[205] Screed City

[205]

11/02/2022 Wednesday. Kitchen Microwave. 67 Av. Queens, New York.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even really know where to start anymore. You know what I mean? I mean, when nothing is happening but everything is happening all at once? I mean, I read the other day that time is not linear. That the reason that time seems to drag when you are younger is because you have no frame of reference and the older you get time flies by, not because you are having fun, like the bridesmaids want you to believe, but because you have more experience with it. You have lived more or whatever. I mean, I call bullshit on that. If that was true you wouldn't notice sitting in a traffic, or a six hour plane ride. Or whatever. I mean, sure, time is relative, I'm not denying that, but tedious shit is still tedious fucking shit. I mean, when I was driving down here on Monday I reached some point out by like, I don't even know, up North on the Taconic and I checked my phone to see how much time I had left before I would get to Queens and the thing said two hours and nine minutes. I drove for about five minutes, looked down, and it said I had two hours and nine minutes left. I mean, I was driving at like seventy five miles an hour. And five minutes had gone by. The road had changed. The scenery. But somehow the time remained the same. I mean, this went on, kept going on. The time changed a couple times. From two hours and nine minutes, then two hours and eight minutes, then it shot up to two hours and ten minutes. I mean, this went on for an hour. No change in time, but I know I must have travelled sixty miles at least. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not an idiot, it's not like I thought I was caught in some sort of time vortex or something, where space and time were somehow running parallel with each other, I mean, I knew what was happening, there was a traffic jam building up down in the City and that was adding time to my travels by basically one minute for every minute I travelled, but it made me feel insane. Out of control even. Like it was some fucked up metaphor for life, the harder you push, the faster you travel, it doesn't matter because no matter what you are going nowhere fast. I mean, I'll tell you that it sucked. It sucked real bad. I mean, I wasn't like: "This is just fine, I have been stuck in traffic before so I shouldn't feel like time is going by slow at all!" No, it sucked. And the worst part was the knowledge that the sucking hadn't even started. The tedious part was still way in the future. And I mean, it did get worse when I finally hit traffic. But when I hit traffic I had reached the peak of delay. And from that point forward the minutes started peeling off. Actual minutes. Actual waiting had commenced. And it was brutal. A five hour drive converted to a seven hour drive, and on my birthday nonetheless. But was rewarded though when traffic finally started moving again. A car in front of me, in the back seat, the driver's side, a full grown man was hanging halfway out of the window, barfing and barfing and barfing. Puking even. And then I hit a pothole and nearly broke my neck because my suspension is so bad, and then when I finally got to Queens I was rewarded again with looking for a parking spot at the exact worse time of day to be looking for a parking spot.

I mean, it was my own fault. I could have come down on Sunday, but I didn't. I was worried about country rats and trash. I mean, I spent some time sighting the new pellet gun in. Which, I mean, I will tell you, what a blast from the past that was. My entire Wyoming childhood coming back to me. Learning to shoot again. Holding my breath while pulling the trigger, shit like that. Adjusting the scope by two clicks at a time. Then finally after pulling the thing too far to the right, adjusting back a single click. And then, wham! Spot on! I mean, it was quite satisfying. Almost peaceful. And then when I adjusted for the short range target, I switched to the long range, meaning, I don't know, twenty yards, I mean, I did the same thing all over again with equally satisfying results. And it was good. And everything was good.

But then on Monday I woke up early, hoping to get on the road by ten, I instead dragged ass until eleven thirty like an idiot and because I was an idiot, I paid dearly for it. But what can you do? If you planned every trip from Vermont on whether or not there was going to be traffic in the City you would never leave home. Because, I mean, here is a little secret I have learned about NYC, traffic sucks. I mean, that's not my point, I don't know what my point is, but that surely wasn't it. I mean, I made it here safely, that is good, and I managed to park in a good spot, that is also good. I gathered all my junk from Junior Mint and made sure I didn't have anything in my car worth breaking my windows for. Locked the thing. Assumed my side view mirror would get hit by a bus and went to the apartment.

I mean, I guess I just hung out at that point. Professor Curly was finishing her film edit in her office. Something about a, "Lock," whatever that means. I guess it has something to do with how the sound guy can come in and start making everything real dramatic or something. And then they do some coloring stuff. And some other stuff. And then, voila! movie done! I mean, I sat around waiting. I mean, we had birthday reservations at seven thirty. At this place called Rolo's, which, I mean, I don't really enjoy going out to eat, the cost alone stresses me out, and I really don't like being waited on. I mean, there is just something sinister about that, specifically in America that hurts my feelings, I mean, not the job, or whatever, the service industry, I mean, I feel like it is akin to the arts in a way, where the job is very important and should be taken seriously and well compensated, but in America, we both hate the arts and we really hate anyone that has to work for a living, I mean, on one hand I would love to support the service industry, I mean, I have done it, from dishwasher to cook to bartender to waiter to fast food to any other number of jobs, I mean, even the work I do now should be considered service industry work because it's not like the work is something that has to be done, it's work that I get paid for by the job. I mean, all freelance work is service industry work. I mean, I am saying I am a dishwasher at the moment, so don't take this the wrong way, but as far as what it means to be an artist or work in the arts versus what it means to wash dishes or wait tables, I mean, they are kind of the same thing. In America, I mean. The pay is shit, everyone thinks you are a loser and should grow up and get a real job. But then somebody throws soup on the glass covering of a Van Gogh painting and suddenly the Queen and all of her subjects are ripping their pearls off. I mean, who cleans that soup up? I mean, Van Gogh was a loser. According to these same fuckers. He didn't have a job. He got drunk all day on absinthe and begged his brother for money. I mean, my point is, I guess my only point is, if I was to wash dishes down at the Apollo Diner in Downtown Brooklyn, making, I don't know, twelve bucks an hour, nobody would give two shits, but if I set up a display at the Museum of Modern Art that was some person of color washing dishes, and called it art, I would be transcendent. Ho-boy! Wouldn't that be a Social Statement of the year! I would get a Cormac MacArthur for that bullshit. And then if someone came around and threw soup on the exhibit, as a way to bring attention to man-made climate change? That would be a taking it too far. I mean, maybe I should do both of those things? How do you get in touch with MOMA? info@moma.org?

But the dinner was great! We got barbeque shrimp, this potato bread stuff, some very awful beet thing that Professor Curly loved, that make me want to puke, some fried greens, a steak thing, I mean, PC got a vodka martini, I drank beer, the beer was quite good, I mean, it was a very tasty dinner. Aside from the gross-ass beets. I mean, I don't mean to disparge beets too much. Professor Curly loves them. A lot of people love them. I mean, who am I to just talk shit about beets? It's unfair and kind of not nice. I mean, I know we are having an issue right now about whether you can talk shit about things or not, like there is some very sensitive people that think that saying the N-word somehow means Society is collapsing, so we should be able to bully people to the point of suicide in order to defend the First Amendment, which, I mean, beets are truly the N-word of food. I mean, just joking! I mean, the best way to tell if beets are done cooking is when they bounce off of the potatoes in the trash can. I mean, I shouldn't make light of hate speech and try to connect it to canceling vegetables, or even the idea of bullying in Society, but still, I mean, if you want to eat dirt for dinner, why not just order a pile of mud? Serve it in a bowl. Eat it with a spoon. I mean, really, when it comes down to it, the idea of not being able to talk shit about something versus say, I don't know, just screaming the N-word on a street corner, I mean, I don't like beets. Sorry, I just don't. And I know that Professor Curly loves beets. And it was my birthday, and she wanted me to order everything that I wanted to eat. But so what? We can still have beets on the table. I'm not a monster. It's not like the site of beets makes me shit blood. I mean, my point is; What the fuck? You think you can just go around eating beets and nobody is going to notice? I mean, sitting down in a restaurant is kind of a social contract, right? I mean, the idea that you are basically sitting down and just doing some verbal diahhrea while you are eating those beets: "N-word, N-word, yum, these beets are so N-word! Yum! Yum!" I mean, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! First Amendment be damned!

I mean, we walked home in the rain. Or the end of a rain storm. The streets were wet and shining. The light bouncing off the pavement like the beginning of a migraine. Pretty at first, but shivering like a sudden violent feedback loop. I mean, we were both kind of drunk. Drunk and full. I bought a four pack of Polish beer at the deli, thinking I wanted to get very drunk. I mean, it was my birthday and all. But by the time we got back, both of us were bonked. I mean, there wasn't even a question of opening another beer. Seven hours of driving, a day of intense editing, then a very heavy and racist dinner, I mean, we went straight to bed. I mean, we were in bed by ten thirty. Asleep by ten thirty-five. I mean, yes, yes the last few hours of the day went by fast. Eating dinner was quick. In the grand scheme of things, as the bridesmaids say. I mean, relatively speaking. The best part of the day went by quickly. Not because we, meaning Professor Curly and I, had experienced more time in our lives, but because those couple hours, the good hours, the hours when we weren't working, or stuck in traffic, or driving at full speed waiting to be stuck in traffic, or the few brutal seconds I spent eating racist beets, I mean, how time is relative, or why time is relative, I mean, it's true that time is tedious when shit is boring. And it sucks when you are stuck in traffic, or waiting for your sweet-ass curly-red-wired tail to get done with things, when you just want to pound her voluptuous mounds from the dank-side, or the Cotton Candy Express, as the kids call it, I mean, there are times when waiting takes too long, but then, in the interim, when you are sitting across the dinner table from your love, while she is chomping on racist beets, when time just slides by, like some mobius rat, gnawing at your Garbage Room door, I mean, you just want to get your special lady off and blow a fat load into the ether and hit the god-damned sack. Whether it is your birthday or not. And time be damned.

I mean, we were sleeping by ten thirty. For probably the first time in twenty eight years I wasn't so drunk, birthday-wise, that I would wake up tomorrow regretting every choice I had made this evening. I mean, if that isn't maturity, I don't know what is.

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