Talking To Myself

I like to imagine that I’m making someone besides me laugh. This is where the talking to myself thing comes in. I burn a lot of mental energy talking to myself. Overlapping synapses of “Let’s see, here” and “What do you think of this?” when there is no us and no you in the conversation. It’s me chatting myself up, chewing my cud and doing situps. Today I remembered that dream I had as a kid, that dream in which I turned into a tapeworm and went down a drain into hell.

Holy shit it’s cold outside tonight. I left the window in the bathroom open about an inch last night and this morning (or 1:00 pm, which is morning to me) a bottle of shampoo was nearly frozen solid. You go outside and it’s refreshing for a few minutes, but that suddenly turns to holy shit this sucks I gotta get outta here. Story of my life.

I’m watching the blurbs fly by on public access television bulletin boards. Visual Arts Workshops. Book Discussion Group (once a month Wednesday evenings). Computer Instruction. Job Readiness Workshop. Legal Clinic (need advice about legal issues?). Money Management Clinic. Separation and Divorce Support Group. Then a photo montage of ethnically diverse citizens of New York.

Adult Day Services, Western Queens Caregiver Network, LGBT Resource and Referral Service, Queens Pride House, Sunnyside Community Services.

Today I tried to explain to someone what I meant by something. Well, actually I stood in the kitchen and tried to explain to myself what I might have meant by something that someone might have heard. It’s an expression that’s junked around my brain for a long time. Here it is: The people you did drugs with were the people you did drugs with. Period. I never said that, probably because I never did drugs. An obese deadhead from the 60s said that to me, and it made more of an impression on me than it seems to have made on anyone I ever passed it on to. I’ve uplated (not quite translated) it as the people you work with are the people you work with. The people you ride the bus with are the people you ride the bus with. The people you sit on hold with are the people you sit on hold with. It’s dubious grammar, but what it means to me is that the value of many relationships is mostly tied to what business you had. For me, 1998 through 2001, the people I sat in meetings with were the people I sat in meetings with. End. The person I paid my rent to was the person I paid my rent to. I know people for whom the people they had sex with were the people they had sex with. End.

That is what I tried to explain to myself in the kitchen tonight. Why did “the people you did drugs with were the people you did drugs with” make such an impression on me, and why do I still think of it as a metaphor for things that may have no connection to the spirit of those words?