4.27.2012

Road Trashed

Your boots aren't off for long enough to let the swamp of sweat evaporate. One costly pair have already gone by the wayside. You learn your lesson and where Walmart is located in the strange town you're temporarily inhabiting.

You save all your receipts in an envelope for your tax guy. If he's worth his salt he'll get back a decent portion of what Uncle Sam robbed from your overtime pay.

You shave your throat once a week no matter what. No one respects a neckbeard and it hurts your eyes to see yourself in such disrepair when you wash up in the morning. If there were women in your hotel they'd be frightened. Your outside appearances matches your soul.

Your meals come at times so random they're not designated with fancy terms like lunch or dinner. You just eat what you want when you're hungry. That's often sardines at three in the morning. No one's there to judge or smell your breath.

Your friendships feel on hold until you'll be around to be one. Relationships are a luxury of the past. You fall in love with your bed and your check, though not necessarily in that order. Rare rest and blood money fuel your heavy steps like phantom forces.

If you get hurt on the job you don't say a word. You wouldn't want an OSHA Recordable. They're frowned upon by the men who sign the checks. You've got other fingers, others hands, other feet. You'll use the ones in better shape. If only you'd been born with doubles of every organ.

Using anything above a three-dollar word becomes pointless. You'll only have to define it afterward and risk being scorned a snob. When in Rome you become Roman and don't ask folks to pardon your French. Anything else would be Greek to them. You swallow words like that last sip of a generously poured cocktail that you know won't end well for anyone involved.

You don't remember the last time you signed your name on so much paperwork. It means less with every feeble stroke of the pen. It crosses your mind that even infanticide can be anonymous. There are rights for things like fixing a problem, but not installing pipes for a living. Still, you make your mark when asked. It's good enough for government work.

Your senses are sharpened, your awareness heightened, despite the fact that you're a walking corpse. You turn your head so abruptly at the delicious sound of a woman's voice that it almost spins off your spine. The floral scent of a lady passing by sends you reeling into a world of fantasies where you don't need the money more than the heartache and none of this has happened. None of this.

Your sex life becomes laughable, an unfamiliar thing of the past. Your reunion with your hand makes you feel like a teenager, though now the novelty's faded. You wonder if you'll ever have intercourse again, let alone engage in what no man admits to doing: making love.

And the sick part, the rub, the thing that makes the least sense to others who haven't done it, and even sometimes yourself, is that there's only one thing on your mind while you drift to somewhere safer as the sun begins ascending: when you'll get the holy chance to do it all over again.

But hasn't that always been your case, oh stubbornly cyclic stranger?

--Michael "Shakespeare" Vahsen, Journeyman Pipefitter, Local Union 373
   Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station. Oswego, New York. April 2012.


Currently reading:
"Mockingjay" by Suzanne Collins.

3 comments:

Phina Gray said...

you need to come home. your shit is getting depressing now. though i stand firm on my comment of "your writing gets better when you have no social life".

dave said...

there's nothing to come home to. i'd rather be here making money and avoiding reality.

Phina Gray said...

Bun-Bun is offended by the previous statement.