Despondencies

Thomas walked into the alley, kicking pebbles forward, and spat to each one, only hitting one. The rocks passed each one by four or so feet and sometimes he’d kick a pile, leaving him only to sit and think which to spat on. He’d only walked into the alley when she’d return from Portland. One a month, sometimes more, in midday he’d set out and pace past broken televisions, scrapped lumber, graffiti, and pebbles he’d already kicked once before.

She came into the house while he scraped the Nutella off the knife and slid it into the pantry. With the intonation of the door closing Thomas knew it had been Portland. That drab city, Portland. Where old elephants go to die. Where the rain sticks to the walls and washes  basic senses of morality into the sewer. The screen door didn’t slam. He put the two pieces of bread together and listened to the door slowly let to a close, the back of her hand pressing against the screen, the bottom hitting first and the warped top to follow. Portland, Oregon, Portland fucking Oregon.

He left through the back door while she came through the living room into the kitchen. He shut the back door with the handle pulled as she  simultaneously pulled the French doors leading into the kitchen open.

A group of four kids rode their bikes towards him as he lumbered along.  He’d wished they were actually Cholos. Cholos with neck and face tattoos and he wished he wore his red shirt and that when they rode past he’d tell them to fuck off and they’d take some of the scrap wood out of the garbage can and beat him with it. He’d be laying in the middle of the concrete and he’d see nothing but his own blood pool into his eyes and they’d deliver the last blow and he’d die and everyone would be sorry and he’d never have to be home when his stupid wife came home from Portland and he’d never have to watch her turn away and look away, and bite her stupid broken flapping bottom lip and be sorry. He’d never have to read letters she left out. Correspondence from this rube, poor little rube, sent to the city, to only ruin a stranger’s life.

The children rode past; one skidded with his back brake for a few feet and carried on. Thomas lit a cigarette and sat on couch that had been in the alley the last time he’d been there. Some wrote, “UPTOHERE” in spray-paint across the backrest and another person had gutted an entire cushion. The graffiti caused him to laugh for a moment before he sat. The filter of the first cigarette began to burn but he inhaled in anyway and used it to light another.

He’d memorized three of the letters and the first one had been salutated, “Come up to here.” Sometimes laziness seems more compelling than life itself. Every repetition of the salutation make him laugh a little more. After thirty or so times his bottom lip bounced to the though and he began repeating, “Up to here” until the morphemes gave way to laughter, and then the words themselves joined and he pulled his cigarette from his lips, flicked it at a post and the cherry shot out of it while the butt fell behind a trashcan. Within a few minutes the cherry gave way to ash. He lit another, propped his foot up on a television and laughed again.

I QUIT

I smoked more cigarettes than I probably should have. Nevertheless, I walked to 7-11 with the average ‘uninterested in walking anywhere a block away in Los Angeles’ gait that I always carry with me, and bought pack more. On the walk there I remembered how a doctor once told me how I, in fact, was a light smoker.

A few months after turning eighteen I promptly moved to Seattle, leaving behind a the chance of acquiring cancer in a paper mill, as most of the men who had worked in them for decades had done. I cashed in whatever you could call chips and moved to the big city – the biggest city I had seen anyways: Seattle.

My first two weeks there resulted in disaster after disaster. Those first fourteen days equated to one persons life of tragedy. In fact, my first two days may have accomplished it well. On my first day I nearly died while skateboarding through traffic on my way to the local library. A fucking car hit me. My skateboard broke in two and I slid over the car hood without my sweatshirt giving me any friction to slowdown, until I hit the asphalt. Trying to get up, before realizing a car had hit me, or rather I hit a car, I noticed blood soaking through my sweatshirt – not flowing, seeping through. After getting to my feet, trying to find my skateboard (which I couldn’t see broken under the car), I noticed gawkers with their hands over their mouths, on all four corners of the intersection. Not doing anything, just standing and watching and if not watching, calling 911 on their cell phones.

In the minute and a half it took me to get up and figure out what really happened, the man in the car had already written a check to me for $500 – I asked for $600. In the moment it took to reach to a wallet and out to my hand, I held a check for $500 and a one hundred dollar bill. Hitherto, I never held so much at any given time in my life. Thank you Jeff Anderson.
The following day the Seattle Police Department shot and killed an unarmed black man with no weapon in my Carport. They pulled him over for speeding.

Two weeks later I contracted a severe case of Pneumonia. For the first time I sat in a doctors office without the company of a family member. In 10th grade I decided I would run track (until I did, I had no idea I could fail so easily at a sport). To participate I needed to take a physical examination proving to the State of Washington I was fit to run. In the doctors office with my mother the doctor asked me the standard questions.

“Do you smoke?”
I thought yes, but my mother glared over and I remembered and replied, “No.”
“Do you smoke Marijuana?”
Uh, yes I thought, nearly smiling, but replied, “No.”
“Travis, do you drink?”
Of course. “No.”
“Are you sexual active?”
What do you mean am I sexual active? I’m sixteen, of course I am. Also, does masturbation count? Can you not run well if you have had an orgasm?
“What do you mean?” I replied.
“Have you had sexual intercourse with a woman?” he asked me while my mother ogled me, really interested to hear about this one.
“No,” I replied.

Now a grown man of eighteen years, independent for a week or so and having my own case of Pneumonia coupled with scab running down my arm, I found myself able to be in a room with a Doctor one of one abandoning explicit thought. What’s to fear being a room with a complete stranger? Someone I will never meet again.

She asked, “Do you smoke?”
“Yes”
“How much,” she asked staring at her clipboard while taking notes in a very uninterested fashion.
“A pack a day.”
“Oh so you’re a light smoker”
A light smoker? What the fuck are you talking about doctor? I smoke like a chimney and you a telling me I’m a light smoker? That’s what it comes down to I guess. I’m in fact a light smoker.
“Do you smoke Marijuana?”
“Yes”
“How often?”
“Three to give times a week.”
“Are you sexual active?”
“Yes” I told her, trying to not make eye contact, cough, or smirk waiting to tell her all about if I drank or not.

Donut Holes

I felt thirsty but didn’t have anything to drink so instead I ate. I opened the fridge and saw some extra pulp orange juice – a favorite of mine, but it wasn’t mine and earlier I already stole a glass. The rice from last night’s midnight dinner stacked to the ceiling in of fridge on top of the eggs, nearly touching the light, but I didn’t feel like eating it after seeing the water had congealed and being brown rice it congealed to a bramble appearance of sorts. I ate the ice cream for breakfast and didn’t buy the oranges either.  I had bacon and eggs for lunch and popcorn for a snack and any one item I noticed that varied from those I either didn’t buy and therefore could not eat or if I saw anything else it simply wouldn’t wet my palette. I hadn’t smoked a cigarette since the night prior and would have certainly loved to do that instead. I forgot to turn my apartment’s heater off. In the past I’d sit next to the window, smoke, and let in a little cold air and snowflakes to settle in, but it simply wouldn’t make sense for me to sit on the edge of the couch with the window open and no cigarette. So instead I walked to the bodega. Usually I’m smoking on the way to the but since I didn’t have any cigarettes I thought of how I didn’t have a job and how I need a job and how I have to pay to credit cards in eight days and how I had to pay rent in fifteen, and utilities in fifteen, and how much the subway costs, and how much food costs, and how I’ll probably find a job soon.

The snow had melted. My shoes are fine for walking on snow, and even sometimes in snow, but never in rain or melted snow. Within fifteen paces I could tell the temperature by the water in my shoes. Usually I just known from the wind striking my nose – I have an enormous nose, or by how cold my smoking hand is, but since I don’t smoke anymore and I hadn’t been outside long enough, I gauged it by my feet. If you feel how cold your feet are and add that by how cold you think the snow is and add how cold you remember it being last, then divide that number by three, you should know what the temperature is. Today the temperature was twenty-five.

I usually buy coffee for fifty-cents at the bodega when I’m there to solely defeat cabin fever, but never in the evening time, so I settled on donut holes. My grandmother use to buy donut holes for me as a child and I had only eaten them once since. I’d show up and she’d either have donut holes, Jello, or hot dogs with mayo. I remember really enjoying them all. The last time I ate donut holes I ‘d been walking home after my car broke down. I stopped in at a diner for some food, tired of walking and really just wanting to just be home – cell phones hardly existed at this point, especially with teenagers. I glanced over the pictured menu and couldn’t decided between chicken fried steak, a steak, or eggs when a homeless man came and sat across from me, pulled a Swiss Army knife from his dirty shirt pocket, pulled out all of the blades one by one, set the built in tweezers and plastic toothpick on the table, and slid it across the table and said, “ I’ll sell it to you for five dollars. There’s twenty-six knives on here, that’s 35 cents a knife.” I’ve never been exceptional at math and certainly couldn’t do that sort of math in my head so I declined the offer, not because his math had been wrong, but because I already had a knife. Instead of ordering chicken fried steak, steak, or eggs, I walked across the street to a gas station and bought a half dozen donut holes, a jalapeño and cheese corndog, and my first pack of cigarettes and started smoking – and starting eating corndogs.

I took the donut holes back to my house. On the walk home the water in my shoes became warmer and I couldn’t tell if the body heat in my toes just rose to compensate for the degrees lost from the melted snow or if the melted snow just became warmer since I had been in the store. For a moment I thought my theory of temperature might be flawed, but became distracted after the idea of using Christmas trees for legs on the table top I had found a day earlier. I’d need a hatchet – I stopped to think of how to spell hatchet because I’d forgotten. One Ts or two? I remembered hatchet had only one T and that I didn’t have a hatchet and it’d be cheaper to buy 2×4s to use for legs on the chair rather than buy a hatchet.

I decided to take the elevator to my apartment because I thought it’d be funny to use a freight elevator to bring donut holes up to my apartment. The terrible graffiti distracted me and I got of on the fifth floor instead of the fourth. I took the stairs down, guessing how many times people had slept in the stairwell, not wanting to know how many times people have pissed in it, nor remembering if I had or not.

Finally I turned left into the fourth floor door and started to walk towards my apartment. I turned the corner as the same time as an ugly woman wearing an old coat and scared her. She didn’t seem to forgive me after I said sorry and even her dog ogled me for a moment.

Finally home, I set the donut holes on the counter and realized they were sugar rather than glazed.  Glazed was always my favorite and I really never have once in my life cared for a sugar coated donut, or donut hole. Since my roommates weren’t home I poured a glass of orange juice and added about a half cup of water to the carton so that if they noticed I had dipped into the orange juice they wouldn’t notice that I took so much but maybe would let me off the hook because sometimes you really need orange juice, and besides, they ate a bag of my rice. I cooked a half-cup of rice last night and couldn’t finish it; an entire bag would fill up the sink. Then I took out the cookies and cream ice cream and ate it out of the carton and felt guilty. I put it back, drank the juice, ate a donut hole and fell asleep on the couch.

I woke up and felt bad because I forgot to read a NY Times I stole from my neighbors. I fell asleep again, hoping I wouldn’t wake up for a very long time, but instead I woke up thirty minutes later. I tried again and woke up fifteen minutes later.