There Is What You Want, And There Is. . .

Originally Posted Saturday, February 8, 2014

I didn't go to work yesterday.  I thought to get some things done.  I didn't get so much done, though.  And it was comfortable being lazy in the house on a cold and rainy day, and I was ready for the slowness of it all.  But what you want and what you get. . . .  The maids showed up much earlier than usual, so forced from my house, I got dressed and went to the gym.  I didn't want to, but what else was I going to do?  When I finished, I ran some errands and bought things that I needed at the house.  I filled the car up with gas.  And still, when I got home, the maids were still there.  I went to the studio and did a few things, and finally, later than I wished, I was able to go home.  I showered and then I went with my mother to Costco.  She was putting tires on my Xterra as a present.  We were both shocked, I think, for even with the coupon and the discount price the tires and labor were almost $900.  I felt terrible and didn't want to let her buy them.  Her face never showed it, but I knew she was a bit in shock.  I felt the heaviness of it all.  

We went to lunch while the tire men were working.  There was a Chic-fil-A right across the parking lot, and that is where my mother wished to go.  It was the second day in a row that I ate at a Chic-fil-A.  At two thirty in the afternoon, the "restaurant" was packed.  I am amazed at this "America" with which I have become unfamiliar.  Does anybody work?  When we sat down, one of the female employees came over and said hello to my mother and grabbed her up in a big hug.  I went kind of through the looking glass.  They seemed to know one another, and my mother introduced me to a rather attractive woman from Venezuela.  And when that was over and done, I sat looking at my mother and wondering.  My mother explained.  It turns out that she and some others meet there for coffee on Tuesday mornings.  I don't know why, but I felt disoriented.  My mother has this life I never dreamed of where she is known in places where employees greet her by name.  It was strange and scary. 

"How much do you think she makes here?" I asked my mother.  We talked about that for awhile.  I had been poor and poor-ish most of my life, but now that I make a living wage, I think about the people who have had to live the way I did, but with children.  How do they make it?   How do they do it?  They eat at places like Chic-fil-A, of course where the entire lunch for two came to ten dollars.  They shop at Costco and buy the sort of clothing I grew up with with brand names no one has ever heard of before.  I looked at the young and sort of pretty girls there who were like the ones I grew up with, the cheap baby carriages and the hand me down clothes that someone else's baby had worn not long ago.  They who work at fast food restaurants or Costcos like my family, and I remembered all the things I have tried to forget remembering, the times when I would buy used tires for my car instead of new Michelins, my weird heart breaking.  Me and my mother. 

I didn't start the day with any energy, and this had drained me dry and a couple hours later, I drove home on my expensive tires feeling terrible for having them.  I could do nothing else, I thought.  I went to my bed to take a nap. 

A woman I know wanted to stop by that night, but I texted her and said that all I wanted to do was eat noodles and watch a movie.  I went shopping for books on my computer.  I was looking for something.  I remembered, two books that I had read years ago, books that I thought very good, and I looked for other books by those authors.  Jerry Stahl's "I, Fatty" had been a wonderful read, so I looked him up and saw books that looked good including his memoir, "Permanent Midnight."  It had been made into a movie in 2005, I saw, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.  It was available on iTunes for $3.99.  That was what I would watch, I thought, since the book was unavailable in an electronic form.  But his newest book which hadn't even been released yet was available on Kindle, "Bad Sex on Speed."  I downloaded it.  I was also looking for books by Frederick Busch whose "Night Inspector" had knocked me out last century.  I read reviews.  He is one of "those" writers, one who is considered "a writer's writer," which is what was always said of James Salter.  The New York Times had written a brief obituary when he died (link), and I thought that I would read some of the ones mentioned there, too.  As I had been wanting to do for a while, now, I downloaded "The Flamethrowers" while I was at it.  The Kindle version was cheaper. 

Just then the kitchen door opened.  My guest had arrived.  I opened some wine and we sat down to chat.  I had not seen her for some time, so there was the usual catching up.  My life has become pretty predictable, so I did most of the listening. 

It was just after dark, and in a bit some headlight's showed in the driveway.  It was another of my friend's who was now the woman's friend coming by to sit and drink and chat.  My night was going sideways.  What can you do.  We talked until it had passed time to eat, and then the night got confusing.  We went to a new restaurant that is of the sort you find everywhere in Manhattan and now finally in my own home town, a small place with a few tables serving a brand new menu every night, stark and severely hip.  The food was good and pricey.  While we ate and drank, the two of them were caught up in some conversation I had no interest in at all.  I checked out and sat thinking trying to remember to grin and nod every so often in faux-interest. 

After dinner we walked to the cars.  It was my understanding that the two of them were going for a drink, but again things ran into the ditch.  I couldn't understand it, really.  What had happened.  It was only ten thirty, early for them, late for me.  Perhaps something was said when I wasn't paying attention. I would have to entertain a bit more, it seemed.  There would be no watching a movie on my couch in pajamas.  My day off had somehow skid off the tracks. 

This morning, I woke to the same sort of day as the one before, drizzly, cool, gloomy.  I was prepared to try once again to have the day I desired, but at 7:15 a truck pulled up.  It was the house repairman.  He had come to do me a favor.  He had gotten my Jeep running.  Now he was fixing a tire.  "Shit, fuck, goddamn," I spat knowing my day was starting off all wrong again.  All wrong?  What sort of person am I?  To have someone doing me a favor and to think it all wrong?  Getting free tires and having good friends stop by and getting repairs for nothing. . . and I whining to myself the entire time. . . how horrible a person must I be? 

There is something broken inside of me, I know.  I don't think it is permanent.  I keep telling people I am having my period.  There are alien forces working inside of me, things more powerful than my own self-control.  Good news and bad news get the same reception.  They are traveling down parallel roads.  I am a bitch, a privileged little punk, an ungrateful whiner it seems.  It won't pass today, I already know, but it will pass, I think.  Surely it will. 

Either way, you will be the first to know.