I said hi to a hirsute fella on the train. I was taking a chance. I’m small and scrawny, bespectacled, dressed in anything but H&M and such. The urge for salutation raged within me. It had been for quite some time, these early mornings. I wanted connection? Maybe. I think I just wanted to stand close enough to someone I didn’t know and discover something significant about them. Something that resonated.
He just nodded and looked away. I had to look away too. To persist would have ended up badly, or so I thought.
I can of course get connection or something like with people I already know. Co-workers, my boyfriend, etc. But they are so already onto me. They know my agenda.

Or at least they think they do.  The stranger has no idea. And as stranger is right back at that them, I am looking for that moment. Call it the moment when the Pop Tart springs up from the toaster, beautifully and warm. Or the moment you’ve run a race and realize you’ve won, after finding out it was a race only at the very last minute.

Strangers are ripe with possibility. Especially the hairy ones.

Like offering help and shit?
Yeah, be useful.
I’m already useful at work. I do things. Complete tasks, smile at people, assist, assist,assist, so much that my elbows hurt.
Elbows, that’s the least of it.
Well, no. When elbows hurt that’s the most of it. And I am being so useful (You aren’t).  Seems to me your spending way too much time tellng me to be useful.
Shut up.
You shut up.
Be useful!
That is my useful, “Shut up!”

the title
the women
the money
everything

It started off as a joke. Bind a book, give it a title. Maybe even a foreward but blank pages follow. The audacity!

“I dont’ get it,” said friends. You don’t either. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Were you drunk?” They asked. “Bored?”

“Nope. Nope.”

“Then what then?” They press. “You know, you’re always pulling this shit and you really need to stop.

You laugh nervously.

“Seriously,” They add.

Bagels clap back.

The donuts raised a ruckus. It wasn’t so bad, this feud of foods (Ha, “foods,” as this reporter quotes in the milieu of it all)

Sweets on social media have caused problems recently as a result of the new findings on junk food now being banned across Britain. The U.S. is now feeling the ripples. Kids are on high alert for cakes and cookies. Dancing sugar plums, this season at least, are being replaced by twerking pastries. This may be the first time when a child is not permitted sugar for an indefinite period of time. What will they do?

Some kids say, “I won’t stand for it and will likely drop to the floor kicking and screaming.”

Toddlers are hoarding the sweets they already have in their posession–knowing the preservatives in them will usurp the value of the the home-baked goods. At least on the Black Market. .

Other more serious children are looking at long-term, crafting robots through a series of underground networks, machines that will usurp yeast fermentation, leavening of flour, various caramelizations.

Stay tuned as this is story is just now breaking…

…bread

I came to know that lifting weights would provide spurts of diversion meant to exhaust me just enough to convince me I’d made progress.
Pushing, straining, sweating–hoarding pain, anguish, means something. Or it should, shouldn’t it?
I’m paying my dues daily. My dumbells have attained my attention. I believe in them.  They want to be promoted.
To want me to be adorned prestige and lust.
Isn’t that what the muscles on my body are? Applause, at least. Nods of approval?

Prompted by the sound of the alarm clock going off, I stared at its facts, undaunated and naked. It was 3 a.m.

Only 3 a.m. That’s all. As if that fact were useful, as if any good ever came from 3 a.m. Well sometimes good things can occur at 3 a.m.

I know I wanted to belive that. So I sat up, turned off the alarm and waited as I had so many of those middles-ofs-thes-nights befores.

“It’s okay,” A voice said. “I’m here.”

“Who said that?”

“You did, stupid.”

“No, I didn’t and don’t call me stupid.”

“Charlie, who are you talking to?”

My girlfriend sat up next to me.

“You know the basics,” I said. “Why can’t I?”

“What basics?  What the fuck are you talking about?” She was usually quite calm–downright aloof during these moments.Which came with more regularity each passing week, month, etc.

“The basic, you know,” I said, throwing off the covers. “The decorum of life, a mode of responding to those  things  that go bump in the night. You always sleep like a baby.

“No I don’t,” she said. “Bumps, basics, babies?”

Is a client. A series of revolving-door of people sleeved with crises, and askings.

You are there to serve. That’s what you’ve been told.

It’s like that with everything. Everything comes to you, constantly, by way of moontides and meanderings. There’s no need to put yourself out there. It’s all coming to you.

They’ll knock, barge in. When they show up, just stare at them and tell them to watch some Netflix with you.

The donuts you choose from the bakery are always from the top shelf; the man behind the counter, in the hairnet, obliges. You thank him. His slight grimace says None of this was worth it. Donuts are a dime a dozen, a flash in the pan, an orgasm. Too quick, not worth it.  Like a brief kiss.  The donut lands on the lips, goes threm them, into the mouth and beyond. The worst kiss ever.
You are left wanting more.

I can’t. A lot of people would be hurt.
Two. Only two people would be hurt.
But it’s never like that. It would be more. Because the two people you hurt would tell their people and they would be hurt.
Hurt spreads like wildfire. Best not to start one. Not even a spark.
Especially the spark.