Yawn. A wide mouthed, stinky, what did you eat last night?!? yawn, a gaping stream of reconstituted aromas. Cigarette in water glass half filled with diluted whiskey. Hate it when the ice melts, no punch, no buzz. Lots of porn magazines, guys on gals on guys on guys and gals and their gal pals and the achievements of the Hard Plastic Industry. Ever read Lolita? Best writing on American motels , ever.
Yeah, I always leave the door open when I turn off the lights; the grind of the ice machine and the comings and goings in the parking lot help me sleep, and something about the silverfish sheen of the headlights cruising across the groaded wall art makes me believe the center of things will hold even when my eyes are closed, a half mile into the Nod. Ah, you're not awake. Damnitall. Said my piece to a failed applause sign.
Nothing makes me sad like a sandwich still in the wrapper that hasn't been eaten, nor stored in a refrigerator. It's a dead thing that becomes even more dead as the heat makes the cheese and cold cuts gamy like soft calluses . A suffocated rat has more dignity. Marlboros are the best smokes ever, they have the right feel in the hand, the pack I mean, and the smoke itself, wretched burning nightstick enema grind, yeah, they are foul, all the time, like sneering geese on a leash, jack.
The buzz was thick, loud, persistent, a steady insectoid drone of the sort that must’ve filled the air before the Triassic Age…the rows and rows of florescent tubes in the ceiling looked like the thoraxes of enormous fireflies, glowing with a fitful twitch, the luminescence of a fetid spring night somewhere south of the sweatband around the waist of a very fat and moist person, the waist of Emil DeVisantes, that kid in 8th grade gym, the one who liked Iron Maiden and wrote the band’s name on his sneakers and his gym bag and even his shorts which is not something anyone would remember except when staring at the underside of a nest of glowing white termites and listening to the pulsations of wings frozen above your head…
ReplyDeleteThad was spacing out. He has taken too much allergy medicine and then chugged some Jager before starting the 11 to 6 night shift at the Circle-K, the one across the highway from that low-rent motel/fornication palace visible through the streaked plate glass window opposite from the checkout counter. He stared at the lights streaking down I-8 until his pupils seemed covered with a luminous film, then slowly turned his neck to fixate on the glass doors of the refrigerator case, where the shelves of little oblong and square cartons of milk, juice and tea began to take on the jittery omni-chromatic patterns of a Mondrian painting, maybe New York Boogie Woogie, a favorite of his from art class in his last year before he dropped out and moved in with Tiffany in that shithole apartment over the café run by those fucking poseurs near the Pike Street fish market…Mondrian painted like a insect in heat, he thought…
Thad’s mind surfaced behind the viscous pools of his eyes. There was a man in front of him with a can of Red Bull and a package of D batteries, waiting to check out.
“You want some aphids with that?” he heard himself say.