toast. Raised the Styrofoam cup toward him and attempted a meaninglessly affirmative expression, for whatever it was worth.
I spilled coffee on my hand. It was hot. So hot that I spilled it onto the table, onto the floor. For some reason nothing in life makes me angrier than liquid pouring away across a table or a floor or a counter.
He did not move. Nor wince. But our eyes stayed on each other, mine burning over with that bile which incongruously arises. And I wondered where he was, and how little it would take to get me there.
OK, Chad;
So breakfast was a failure. My hand shook all morning from the scalding heat. My voice shook all day from having spoken out loud to the vile-smelling man. My chest was battened by the doors slamming shut around my shell.
I stepped into the office and every person was an asshole. Rickets of irritation jutted out the sides of my neck. My stomach blazed with burning stones of coal that never flaked into ash. All day long came more frustration, more disappointment, more of my mind squeezed shut by the mucous of ignorance. More of the feeling that I am a fraud. And my eyeballs are still electrified by it. Sparks of shine obscure everything I try to look at.
In the afternoon I left the office, and went downstairs to look for him. For the man I spoke at this morning. He was not there. No one was there. My coffee had long since been mopped up, and the gates of McDonald's were slamming shut.
I left the building. Crossed Techwood Drive and entered Centennial Olympic Park. The sidewalks of that park are made of brick, and on one of those bricks is engraved my name. I have never seen the brick, because the energy to find it escapes me, but it is there, as are the names of several friends and co-workers. It is meant to give the park a personal touch, but it has only ever made me feel lost in a sprawling victory of corporate oblivion.
The bricks seem never to end. This day seems never to end.
I am at home, naked and drinking beer
After getting home tonight I lay down on the carpet for over an hour, letting the cold, cold wind from the air conditioner blow across me, my heart pounding like the sledgehammer I wanted to pound over someone's head after lunch this afternoon.
I went outside for coffee. To a doughnut store up the street. The daggers of frustration have lodged so deep in my skull that I can not remember the walk. I can not remember lying at home on the carpet, or getting out of bed this morning, or eating a sandwich and 2 bananas for lunch. I can not remember any of my day, but I can remember walking through the door of the doughnut shop and seeing him there.
The man, the hoary, grizzled man was sitting there, many miles away from the only place I have ever seen him, and a few blocks from my apartment. He looked the same, but he seemed preoccupied by something. His hands fidgeted. His feet tapped quickly.
I do not think he noticed me. He did not look in my direction. He did not look up. After a few seconds he stopped fidgeting, and assumed his ritual pose. You have seen it: Both his hands wrapped around a tall, tall coffee cup and both eyes locked and staring at that blind spot of human attention somewhere between your hands and your kneecaps.
Suddenly I was awake. I thought about sitting down with him, and asking him where days like this one go when they are over. Or if they go anywhere. Are they like going hungry at night? Are they better after a night's sleep? Except for anguish and grief, is there anything, my friend, which can not be made better by a night's sleep?
But I bolted the place. Came back to this building, bought beer at the store downstairs, came up here, tried to take a shit but then realized I already had, and wondered if he followed me home. If I should invite him in for drinks. If his conversation would be erudite and introspective, or cacophonous and confused. If he would fall asleep out on the porch. If he would steal the change off my dresser. If he would find a way to kill me, to butcher my carcass into chickenfeed and flush it down the toilet. And take over this apartment. Post things to my website. Play my piano. Eat my pretzels. Sleep on my floor. Show up at my job tomorrow morning and sit in my chair and live a day just like this one.
That could be exactly what happens, Chad. It could be so easy.
The cold air in here makes my teeth chatter. The beer goes down like cold spit. I scratch my balls, and look at the ceiling, and feel myself turning into Kafka's helpless insect. All I can do is sit with the lights off as the dark vomit of this day pours away.
Until tomorrow,
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