doldrums

nothing to do. while the white world outside lays still. tap fingers, move toes. crack neck and cough and swallow. drink orange gatorade. smoke a bowl of fine grape diesel. tick off seconds on the clock. what's next what's next. if you don't think too hard about it it'll happen. if you don't think. a watched pot does not boil. boils slower. seems to. anyway.

i get asked by this girl i work with. tell me a story, she says, and she doesn't want me to tell her a story like Tom Nero. she wants a funny, sick, perverse or entertaining tale. she wants a blockbuster and i want to tell arthouse. she asks me what i'm reading and i tell her it's Ulysses. she has never heard of it. i show her some and she shakes her head. her forehead abruptly furrows downward. she doesn't know. doesn't much care.

so there too. standing. wasting time while the people chew contentedly. chew and drink. masticate and gorge. margarita, glass of water. rocks - no salt. most people don't say rocks, but this one did. says it so quick it's like a little switchblade coming out of her mouth. her companion - middle-aged, barn coat, wisping white hair and aviator-frame bifocals - purses his jowls (or tries) and orders a non-alcoholic beer. she is agitated. fingers and toes, tapping. biting around her nails, the skin, tugging with first her dextral incisor, then the sinistral. her eyes lock on the old man. he is full of rheum and coughs like a bellows. i have the image of Stephen Dedalus and his room full of students in my head. discussing the Pyrrhic victory. it is not easy to read James Joyce in that room. i try anyway. once i even lay it out so that someone can see. this is vain and causes me to turn gray on the inside, just slightly, and later out of guilt tuck it away. ashamed.

a cigarette, every hour. more standing, close-mouthed, but at least i'm outside. i like the cold. relish it. the gradual numbing of my ungloved fingers, the sting of an impish wind lashing at my bare face. some people walk eyes down, neck bent, hooded and gloved. older folk do. walk slowly over grayed-out rises of ice and tamped-down snow, clutching to one another as though they were enduring their own private earthquake.

she laughs at me and tries to rile me up while we are in that stasis of customers. we lean against the station and keep our eyes on our tables. she tries to tickle me but i'm not ticklish. she whispers, low, menacing, in my ear, "fuck you." but i can't help it and i laugh. she could mean it. she could hate my guts. but it's unlikely. i drift into an alternate world where what i fear is real and unravel the consequences and ramifications. it is entertaining for a second but ultimately i abandon it.

they say only boring people get bored. i have heard that humans are the only thing to experience boredom. some people glamourize it and give it a stage name: "ennui," or "accidie." which makes it sound less banal, i think. a tinge of Keats in the sound. a fragile sigh.

it is a slow night and the bartender's been playing cannonball adderley for a while now. it's pleasant. there is a dull uproar which swells and falls like waves from the intoxicated crowd at the bar. they are all friends, or at least, they seem to be. the roar and thud and smash of the kitchen, a tumult of frenzied activity. i imagine it as a pit of wild dogs, all howling and snarling and raging against their short chains. i know that this is hyperbolic but i enjoy the image anyway. i am aware of every sound. when the hush of closing sweeps the floor, we carry out our duties. fill the sauces. called 'marrying' them. replace the napkins, switch the menus. i am tired and so is she. we can - both of us - taste the alcohol sparking in our mouths, feel it white-hot in our skulls.

we will turn the lights up and do one last sweep. sit in a makeshift counting-house, multiply and subtract and divide.

end up drunk and high and white-faced in the yellow wash of the desk light. enumerate all the things i could be doing but which i am not. not just in this one night, no. in my whole life. from now to finish. feel like an elastic band and can see one in my mind's eye, collapsing, tautening, collapsing again. then the deluge of exhaustion, tumbling down like Jericho. breath suddenly deeper, as though my body's pneumatics are forcing me to sleep, urging, inveigling. one more cigarette. standing. thinking. the muffled tick of my shitty watch, sharp and martinet-like in the dark. the stars above and their vague intimations. standing in the gray waste of days-old snow and thin, brittle tree-branches. count the bricks on the building in front of me. put the cigarette out. return indoors. sleep. always, at the end, sleep.