Scs, Mts, Hrs, Days

"I'm sorry I'm late. I was waiting for a phone call." I sit down on the bench next to the dark man and flip open my phone again to check it for emphasis. Only a handful of life’s moments feel anywhere near as good as getting a phone call from a girl. The satisfaction of being wanted.

We sat on the Laguna park bench and since conversation had not taken off by my entrance I thought of all the various runways I could back up and try again from. As a writer I'm full of lines. People are fun to watch. Whores. The ugly art student sketching outside the bistro. The old man dressed up like a lady. The beautiful young mother with a ring the size of my fist. I had that dream again of the pretty girl fingering herself in the surf with two fingers and just as she is about to come a wave crashes over her and carries her away. All the little fishies in the water smile and I wake up sad and dissapointed. I have decided that the fish represent my ex girlfriends and the waves represents something else.

We sat on the Laguna park bench and waited to die.
Apart from telling stories, I enjoy this activity more than most. Waiting to die.
My friend Craig's mother died of cancer when we were boys and before the wake he and his older sister blew up balloons in the dim creepy room that was meant to make sad people feel comfortable in awkward situations. I sat there and popped the balloons. Until an adult told me to stop and I hated him. Everybody around you all the time is just doing things to make themselves happy, and it makes me happy to make happy people unhappy.

I've been happy. Waiting for you with flowers. I could imagine the look on your face. That's when I was really happiest. When I was imagining the idealized version of events unfolding. Like how I'm saddest when I'm thinking of what will make me sad. It's never as bad as I expect. Real experiences never compare to the experiences we can formulate in our minds.

Evolution has equipped us well in this way.
Remember on that forlorn strand of glint-sand beach on the other side of the world? The soothing effects of my mantra were given new provenance by long breezy-strewn legs exploding into view like fireworks as I lay belly flung on the ground getting fucked by eternity. Sparks. Breasts. Ass.

Everything good is always walking away.

"Well what do you think?" I asked her.
"Geek. It's obtuse. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't call me a geek."
"You sound like some really depressed person. Do you have any music?"

Memory percolating just below the skin, just inside my ear at night. The stars fell all around. The stars were a great river overhead and all the little fishies fell. Asleep old men still wake up sad confused and sadly horny. Dear God, stop me if you've heard that one.
"Ha! You're so emo."

Remember how Craig's mothers ashes went everywhere? I would have laughed but no one else did. Later we all ate egg salad sandwiches and I thought of asking his older sister out to a movie sometime because even though we were young I was starting to be old enough to realize that she was kind of hot, in her tight black church clothes, carefully applied mascara dripping down her freckled cheeks.

We sat on a Laguna park bench and I searched my backpack for clues. TIME magazine in my backpack. The phone number of a gay man. In my backpack. The memories of days spent watching sunlight draw lines across the wall and nights spent crying on the floor of the shower. In my backpack. Light moves in particles and waves. The waves represent my sudden implacable desire to move to South America and start a new life selling homemade leathergoods with a woman named Phillipa every time I open up the microwave in the break room and take a deep breath. Exhale. It goes away.

As a writer I'm full of lines. Like, "how about I be the needle and you be the thread and we'll weave ourselves a life together." You left the flowers in the bathroom trash next to that lace bra we I accidentally ripped in a moment of passion I hope you've I've been tripping over for two weeks now.

New Music, in my backpack. See? I have music. The music, the music, and you. Things I can't get out of my head backpack. If I was enough you wouldn't need the music. If you didn't have the music I wouldn't be. It's contradictory and I'm not happy resolving any of it any my head because the pleasure of frustration is what makes life worth living.

Waiting to die.

At work today I walked out of a meeting themed "Everybody Wants a Sale". I don't want a sale. Looking around the meeting room all the bright faces glowing in the waves of light off the overhead projector. Whores.
Often I feel like I need to summon up mountains of strength just to get up in the morning, like the sky will come crashing down on me unless I am ready, but this morning wasn't like that. I didn't care if she wasn't going to call.
Some ducks from the bay flew overhead and I suddenly wonder what this office complex must look like as seen from the sky. Boxes. Like when we were little kids and we played in the cardboard and made our refrigerator box into a house, and a spaceship, and a hideaway, and when we fit too many of us in there one of the sides crushed in and then it was just a flat brown pad in the middle of the floor that we fought for the right to sit on.

We had an uncle who used to visit once a year and I can remember thinking he was such a wise and happy person. Now I can see that he was only so talkative because he was lonely, and he visited each year because his life grew steadily more isolated and desperate.

We sat on the Laguna park bench waiting for each other to say something and I made a list in my head of all the people I've known who have died. Craig's Mom. My Uncle. The Woman of my dreams. Craig. Everyone I know at work. The whores all around us.
You.

Me.

"See, there's this girl," I say and the dark man turns and looks up at me. He has the stature of a fire hydrant. The complexion of fine adobe. "There's this girl and for her I am trying to be perfect. Regretting innumerable choices I never made because I lacked conviction and rode the waves." A fly buzzes onto my arm and I am pulled back into reality as if the fly is repeatedly intoning "you're not the first person here. You're not the only person here. You're nobody. Just like everybody else."

As a writer I'm full of characters and they are not real. But she asked for more stories, more characters, and that became our reality. Now I don't tell them anymore. "You can't miss them," I told her, "they don't exist." But by that token neither do I. My make-believe characters gave shape and dimension to her day. And when she doesn't call I don't tell them. That's all I did. Tell stories. And now I no longer exist. I'm just a shell. Waiting to die.

Because it's not my story anymore its her story and I'm merely a player in it.

Because being that character is still better than not being any character at all.

We do better when we have roles to play. Evolution has equipped us well in this way.

The dark man sees his wife and young son and greets them in Spanish from across Laguna park. He hasn't understood a word of it. Walking away, he lifts the son and hugs the wife and they walk off together and I am alone.

Now I realize I should have been looking for someone else. Someone waiting for me.
Unless I am early. Maybe I will wait just a while longer.
I'll count to twenty in my head and then I'll go.
Or maybe I'll count to twenty twenty times.
Maybe I'll count the seconds and the minutes, the hours and the days.
And when you appear I'll say "TWO, ONE!!" as if you came just at the right moment and we couldn't have planned it better if we'd tried.

When the fly goes away all will be silent and I will start counting then. All alone
To twenty.
Any second now.
Okay he's gone.