I am back in my easy chair. In my cheesy air. It is too comfortable here to do real work so I write instead. As if writing is easy. Sometimes it is, other times not. I don’t know anymore. There is a woman I’ve seen twice in the last few days after remembering, with no sense of expectation, that she used to throw a half smile my way any time we passed. She looks serious. Focused on something. Reminding me of a girl in grade school who used to ask me where I was going all the time. She said I always looked purposeful, like I was going somewhere. But in this schoolyard there was really no place to go. I would hurriedly walk toward the classroom building, my brow tense, briskly passing into the hallway and out of her sight. But she would follow me, and catch me standing there, doing nothing. I felt like an actor caught backstage, nervous. I had nowhere to go and she knew it. In those years I may have felt she was setting a trap. Girls were not especially nice to me in school and my suspicions and skepticisms bloomed early.
But getting back to this woman, I just saw her again minutes ago. She wears hear earmuffs in a funny way, as I noticed when I saw here just a few days earlier. These past two times she seems not to recognize or remember me. We’ve shared knowing glances, or at least I interpreted them as such. But I am probably wrong.
I am doing now what I have never been good at. I am relaxing. Or something like that. My new schedule gives me 3 days off, and I’m looking forward to this lifestyle change. My job does not pay enough to meet my expenses, so having 3 days off will allow me to find a part time something, I would hope. I like the job I have but the wages are not adequate for New York City. If I had paying roommate and not a freeloader, as I did some years ago, that would make a seismic difference. But this place is not laid out for bringing in a stranger through a roommates service. This place would only work with a live-in lover or companion or whatever the word is these days for girlfriend. Someone I could be quiet with. Silent. Prospects at this time are zero. Less than zero. Null.
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It is the next day. Same spot, same life, same sense of directionlessness that induced me to find a regular day job. Directionlessness was the dish served cold for about 2 or 3 years. I ran out of everything. I needed structure. I got that, and how. This is an experimental week. My new work week is Friday through Monday. Having the middle of the week free should be prime, as long as I don’t stay lazy, which I probably will. I don’t have a lot of meaningful memories from my extended family but our aunt, who I think was actually a great-aunt or some genealogical level removed from being a straight aunt, said “You Thomases are good people. You’re just lazy.” There are proactive ways to look at lazy. Some would call it the pursuit of efficiency in all things. If not “pursuit” than something more passive, or embedded into the world view.
I hope not to leave the apartment at all today, but I may have to get the laundry. It is laundry time as evidenced by the fact that I am wearing a stupid, cheap, poorly-fitting pair of underwear I bought out of some sense of obligation when I entered a dollar shop in Corona. For some reason I felt obligated to buy something, and underwear seemed like a safe, evergreen thing to procure. I don’t think I ever wore these outside of this space. They fit weirdly but they serve to remind me that it must be laundry time if I’m down to these.
I would actually like to be out walking but the cold is damnable. Feels like 8, they say. I’m mostly naked and feeling fine inside today. This is not always the way. It can get cold as a tomb in here when the owner deliberately decides not to turn on the heat. He still believes everyone goes to work weekdays 9 to 5, so who needs heat during the day when no one is here… He was even like that during Covid, when no one was going to the office.
He has talked about selling this place over the years but for whatever reason it never happened. I suspect it’s because it doesn’t make enough money to interest investors. I think he does OK financially because he’s the sole owner but buyers tend to be LLCs or entities with multiple parties. Even if it’s just 2 people I don’t think this place makes enough to interest them.
In that respect this place reminds me of my father’s place, a 4-apartment building in Florida. His goal in living there was to live rent-free. He accompolished that by renting out three of the 4 apartments bringing in just enough to cover his own expenses. Ultimately the place was worthless. I sat on it for years before a serious buyer came and by then I just wanted it out of my life. It was purchased by a couple of dudes in California. I don’t know that they ever actually saw the place in person or if they kicked everyone out or raised rents. I don’t know what happened after selling it and why would I.
Okay, I did the obvious just now and looked up the address of dad’s old place. Interior photos show someone cleaned up the apartments pretty well but the outside looks like the same dump as ever. I believe I sold it in 2015 but that could be off. It sold again in 2021 for what looks like a break-even price for the sellers, who I assume are the people I sold to. Who ever said Florida real estate is always a sure thing investment obviously never knew about this place. My dad, in his fantasy realm, valued the place at over double its real worth. At the time I took his word for it but after he passed and as the years ticked by it became clear that he had been kidding himself, and us. We basically made nothing on the sale but I consider it lucky that we didn’t lose money on the deal.
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I am now partially clothed, with an Astoria t-shirt and the white “snow man” socks that earned the wrath of a stripper I dated for a few months. She hated these socks so much I swear that if there had been a weapon available she would have used it on me. She was that kind of drunk at the time. I think of that some times, being dead on account of socks that did not suit my woman’s sartorial sensibilities. That would make headlines and cause a brief titter across the nanosphere.
I want to be indoors all day but may have to go out for provisions after all. And I really need to walk. I’ve been at the piano for the first times in months. I started with Joplin but ended up with Alkan, who seemed to love E Major. I slept pretty well but a little too late. The new workday wake up time is 4:30am, at least for now. Today I slept until 6am. But I have another day to make up for that. I wonder if this 4-day week thing is really going to last. It’s a “pilot” thing, which was pitched to me as meaning that if I hate it I can revert to the old or change the schedule back to 5-days. But it could also mean that if management hates it they can revoke it, too. But then I’m not sure it would work like that. I know precious little about how this company works. I don’t know who anybody is. After I’d been there about a year I overheard someone say there was a “Senior Manager.” I have no idea who that person is. There are no name plates on offices or cubicles. It’s not just me who feels this sort of disconnect. There are people with closed-door offices near my boss’s cubicle. She has no idea who they are or what they do. I know who the one head of the department is because he’s done public appearances and he remembers my name and says hello in the halls. But most of the other managers and poobahs are lost on me. If I know who they are by face recognition I know not who is who or what anyone’s name is.
The decision to give me a 4-day week was made by forces outside of my direct department’s control. I didn’t even know what was happening at first. A meeting showed on my calendar with no agenda and no attendees listed. I thought certain this was it. My everyday fear of getting fired from this job, instilled in me from day 1, was finally going to manifest. Instead I found myself in a room with two people I’d never seen before, who did not identify themselves, and who very cheerfully asked if I wanted this new schedule. I said sure, and that was basically it. I didn’t get fired.
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Okay, I’ve had it with this place for now. I have to get out of here. Staying indoors all day had its appeal but it can wait until another day. I need to walk. I walk past the stripper’s house a lot, as I’ve no doubt prattled on about elsewhere on this site. I have zero desire to reconnect or even say one word to her ever again. I just like to imagine that by making my presence known she can be reminded of all the lies she tried to keep track of while we were together, and how I never treated her with anything but kindness and respect. I know, of course, that kindness and respect are not a valid currency in many relationships. Valid currency includes drama, anger, degradation, and a never-ending loomage that everything could end with just a single word or incident.
…
Okay, I am looking for 2 more dollars so I can get provisions. I will leave this domicile. I didn’t want to but this is where I am, this critical juncture in my day.
I am listening to a dismal trumpet solo from Stockhausen’s Donnerstag und Licht and looking at a Rubik’s Cube. The cube sits atop a container of juggling balls a woman gave me for Christmas. I was going to learn to juggle. Maybe I will. When did I know S., anyway? It was she who gave them to me, as a kind of gag gift. “I got you the gift of balls. Now you have balls!” She was trying to tell me something.
In my adult life I don’t think I’d ever been so infatuated with a woman as I was with her, her troubles and obvious warning signs notwithstanding. We most actively spent time together from 2003 to 2008, more or less. Wow, that’s been a while. Oh, wow. Heart sinks a bit. I just looked at her memorial FB page and there I am, a picture of us together along with a dude who moved to LA. I took a lot of pictures of her but I don’t remember many of us together. At a certain point in her photo stream there is a blast of pictures I took of her. I could barely help myself in those days. She died in 2015, by which time we had barely any contact. We had reconnected via social media sometime around 2010, I think? Hard to be sure without scroll-dooming through years and years.
She loved me. I will forever save the e-mail that proves it.