The special service party.
The alarm clock wakes me with it's familiar squawk of 'wake the fuck up you suck'.
My eyes don't want to open and I'm not going to be the awful person to make them.
Sadly you can't do things and sleep forever. The sheets fall heavy in my hands and
roll off the palm back into a pile on my mattress. I stretch myself slightly, grabbing
the familiar package of smokes off my bed side table. Four steps forward and I rip open my
eggshell colored curtain. Another building faces my window, so close I could touch it with
the very tips of my fingers if I stretched out of it. A two story drop into a 3 foot across
ally isn't what I need today, so I spark a match against it's book and light my cigarette.
For June, it's still cold. I grab my hoodie and make my way down my narrow metal staircase.
These apartments were the kind I'd see in indie films, with abstract art sprawled over the walls.
There would be stacks of my artist problem shit of my shit head artist boyfriend would be the
one who lives in such a beatnik place. I would be the white dress shirt on the fire escape,
a cigarette and runny mascara sipping my coffee in the morning sunlight.
I enjoy it for that reason probably, or I wouldn't pay so much damn money to live here.I at
least hope that's a reasonable reason because, shit, I'd feel stupid otherwise. I always
feel stupid anyway, I guess.
My coffee maker starts it's familiar hiss and I grab my faded purple mug from my cup rack.
My cigarette ash hits the small clear glass tray sitting on my kitchen counter. I pull myself up
onto it and slide myself against the wall. one wall of my apartment was brick. I stared at each
one's imperfect face all stacked too close together. None of them match, it's a cobble of
different colors which makes it really hard to put anything on that wall. Everything I tried to
put on it just clashed and made the space look cluttered. Now I just leave it blank and stare at it
every morning, just to remember there's nothing to remember. The coffee is finished, droplets
still condensing into beverage on the rim of the pot. I pour and drink. This is what I wake up
to every day.
I tell people I'm a writer. Normally I get an uncertain nod that proves most people still
think a poor sap that writes is an emotional train wreck waiting to set fire to your field
of posies. Most of the time people get overly excited about what I said. Then come the questions
like:
"What kind of stories do you write?"
"...or are you a poet?"
It's not really like that bothers me. I hear someone tell me they're a doctor and I ask which
kind. A teacher? What subject? It's all the same small talk. The less details you get the more
likely you'll as more questions. I think that may be why I talk with such inconsistency.
I meander and change topics randomly. I tend to lose my vision to the room around me and not
the face of whom I'm talking to. It's the saddest part of my story but alas it causes me no
qualms. If anything it makes people more apt to talk to me. As a writer, I'm far too concerned
about the characters in my story than the main character because the main character is the first
story I finished. It's the side characters who don't get decent background stories or detailed
personalities that set them aside from typecasts and stereotypes. That is my reason for liking
other people so much, and that's why their stupidity only entices me.
The thing is, writing was always a thing I did. I loved reading, I loved words and I wanted the
magical power of making them say fantastical things. There's a princess somewhere inside
this crusted shell of a girl. She tried to get out once but reality was too much for her to
handle. Although she doesn't control most of the things that I say, she does still very much
influence me in many ways. My hopeless romantics are the main contribution. It's never been
a battle with her though. She's so submissive it's almost criminal for me to call myself a
happy independent single female in her mid-twenties. So, I write things because that's the
only way I've found that keeps me from killing myself. Any time an asshole tries to belittle
it, I've found it most effective to just write a story about it. Now I just tell people when
they ask about it, that I write about what we're talking about right now. That normally gets
an uncomfortable confused response, or occasionally an excited mysterious give away that only
happens if for some reason in the universe someone found me generally interesting. That is not
very often by the way, I'm a very unbearable person to be near.
I climb back up my stairs to my room and sit down at my computer. I hit some buttons, it does
it's whole shitty start up routine and I decide it's time for another cigarette.
I started living alone when I was 20. After one of those 'love of your life' break-ups I
called it quits on roommates. I'm almost 25 now and it makes me happy to know I don't need
anyone to enjoy a morning like this. If anything it concerns me how content I am being alone.
It's almost as if I'm no longer comforted by the company of others. I watch my computer load my
wallpaper and little program icons. My coffee is starting to get cold. I never wait long enough
for the machine to actually warm it up. Then I add a ton of cold creamer to it which doesn't
necessarily help. I drink my room temperature beverage and click on a small folder that reads:
'imbecile'.
I've spent the better part of the last four years writing little stories that I was going to
eventually compile into a whole book. I had hundreds of them at this point and they were all
slightly fictionalized versions of things that really happened to me. Since I'd been proclaiming
myself as a writer since early high school most people don't believe any of the shit I say,
which I totally get. I'm a writer, I must be fucking delusional and that's alright. Maybe
the only people willing to actually write things are the people so un-possessed by life they
have more than enough time to develop numerous realities. Then they write it down knowing
they can literally live in that world through words and it becomes The New York Times best
fucking seller. These are people who abuse vices, abuse people, abuse themselves. Half of them
would be considered a threat to themselves or society if they were checked by a mental health
physician. Not a single person I've met who writes as a hobby or even career are normal human
beings. They all have some little glitch that makes them some sort of wrong. I mean, socially
wrong. People existing isn't wrong and no one should ever say it is. Though as my coffee slips
into lower temperatures and my cigarette is at the last drag, I can't really even get down
with the idea that these things roaming around me that look similar to me are real important.
I start writing about something. Some time in my life made more brilliant and shiny with word
play and punctuation. Minutes go by and I'm immediately in a rut. The glorious part of every day.
That moment when you're starting your art then nothing actually comes out. when you think
creatively you tend to be more or less the worst person ever when it comes to getting things
done. I'm sure there are plenty of proactive artists that create hundreds of things all day
long with not a spare moment to wipe their own cum off their bed sheets. I don't doubt that at
all. There is a strong belief in my heart though that those people are full of shit. The monitor
is starting to hurt my eyes. All of a sudden the room is too bright, my coffee is frigid and
some asshole is ringing my doorbell at almost 8 in the morning. This means I have to get up.
Like most normal people with comfort zones and morals, I have a very comfortable space set up
for what makes me happy. A happy place is something that takes development and once you get
one you never want to leave it. My fundamental rule is to never make a big deal out of leaving
my happy place. I have to learn to be okay outside of it, obviously because not every place you
go can be as special as this place. (That's a legitimate rule in the Book of Happiness for you
saps taking notes. Vital. Cannot be half assed.) If you don't have a place like this you're
probably miserable and you have every right to be because you're probably the leftover
shell of a real person. If you only dwell in this place, you are literally the leftover
shell of a real person. And that kids, is why we learn what 'moderation' means.
For a whole minute I waited to see if whoever it was would just go away if they didn't hear or
see anything going on through my window or something. I wanted to not be bothered with the real
world because today was for making fake worlds. The second hand swept past the 60 mark and the
door does that thing again where it informs me some one is outside of it looking for me or
something. Now I am completely frustrated. This is lunacy. There's absolutely no reason
someone should be here right now. For a second I wonder if it's a mail person then I get up
from my spot. The anxiety attack begins so I hurry to the door so I can get back to safety
as soon as possible. The door gets closer and closer as I scurry toward it, the handle touches
my fingertips then in a second it swing open. My eyes follow the opening of the door up to
an uncomfortably familiar face.
