Fuel

Originally Posted Sunday, November 10, 2013

I did it!  I finally made it out to buy some of the many sartorial items I need--underwear, jeans, khakis, socks, shirts.  Not quite shoes.  I didn't make it where I intended to go.  Rather, I went to a popular mall.  To make a statement, I entered through the Barnes and Nobles bookstore.  I had no sooner gotten inside when I heard someone call out my name.  Turning, I saw a good friend approaching me.  I felt a sudden shock of embarrassment.  What was I doing at a mall?  I felt a pervert, somehow, like I had been caught at the penis enlargement aisle of an adult store. 

"Hey," I answered cautiously.  He had a story to tell and my back was killing me, so I suggested we get a coffee and a cafe table.  And oh, the story was a good one.  He had met a woman.  She was a knockout.  He was crazy about her, he said.  They got along well.  She was getting divorced to a man she'd been married to for twenty years.  She hadn't been intimate with him for many of those.  She and my friend texted like teenagers for hours a night.  They met for a drink.  The list of things that went wrong were hilarious--if you were not him.  He told her all about what he thought on every topic he should never have brought up: politics, abortion, marriage, women's rights.  I was having a good time. 

"She didn't want to talk about you," I said.  "Haven't you ever heard about the strong, silent type?"

"I know, I know.  I don't know what was wrong with me.  It was like I was on a roll at the craps table." 

The young woman sitting at the table next to us had her earbuds in.  Her phone kept making a sound like a buoy bell in the fog.  At night.  I know, but that's what it reminded me of.  I looked over each time it went off wondering where the sound was coming from.  It didn't bother me, I was just curious.  She took out her earbuds and said she was sorry.  She didn't know we could hear it.  It was obvious to me that the girl wanted some attention, but my buddy was too busy talking to some old bum to notice. 

"Hey buddy, can we buy you a cup of coffee?" 

What the fuck, I wondered?  They were talking about god and Italy and I don't know what.  It fascinated him more than the girl. 

"What's wrong with you, man?  That girl wanted to talk?"

"Oh, no.  She was an alien.  Didn't you look at her?  Something was wrong with her." 

"She probably would have enjoyed your opinions on things.  You could have chatted her up about abortion and Obamacare." 

He was right, of course.  The mall was full of them.  We were with The General Population in one of their gathering places.  They came for fun.  They were pumped, their bodies shaking with anticipation, their general movements punctuated by sharp jerks and hiccups, their speech a rapid fire ratatatattattat.  The old guy wouldn't shut up.  We were on our way out, but my buddy stopped at the table.  He just couldn't get enough of the wisdom, it seemed.  I heard him tell the guy that I was a writer. 

"Who?  Superman?  What's he write?" 

"He's kidding you," I said.  "I can't write a check." 

It had been a while since someone had called me anything like that.  People are funny. 

We looked at the new fiction for a minute, then my buddy said he had to go.  He'd come over for a scotch on the patio at sunset, he said.  Maybe we'd go out and have a cocktail on the Boulevard. 

And so I got to my shopping.  All that noise, all that banter. . . it seemed unending.  There were girls in tight short shorts wearing cheap high heels and little tops, seams hugging chubby thighs, hands holding greaser boyfriends walking uncertain and tough in baggy jeans and long, untucked shirts.  This was the getting place.  You could buy costumes of every kind.  Girls in uniforms walked around giving away free samples at the food court.  Crowds of people nervously surrounded them eager to get their free thimble-sized cup of frozen yogurt or a tiny square of fudge, tasting the sacrament and then nodding their heads in the affirmative, but that was all.  They walked on without buying anything, hoping for some other offering.  Free samples--they didn't get that at home.  I walked on through the baby strollers and the screaming kids and the young moms with wisps of blow-dried hair and figures that were beginning to go, the ravages of the American Dream, the consequences of a consumer society.  These, I knew, were the people, my people.  Aliens and relatives.  Capital.  Fuel for the machine.  

That night on the Boulevard after a couple scotches at home, my buddy and I looked around the expensive bar.  The people were well dressed and tony, the bodies YMCA fit, faces Botoxed and sanded, hair expensively quaffed.  I was still in the clothes I'd worn to the mall.  There was nothing for us there, not that night, and in a little while, we were done. 

This morning I woke thinking about what I had seen the afternoon before.  Jesus, I wanted to photograph that.  The mall.  Mall people.  There was such a randomness to it yet a crazy sameness, too.  All those stores I can't remember, Forever 21 and. . . and. . . what was it?  It had been around forever.  Would I get kicked out if I tried it. . . arrested?  How could I do it?  Maybe a little digital camera no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, something with a fixed 35mm lens and a quick autofocus.  Jesus they were something, I kept thinking.  I will have to go back and look again.  I will have to figure this thing out.  I will talk to them.  I will learn the lingo.  They are God's People.   I just have to figure out how not to get arrested or beaten. 

Thusly my mind races on a beautiful Sunday morning.  It is quiet here.  Soon there will be jazz.  I will take a walk and try to run.  Mostly, though, I just want to go back to the mall.