january 10 2010
eight minutes
At the laundromat...
strangers meet, nor polite hellos and protect their underwear from prying eyes. I like to sit in those molded plastic chairs, usually orange or green, watching the strata of society filter in through the glass swinging doors. With each entry or exit a blast of cold winter rushes in only to be extinguished quickly by the heat emanating from the wall of dryers. A large corn rowed black woman pushes her two toddlers around in the baskets on wheels while her four loads spin heavily in their stainless steel basins. A used up stripper with yesterday's makeup and baggy sweatpants primly folds g-strings, garters, and various stage outfits from last week's work. An old man in a rusty denim jacket pulls white shirt after white shirt from his basket, crisply folding them into neat little stacks on the chipped formica table. I don't have anything to do but sit, watch and wait, being ignored in a tiny corner of a small building by the everyday and this is why I have always loved doing laundry.
twelve minutes
Across the street...
from where I used to live was an old house that time forgot. It stood off of the street with an over grown cobbled driveway falling from its front door like a lolling tongue. Pillars stood framing the cement porch where I always imagined a skeletal butler staring down at me with hateful eyes and a silver platter holding nothing but my over indulged imagination. I wanted hideous things to happen behind that door but nothing ever told me otherwise as the place stood uninhabited my entire youth. The windows were intact, the paint peeled, weeds grew and birds refused to sit in the lone birch off to the side. It wasn't haunted because it wasn't abandoned really, only refused to be acknowledged. I wanted bodies in the yard, secret passageways inside, trap doors and a curving spiral staircase. I wanted creaky hinges, black cats and dust written messages on bathroom mirrors. What I wanted was mystery but all that old house did was stand there and grow older with me. But, as I grew into my strength and vitality of life, that old place across the street became more decrepit ad eaten, sinking into itself but never giving up. Weeds in the cracks, piles of leaves and rotting trees falling to time across the street.
fifteen minutes
She had said no before...
But I had never listened. I never listened to anything anyone said because I knew what was right, what was best. I lived my life for me, to watch out for number one and take care of myself. If that is selfish and egotistical, I can live with that. She had always come back, staggering like a weary fighter in the thirteenth round, and we had great make-up sex...crashing over chairs, tables, the sofa, and spilling our inhibitions across the wrecked one bedroom apartment. Our neighbors above, below and on either side of us had long ago turned a deaf ear to our antics as at least we were entertaining and not likely to cause harm to anyone but ourselves. Mandy would grit her teeth and snarl like a caged animal when she would leave me,
usually standing drunk in the kitchen, and slam the apartment door. We didn't hold anything back from each other in the battle of love and hate that continually danced across our universe, which probably created the white hot intensity of a falling star. We brought out the best and worst in each other with my cynical selfish egocentric maleness winning out over her stubborn strong abusive femininity every time. We weren't made to last, like an eclipse or an earthquake, it was over before it ever began and saying no was nothing new, but now the apartment felt emptier, lonelier somehow. Her perfume had lingered for moments after she left, like a forgotten shadow, but now that too was gone, disappearing into the depth of night. There was nothing in the fridge, nothing on TV, nothing to drink, nowhere to turn and only the no echoing across the nothing in his mind.
