I am dressed like a fucking slob today. Coffee-stained shirt, pants from 30 pounds ago, unshaved, unkempt. At least I smell passably OK but I look like I should be sleeping on a bus after being released from prison. I chose a seat far off in the corner, where no one will see me. The people I interact with are not going to be here today so no one will miss me. It is the holiday weekend. Should be quiet on all fronts. And backs.

My shirt reminds me of a mattress salesman from some years ago. His jacket looked like it cost $8, with stains to explain and sartorially inexcusable accretions. THe shirt looked something like the one I’m wearing, with stains both long and small. This shirt could arguably be described as ironed but his looked like he’d plucked from a bag of wadded up shirts headed to the laundromat.

Shirts matter. Pants matter. Shoes matter. I’m wearing Teva sandals with black thermal socks. I get made fun of for this but I don’t care. The conventional wisdom is that when a woman comments on your shoes it means she’s hitting on you, or thinking of you sexually. I don’t agree or disagree but I carry it in the cage of mind when someone mentions my footwear. It’s a bit of urban lore similar to when a woman is tworling her hair that means she’s thinking about sex. Is it true? I don’t know but I’ve been in circumstance with women  twirling their hair vigorously and would allow that, based on the context, they might very well have been thinking about sex.

I wear all black thermal socks now after a woman saw me wearing white crew socks, the kind that go about half way up the calf. When she saw me wearing these socks it happened to be all I was wearing. She freaked out about them, saying they made me look like some kind of creepy sandman, or snowman, I forget which term she used, maybe both. She was a little drunk but proceded to behave as if she was traumatized by this site, a man she’d just had inside her standing naked, post-coital hard, attired in nothing but white socks that tarnished the otherwise satisfying experience we just shared. She liked the sex, she liked my cock, but somehow she was always looking for an escape hatch, a way out. She once threatened to murder me. That would have been her ultimate escape hatch. She never made sense to me. I was attracted to her until she took off her clothes, focusing and fetshing on whatever parts of her body didn’t disappoint or annoy me. I never left her unsatisfied.

This little aside is a preamble to my reason for wearing only black thermals from now on. I formally discarded all my white crew socks, not wanting to ever screep out this or any other woman again with sandman/santa claus socks.  They were old and broken anyway, after years of unwittingly using them to and being judged accordingly.

I am eating strawberries and water. No more $7 or $8 breakfasts for me. The food at the breakfast places around here is not very good, and the strawberries cost $1.50.

There is yet another round of drama involving the anxiety pills. I stay way ahead on those pills. I have a two month supply, in case something like what just happened happens. The prescribing doctor is on vacation, He had a reasonable policy of not requiring me to schedule an in-person visit to be able to renew the prescription. It’s considered a controlled substance and rules had always been that in-person appointments were required for refills. This doctor dispensed with that rule, but now that he’s on vacation I have to get another doctor to do this and this dude insists on an in-person visit. It’s so stupid. But it’s fortunate I ration the pills the way I do. In the past I’d gotten down to as little as a half a pill before the previous PCP would deign to give me a refill. It’s not like this helps my anxiety, you know? I wish I didn’t need the pills at all, and I should aspire to weening myself off of them. But things can be pretty awful without them.

Funny, I talk about how fucking slobular I look today when, between last paragraph and this, a flirty woman I’ve talked with before appears. Same age as me, she calls me “handsome” and touches me on the arms. She talks fast as a noisy typewriter and I miss much of what she says. Something about perfumes, powder cases, her daughter wearing something called “Morning Dew” by Estee Lauder… or was it her mother who wore Morning Dew? I don’t know but the flirtiness was palpable. She smelled good. I said so. SHe said it must just be her deodorant because she had no perfume on. Then she said she’d find me later after she put some perfume on. OK. And here I am looking like a slob. I don’t think she looked at me as a slob, like she had expectations with respect to my clothing decorum. Doesn’t care. She would not have seizures over white crew socks. She made a weird comment, asked if my mother was dead. I said yes. She said “Good, then we can talk.” Not sure what that meant.

She’s been flirty and complimentary of my appearance in the past, as has another woman, also about my age. She’s less obvious, though, and more of a puzzle. She’s the only person from this job I’ve communicated with outside the workplace. Her birthday was yesterday and I texted her “Happy 70th!” She’s not 70. She’s about my age.

Another woman, earlier, was also nice to me. She commented on how she sees me eating strawberries every day, asked if it’s my favorite fruit. I said strawberries and blackberriess are best but I hate blueberries. Those are supposed to be ultimate detox food but I don’t care. They’re gross. This made the woman laugh. SHe’s also commented on this poor-mans-laptop setup I have, with the screen magnifier and bluetooth keyboard/mouse. People see me writing, or typing, and a few have asked what I’m writing about. I don’t really want anyone from here looking around for me on the internet. The one woman who I connect with outside the workplace, I’ve shared with her a few paragraphs that I wrote here. But she’s sworn to secrecy, not to tell anyone at this place that I’m writing sometimes crazy and x-rated shit while maintaining the appearance of a government schlub.