a n i m a t i o n . w o r d s & p i c t u r e s . f o r u m
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A True StoryBy: Josh02.06.01 I found myself at the welfare office in the closest "big city" to my hometown with my immigrant friend recently; he was signing up, I existed for moral support. A stately building it was, seeming to have sat there for years just waiting for me, aging and outdating itself. Like it had become a part of the town more so than any of the people who resided inside the town walls at any given moment. Having lost its pride to the unemployed riffraff of everyday nonsense and mind numbing simplicity, to become grizzled and disgruntled. Much like the inhabitants of the city. The room inside to the right at the top of the stairs was filled with the stank of aged wood and redneck propaganda, small children playing with over-sized lego blocks while their common denominator parents scrounged themselves into high mobility. I went outside to smoke, not my theater of entertainment or comfort. I stood on the steps of this, ancient majestic building and observed the goings-on of the townsfolk. Many a crusted-over man, bald and unshaven, fat and unkempt, pale and stale, trundled by, or into, the welfare office. Overweight middle-aged women who wore jogging pants and brown, steel-toed work boots, shooting me odd looks, not wearing make-up, and generally being unclean and foul-smelling. It's the smell that sits on your tongue, you gag, why do they walk so close to you? Do they not know what human civility and "cleanliness is next to godliness" means? Ah but that's another story altogether. This is a banner day for the unemployed. Sunday, the lord's day. The money day. Too many people. It is a fucking zoo out here. And carnivores surround me. It happened to be one of the warm winter days where the snow melts half away, and everywhere you look, is just disgusting, brown, sludge. That's what reminds me of winter more than a White Christmas. Everything has that wet sound, everything exists to be wet, cars driving on the slick road, people trudging on the sidewalks, getting their pants soaked, and sloshing up and down the street pretending they have some purpose in life. It's revolting. Even the air is heavy with moisture. It sits in your lungs and stagnates, a choking feeling of helplessness, and coughing, choking, there is no hope, it will not come out. You are poisoned. You are poison. The town is poison and you are an easy mark. I finished my cigarette, observing the tedious, hum-drum, up and down main street life of, well, everybody, glanced up t'wards the door to welfare, and lit another one. I wasn't moving until that immigrant fellow came out and left this horrid place with me. That was my moral support. When claustrophobic tendencies take hold, and all you can do is hold on and pretend the walls aren't squeezing existence out of you, its best to remove yourself from the area that is causing yourself this problem. It is an interesting problem to be afflicted with. More elderly men, smelling of something sinister, passed by me, to enter the den of the freeloader, more came out. All the same. All bald grizzly bears, hairy and old. I chanced upon glancing at myself in the glass doorway when some unknown person exited from it. I generally tell myself that I am what I would deem Punk; I exist to wear safety pins/bondage trousers, clothes with my slogans written on them, I choose what laws to obey under the pretense of social and/or political protest. But no, I exist to be a façade. The image was of cold sober truth in that glass. I grow overweight with time, sloth-like and immobile, and though its blue, and stands straight up, genetics has gotten me young -ALWAYS GET THEM WHEN THEY"RE YOUNG. YOUNG AND STUPID-to begin my hair loss pre-maturely. I sport the general facial hair of a pre-pubescent schoolgirl, but I have not shaven this girl stubble off in days. I am pale. I am this town. I am the poison. I am these men, these women, this disease. I exist to be them, I have been fighting myself. Man's eternal, internal struggle with himself and who his father thinks himself to be. All in a second, as the door closes, and is re-opened. You must choose to ignore these things before they get the better of you. No good can come of introspective, mind-claustrophobia, you have to escape. I lit another cigarette, this was not a good day, and this was a bad day. I saw a young mother with her son hand-in-hand right by the building, and there was hope. The highest teen pregnancy rate in the world just walks by me, and is happy. They are just a number. A statistic, they have no emotion. I wish I were hand-in-hand with them and laughing happy. Just focus on the cigarette and the brain will do the rest. I am having a mental breakdown. A white-haired, stately, elderly man and his wife started up the stairs. Then the man's hand brushed against my crotch! Right against my dick! His head was turned away from me! He broke no stride! He stumbled on no step! Had it been an accident, he would have looked at me! He would have stumbled, stuttered, noticed! What was this pedophilic man doing to me? I sat down! Collected my thoughts! Where was my immigrant? I waited! Staring! It was nothing! The man did not notice! He must be a war amp! No feeling in the hand you understand! The door opened, and I looked up, existing for it to be an immigrant that I knew at least in some vague way. It was the man and his wife. Coming back out. The man looked down at me as he closed the door. AND HE SMILED AT ME! |
