Workin' on the Train

“Spare some change?” he bleated, “I’m a crackhead.”

There he sat, reclining against an abandoned storefront, eyes half open, disinterested. A king’s ransom of steel hoops, iron bars, and truncated clips studded his face, each issuing an individual challenge: call this guy a liar.

I laughed heartily, shaking my head at the absurdity. That kid was less than earnest, almost bored, even as he weakly shook a styrofoam cup half-full of change. I almost asked him how long it took to shred his old cargo pants; just when he last washed his sweat and grease-stained shirt bearing the slogan: Huge Cock, embossed over the silhouette of an innocent rooster. Yeah. I bet.

I should have given him a buck for the entertainment alone.


Yes, that really happened earlier today, and yes I couldn’t help writing about it. It’s like a disease, insidiously invading every aspect of my life and reducing me, like a crackhead, to seek out my next fix. I wrote on the L, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t just work on the outline of Rabbit Rue, I actually wrote a chapter entry.

Sure, my purpose in traveling to Evanston included picking up my newly minted right contact. But I had to entertain myself somehow, and I woke up this morning with ideas spilling out so quickly I feared many would expire before I managed to scribble or type them somewhere safe and my memory warped their initial magic, or my tiresome need to rephrase rendered them lifeless.

Now I wonder again, why I didn’t do this ten years ago; but I already know the answer. I wasn’t ready then, and there’s no question or argument about that evaluation. I wasn’t ready then. As with all things, that changed with time.

On another note, the character “Fat” Charlie Nancy from Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys bears a striking resemblance to me, or rather, his paralyzing fear and certainty he exists as a caricature doomed to suffer slights of fortune and ill-luck. I’ll keep reading; hopefully the poor sod gets some relief.

I also decided to finally see 300 while in Evanston. I can only adequately describe the movie as very, very bloody. Then it was bloodier. Even the credits were decorated with animated splashes of blood, and then more blood. A summary of most battle scenes would be to imagine a solid hour of spears thrust through human torsos, necks, eyes, etc., and the ensuing splash of gore. But it also contained boobies galore, their shameless abundance sending me into a shocked torpor. A cavalcade of messy death and naked chicks. It was glorious!

Until Tomorrow