scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

22.10.03

Everett's

The same place, every night of the week. The same cheap neon in the windows, erratically blinking. It's so easy to keep coming back, so the same people, predictable by the hour. Strange that this town services so many tired men. They all buy Miller. Lite, in deference to growing, undesirable bellies. Their wives regret everything, so they leave, hoping to start over somewhere else. And their bellies grow.

And they know what they've come to, and they know where they could have gone. They look at us and are jealous, because we might go on to do the things they couldn't. Maybe their families needed money, or maybe they just never got around to it, or maybe the whole gang decided to stick around after high school. But they know they used to have potential, before the frito lay work and the stint doing security and all the lotto tickets. They even know we call it the tax on stupid people. If they ever talked to each other, they would know everything.

We're lucky, that way. They don't coordinate like we do, they don't realize their power. If they ever did, we'd be cooked like so many pancakes. Flat and sticky. We see them doing construction, walking dogs, fixing their blue pickups. One of them followed me home the other day. A Ford, with rust along the bottom of the doors. It pulled into all the driveways I had to walk past, so I had to walk around the bumper. I suppose all that would pass for a compliment around here. I hid for four hours. Imagine what they could do if they ever spoke to each other.

They look at us when we buy our liquor. One of them sits in the rusty sedan, watching, while the other one goes in. They play music they will never see live, because the groups will never come here, and they will never leave. Sometimes they plan on going somewhere, even just for a day or two, but then something comes up and it's all cancelled and they are here for another eternity, until they try to escape again.

And you know it's the worst when they get to us. When one of us becomes one of them. I met one yesterday, at the wall. She graduated eight years ago, and she works at frito lay now. She hasn't got any student loans, she says, but it's real hard to get anywhere in the world. She was giving beer to the first years. MGD, because she's too young to have a belly. She talks about moving to madison, but "it's not the kind of place you live," she says. "it's nice to visit, but it's full of college students, and I've graduated, so..." I wonder what she majored in.

She looks as tired as the men. She was obviously cute and snappy once, full of energy, but her eyes are flat. What is it that makes them so tired, I wonder, and does it extend across the midwest and across the country and across the world. It could be such a problem if so many adults were so tired. They say Americans get less sleep than ever before, with electricity to extend the day and commodities to fill it. This is one of the times when that has to be believed.

This is the destiny to be avoided at all costs: the permanence of sloth. It's the sin of the seven that'll kill you the slowest. Even pride causes ulcers. At least if you do it right. But sloth eats away at you, and you never notice until it's too late, when you look at the young people who might be going where you should have been years ago. Then you realize you've been wasted. That of all the fantastic things you could have spent your life doing, you're in a town that isn't even a nice place to raise children. That you've become one of the salivating, consumerist masses you used to pity.

In a meagre effort to throw off the laws of inertia, imported, swanky-looking beers flavored with cranberry or cinnamon become the drink of the moment, but these things never last very long. Then it's back to your basic hops and American piss-water lite.

I can't let this happen to me. I have to avoid this, and I have to do it consciously, continuously, and without panicking. Remember that Karaoke Night doesn't count as doing something constructive. Keep the image of the twelve-year-old prodigy, more succesful than anyone else in his country.

Labels: writing

scrawled @ 16:40