Hey, Buddy, Your Hair Is Touching Mine

(It Was A Girl)

I worked all day and then worked tonight and did nothing I wanted to do all day.  Driving home, I stopped at Wendys and got a chicken sandwich and a coke which I wolfed down in hazardous traffic.  I settled back into the seat then, and thought of something that I may have told you before but I can't remember so if I have, I will tell you again.

I went to the movies with my girlfriend of the time.  We got there early and sat in good seats, but as things go, the theater began to fill up just before the movie began and a big man sat in the seat right next to me.  He put his arm up on the arm rest taking up, as I saw it, more than his share of the four inches allotted to us.  As I say, he was big, but I am clever, and I had a plan.

My girl and I were sharing a popcorn, so I would reach over with my right hand to get some out of the box, put it in my mouth, then return my arm to what was left of the armrest.  And each time I did, I would just touch the hair on his arm with the hair on mine.  It was a really weird sensation, but I knew what I was doing and he didn't.  While my arm was sitting there, I would move it mere millimeters this way and that.  I knew it had to be creeping him out, but what could he say?

"Hey, buddy, your hair is touching mine.  If you don't stop it, I'm going to kick your ass."

Nope.  I was sure he couldn't say that.  I have to give it to him, though.  He persevered longer than I would have thought.  At one point, I feared he might even be enjoying it.  But I was right, and in a short while, I had the armrest all to myself.

I began to giggle on the ride home remembering this.  Why I did, I don't know.  But I don't want to lose it, so I will write it here for you tonight, the most fun I had in a long slave day.

I shouldn't have taken this night job, but I want to spend money on photography and have nothing coming in, so. . . it is what I need to do to continue.  Sometimes it seems I might be on the verge of selling things, but it always falls through and I fall flat.  It is a pipe dream, of course, especially when I haven't the time to pursue selling them nor my particular talents.  So extra hours and extra work are the only way to continue, even if it prevents me from making pictures.  Joseph Heller for Christ's sake.  Karl Marx.

"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work.  He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours.  The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work" (William Faulkner, Paris Review Interview, 1958).