Another smokey
Saturday, 3am, watching
pickup trucks shuffle by from the womb of a
franchise diner. They throw me in back where it's safe to lose myself in a
book without the petulant
pick-up lines of drunks, but also without the
line of sight benefits to my
coffee cup. No one watching, I forget to look
studious and stare into nothing. And I think of all the
inebriated nights I spent here, not alone, the
frantic teenage exploits of
small town kids eager to scatter when eighteen rolled around. I catalogue the
waitresses who've moved down the
freeway to the next glorified
truck stop or settled down to get fat and beaten with a boyfriend they thought would make a
good daddy. You'd think it'd be harder to disappear in a town this small. It's proof of
the ugly side - no one really cares to know their neighbor outside of a
nod and smile routine. We run away, no one seeks us out. And when we come back, we find we're
no one, ourselves.
The waitress comes around the corner, startles at my presence. She makes
the approriate noises and I placate the graciousness by requesting water. Brazenly, she gives me the glass from the table across the
aisle. "They didn't
drink out of it," she promises.
Can a world like this really exist? How does reality not come in and
smack the hell out of all the people hiding in this dumb little corner,
drugged by all their dumb
delusions? I thank her and shove the glass aside, making a
spilt second decision about the
tip. Above me, the
smoke eater coughs and somewhere in
non smoking, a vacuum cleaner bulldozes through the
silence, answering its call. An empty pack of
cigarettes stares up at me, chiding me for neglecting my
habit. I think of the
prison lit 24 hour supermarket across the parking lot. I think of crossing that sea of asphalt with a friend, him full of
acid and sure he was sinking in.
Things change. I put my sweatshirt on.