Chapter 6 - Induced and Reduced (draft)

 Chapter 6

Induced and Reduced

Puharick’s journal folds in my hand as I stuff into the outer pocket of my jacket.  As the rain hits me, the door on my van closes and I begin the push to the door of the Daylight Donuts on 3^rd.  Rain has never been what I want it to be.  Too unapologetic.  Too self-centered.  It fucking mobs me as I fight myself to show no interest.  It fucks my ankles, my neck, my hands and Puharic’s deeper meanings, now bleeding at first contact, and only half pretending to be unaffected.  I walk an extra ten feet to avoid hopping onto a slimy curb, and right about when I want to start swinging at the rain, I make it to an eve.  The door is off, lot a things changing, but too soon, too fast, too much change, Jesus, “pull” and it doesn’t even need to say it out loud.  Its destiny is distracted by a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and a Bud Light Sticker from the 80’s and so much small Stickerage and Signage, and words, I could complete a Junior College degree just doing a work up on this fucking donut shop door alone.  How have I not noticed this before?  In fact, when did the old man get so many fucking stickers!  If this was the fucking seven eleven down the street I would kno… , it’s the fucking seven eleven.  God damnit!, I wheel and am back off the curb, right in the half foot of re-gurge in the gutter, from what ever is saying no to the rain in the sewers, and both feet are wet now and I am back in the van, and I am made meaningless again by the rain, and REALLY CANT FUCKING HANDLE THIS SHIT!  I CANT!  GOD DAMNIT!

I have to go home again, I have to go home, I don’t care, I am not slogging around all day with wet socks, I do not fucking care.  I would smoke if I did, and I think about it, and instead pop a dick pill, buckle up, get the van heater going again, and then wait too long for a break in the cars to pull out, and then I am back again, on the river, rolling through, passing it all in my time capsule, my space ship my van.  Maybe driving will turn into something more like what it is way deep down, maybe city driving will.  Maybee we will be able to hide completely and never have to step out of our cars, hovering 200 feet above the real street, the poor mans street, the actual fucking ground, and we hover and our apartment windows are like our car windows, and the air is the sea, only a sea with water we can breath, and maybe that will be it, maybe driving will be home.  Maybe driving will become what it really is someday, like fuck, like I don’t know what.

I pull over behind a grocery store and go into the back of my van and dig out my sandals, then I scrape off my shoes, and socks and slide back up front dropping into the cockpit, feeling a bit freer and thinking about going full-day-off with shorts, but that is not today.  Today, a scab comes off.  Today a door opens or a window gets broken.  Today I get a connection or they get a cast.  At my real office (the donut shop on 3^rd), I sit in the old chesterfield and read the daily paper.  My coffee comes out to me in the mug the old guy keeps above the coffee maker, on the coffee maker to keep it hot, convenient.

“you rain uh”

“Fucking rain” I tell him.

“Uh fucking a rain” he says, I nod and reach for my wallet and he subtly waves off payment like an old Italian.  The fuck he doesn’t speak English.  I don’t know how the chair got in this place, the old man never sits.  He doesn’t even lean when he smokes out back after taking the last trash bag out.  I only ever caught one other person in what I really feel like is my chair, once, it was a kid, and when I walked in his fat mom called her son out of it like he was wandering off or doing some other shit that took her right to the edge of beating him in public.  That’s right you little rat, your not even a rat yet.  Your not broken enough to sit in that chair.  You haven’t lost, you have too much of your self to even know what to do in a chair like this.  My god, your just a fucking kid, oh my god, and it hits me how much pain that little turd gets to drink if he’s lucky.  But its not my chair, and I am the only one who sits in this place anyway, though I saw a Mexican once, in a reflector vest, sit one time, hung over, waiting for the rest of the crew to get those damn ham and cheese microwaved cresents, those always a disappointment sandwiches you know are a lie, and yet you drop $4.00 because of course you do, we all do.

The paper is mostly noise.  I look for the signal, I really scan and look for any kind of pattern, even the help wanted adds, the realestate the collums are pure shit, then I see the funnies and the horoscope, they are tied together, Charlie brown looks down, he found the lead that broke him, he can see the fisa form, the word majestic, a date, the start of a department and so much ash.  The proof was there, Lucy tells him he can get killed for even looking at the ash, she stands over him, I think some one is dead, I think it was his friend.  Here they come, stand up, play, dip shits are coming, stand up Charlie Brown, STAND UP!

I look around, my body is literally electrified, I feel both crazy and drugged, no it’s a heart attack, I wait, but the heart keeps working, I am quiet, I gulp it down, I fuck with my hat. I sit up, I adjust, I look around, outside.  Someone's here right?  Someone has to be here?

I cut out the comic.  This will have to do for now, I keep trying to hold it different to see past the window and down at Charlie browns knees where conveniently out of the frame of the comic the burn bag lay and the remains of what they stole, what the hid, what they have been doing to us sits, found too late, found like a fuck you, try, I dare you try.  But his world is stuck, and the window in is a 2d comic book strip box, and those physics can’t be fucked.  I am too big to fit in the hole, and I do not want to scrape off who I am to fit through even if I could, to sit next to him and say, I am gonna get these fuckers, but, I am just as helpless as you are.  I want to put my hand on Charlie browns shoulders and say, I know.  I do know.

The horoscope is Ares.  I see it and I know I can swing by Jani’s place, that she’s sleeping but will let me fuck her, that she’s thinking about it.  “The pen will not fall down from rain, but you will need to shake all four legs to get out” something about making a fist, and recycling..  yeah, the key is there, the door unlocks, she is laying where I know she will be, face down, theres a smile but she won't open her eyes.  

    I am certain I am both crazy and right.  I can still reach down to the people here that we are all calling my friends, and speak to them with the added benefit of them hearing me, maybe not all of it, but most of it, so I am here, I am here right?  I have to be here?

    A perfectly small bell rings on the door as it opens and i realize that though i have been sitting directly in front of full, floor to ceiling glass windows without obstruction that wrap a good half of the entire building on three sides, I never saw them approach.  It is just a boy.  well, a teenager, fat, wants a fucking donut.  might be me, might be me for real, as I sit, old, skinny, tired, not eating a donut in a place that will save him from stepfathers resentment, mothers obliviousness and expertly grown obtuseness, from the pain only beautiful women can casue, the hoplessness of directionless ness.  From the empty hand pulled back from the universe when it said 'what do you want little boy', and i said, treasure, love, home.  and its said, 'get the fuck out of here i wasn't talkign to you'.

     Maybe the kid is a part of something.  maybe its just a kid that wants a donut.  you can turn a cat evil, but you have to work at it over time.  maybe its just a kid.

    When I leave Jani's house I have been repaired in a way that masturbation can't.  Whatever probability spikes have been emanating off of me and flinging right up into the proverbial ass holes of the Archons, has withered into KOFI and some lite static.