Five

 

Five

 

     This morning while I was sitting at the bus stop between two rough looking guys, I noticed

 that the mustard message I mentioned earlier was starting to flake and peel. The guy on my right

 was an old Yellow man. He wore leather loafers that were almost completely worn out and

 brown fast food looking dirty polyester slacks. Both his eyes were badly swollen. Hopefully, he

 was on his way to the doctor. The guy on my left was White, bearded, and his mouth was sunk

 in like he was missing a lot of teeth. His hair was long and greasy. He was wearing sneakers that

 originally were white but were now soiled. He wore no socks and dirty blue jeans. He carried a

 wooden cane that was splintered at the handle, so he had a rubber band to keep it together.

 When the bus came, I saw him get up and move okay. He really didn’t need the cane to walk. I

 guess he had it for protection.

     I’m going to stary carrying a chainsaw and say I’m a lumberjack.

     The thing these guys and I had in common were the jackets we were wearing. We all had on

 brown jackets. The kind you wear casually with big pockets that button on the front. The main

 differences in the jackets were each one’s degree of dirtiness, but for the most part, the style was

 the same. I wish I had a picture of the three of us sitting side by side at the bus stop.

#

     I’m in the lunchroom now at my job. It’s after work and I don’t want to go right home

 because my roommate is there. She took the day off and I really don’t want to talk to anyone.

 She’s nice enough, it’s just that I like to be by myself after work. I don’t think having a

 roommate is natural. If you look in The Bible, I bet there isn’t anyone who were roommates.

 Sharing a place with a family member is one thing, but there is just something odd about living

 with someone you aren’t related to because there will always be some kind of dynamic that will

 develop. With my roommate and me it’s a brother and sister thing.

     I decide to go to this theatre by my work that shows month old movies.  I have about an hour

 to kill, and I want to wait for the getting off the job people traffic to thin out before heading

 home. I give the pretty Yellow girl working the box office six times what the movie I’m going

 to see is worth and step inside.

     The interior is dreary. The carpeting is ugly. Its orange patterned and it covers the entire

 upstairs and downstairs. The Black man who takes my ticket tells me the bathrooms are

 downstairs and my movie is upstairs. I go up, pass the video games and unattended snack bar,

 noting that there are candies on display. I don’t think the snack bar is supposed to be self serve. I

 leave it alone and go inside the theatre. There are credits rolling and I’m thinking maybe I

 misunderstood the Black man who took my ticket because there are about ten minutes to go

 before my movie starts. I go back downstairs, but the ticket man is gone. I ask the older Yellow

 man working as a security guard where my movie is and he assures me that it’s upstairs. I thank

 him and walk up the escalator that isn’t working, deciding that it might be bad luck to walk on

 too much orange, past the non-self-serving unattended snack bar, and into the theatre that will be

 showing my movie.

     Inside there are other people, only I think they have more time to kill. They look like they

 have paid the before five o’clock amount to get in. In fact, I would guess that a few of them

 have been here since the first show and will be staying until the last.

     I sit down in the middle chair of the last row in front of the wall where the projector is. There

 is a metal railing in front of me and I am just barely able to see over it. I move to the left rear

 section and sit in the middle seat of the last row.

     These seats are easily the most uncomfortable movie theatre seats I have ever sat in. They

 have some kind of orange padding; but they are so smashed down from accommodating

 peoples’ behinds that they might as well be cinder blocks. They have wooden arm rests. The one

 on my right side is loose. The backs are also wooden and the back to my left has some gang

 words written in permanent magic marker. If any of you have tried to read gang writing you’ve

 probably come to realize that you can’t unless I guess you are actually in a gang. Gang writing

 looks like an ancient alphabet to me, or some kind of hieroglyphics. I wonder if each gang has

 their own written language. I’ll grab a tagger the next time I see one autographing the bus roof

 and ask him.

     There are three other people in my section besides myself and they are all Black. There is a

 man and woman who appear to be on a date and a young man wearing a puffy down filled

 jacket. He is wearing a baseball cap with the brim extending over his left ear.

     The movie is about vampires, and it is pretty stupid. Of course, the vampires are way cooler

 than the heroes that are trying to kill them. It wouldn’t be too bad being a vampire. I mean, at

 least you’d get to live forever. The only thing is it might be kind of hard to get used to drinking

 blood.

#

     Eternity

     Dawnless Hell

     Earths Core

     666

     This is written in magic maker on the piece of plywood that is serving as one of the windows

 to the lobby level entrance of the building where I work. If I didn’t know better, I would

 consider it a bad sign, but I actually like my job.

     I’ve worked at a lot of different places since I got here. My first job was an inside sales job. I

 can’t remember if I actually thought that job was some kind of new start. I probably did. Every

 new thing I find myself falling into I think is the beginning of something great. But it usually

 only turns out to be a stopover. A weird rest area while things keep shifting and I end up

 someplace that really does have potential.

     The main thing I noticed on the way to my first job here was the lack of trees. There are some

 trees, but it is obvious that the city was here first, and they just added them later by

 jackhammering holes in the sidewalk and putting them in. My job was to data entry product

 orders into the computer system and listen to the salesmen on the phone so I could learn how to

 sell. The salesmen where all White, in fact everybody at this place was White. The salesmen

 were musicians. This was their day job. One guy played keyboards in a swing-type band. His

 band would sometimes give performances in convalescence homes. He said the audience didn’t

 applaud they just shook their IV stands. Another guy was a drummer who recorded and arranged

 songs at home using the computer music software we sold. He was nice enough. He was a tall

 skinny guy with glasses and curly hair. The last sales guy was a Loner. He had long blonde hair

 and a beard. He seemed older than he was. He also seemed very afraid. I see him at concerts all

 the time. I remember his name, but I never say hello because I know he wouldn’t remember me.

     The office manager was this psychotic witch with stringy black hair who played bass in some

 small-time outfit I never heard of. She would verbally abuse me. At first it seemed unreal. No

 one had ever spoken to me the way she did. She was apparently unhappy with my job progress

 even though me and my two bosses seemed to think I was doing fine. I quit very suddenly

 without giving notice.

#

     I have too many numbers assigned to me and sometimes it’s confusing having them all. It

 takes thirteen numbers to access my voicemail at work, nine for my social security number, six

 for my date of birth, and four for my personal identification number that allows me to get cash

 from an ATM. Even though my PIN is the least number of digits, it’s the one I have the hardest

 time remembering because I just kept the one they assigned me. I was at the grocery store using

 my debit card to try to pay and I could not remember my PIN. I didn’t have enough cash on

 hand or my credit card. The woman working the register was very nice. I think she could see

 that I was genuinely confused and allowed me to try again three times before I finally got it

 right. The other people in line were also nice. They didn’t seem frustrated or impatient. It was so

 strange. Not at all like you’d expect.

#

     Sometimes I feel like I’m actually glowing. Seriously. It’s like I’m one of those neon light

 sticks that they sell at nightclubs and concerts that you crack, shake, and then they glow. I have

 this uncomfortable awareness of myself that is almost maddening. And other people appear very

 intense to me. Almost exaggerated. I hope this goes away. I don’t ever remember feeling this

 way. Not even when I was single before.