Late Night, Drunk, Alone, Content (please critique)

by ModernAncient

Posted to Stories on 2002-12-18 12:14:00

Little Suzie gets off a bus in New York City, Suzie gets mugged.
No one cares.
Why should we?
We can’t care about everyone who gets mugged.
Jim-Joe America is driving home one night from a pep rally, Jim-Joe gets hit by a drunk driver. The drunk walks, Jim-Joe is in a coma. Jim-Joe’s mom is wondering if she should give his organs away.
In six months, no one cares.
I think it’s pretty clear that when it comes down to it, the staggering majority of us will be forgotten. Good things will happen, bad things will happen, life will go on. Maybe somthing truly great or truly evil will make the news, but by ten the next night, no one remembers. And ten years later, even the families dont really remember. Fifty years from now, unless we’re the stuff of great men, we will be ghosts. After death, we’re nothing more than records and a carved piece of rock. Write a book, make a movie, do your best to get famous, even then you’re mortal. Eminem won’t matter in 75 years. Twain will though.

Gray days make me meloncholy. Death hears me fall asleep. I can feel him standing next to me, waiting. I greet him like some old familiar friend, he resents my appreciation. I tell him winter is his season, he agrees. In the summer time he is weaker, in the summer I feel stronger; I wake up smiling somtimes and I know he wants things cold and gray and damp -Like they are now.

Slumped, shir untucked, unbuttoned. Hair wet. Dripping. Just dumped my face into the full sink of cold water. Late night talks with other screen names, all mingeling in some kind of private universe. Each conversation erased as soon as we both sign off. Things have been better than rain, than half drunk glasses of scotch, than aimless December fridays. Later this week the gutters will clog and for money I’ll go up there and get the shit out. I’m a whore for manual labor, do some shit, get money… Spend money on things soon consumed or forgotten.

Delighted girls made endless promises. They told me I’d be better with them, I never knew how they’d do that. I never believed them. I never believed myself when I said they’d be different. Some nights I’d sit there and make mental lists and cross off names. I’d look for her and she just wasn’t there. I’m looking for her and she’s just not there.
And they all think I’m someone I’m not. Preconceptions may have ruined me. Do I live up to predictions, or do I make new ones? Do I invent myself as we go along? Should I be inventing anything, or rather, anyone, including me?

There is a small burr stick to my pant leg, I can’t shake it off. It’s been there for weeks and now it’s kind of a game. How long will he hang on? I make little predictions in my head, and it hangs on no matter what I do. I can’t pull it off now, it’s been there too long. It hangs there dead and prickly and brown, with all that promise of life. Inside that little brown ugly ball lies life, deep and green and somehow beautiful.

Somewhere out there sits a pretty girl in a coffee shop. She’s crying and her mascara runs down her face. The man sitting at the other end of the bar doesn’t know what to do. He buys her a coffee. They sit and talk. An artist walks in and calls it “Nighthawks” Somewhere across town a girl lies in bed, eyes open, staring at the glow stars on her cieling. She wonders if anyone has ever been exactly like her. She feels so average, she knows someone has lived her life before. Somewhere to the east the sun will rise on a room. In the room, on the bed sits a young man. He has a job he hates. He’s sitting on his bed with his head in his hands, he remembers family vacatons when he was young, he doesn’t know where all those expectations dispeared to. He hates his life and really doesn’t know what to do. He sits on his bed like that for hours. He’s stuck. The office calls and he throws the phone into the wall. He walks to the balcony…

In L.A a young prostitute stands on a street corner. The sun is setting behind her and the colors are muted by the smog. She glances over her shoulder trying to catch the sunset before the savage night takes hold. A long black car pulls up, a handsome man rolls down the window. She knows what has to happen. She gets in, he pays, they go. When it’s all over she’s all the richer and all the poorer. When she gets out her right high-heel snaps in half. She goes back to her room. Halfway there she takes off her shoes. She’s a young prostitute, walking across sinister L.A in her stockings. Her long fake fur jacket is pushed open by a passing breeze and a padestrian sees someone beuatiful. She knows shes beautiful, and again, wonders why things had to be this way.
About halfway home, carrying her shoes, she stops. She’s standing on the sidewalk dazed, she cant remember where she was going. Something in her head says home but she knows that home isn’t in Suite 16 at the L.A Motor Home. She remembers dancing on her papa’s feet on teusday nights to the tunes of old New York jazz. She remembers Mississippi and cries for the ruined swamps of Louisiana. She remembers a small home with a small but acceptable yard. She remembers the sunsets in Mississippi. In L.A a young prostitute walks to her room and goes to sleep all day so she can work all night. In California a young prostitute remembers soft music and sunsets and love in a warm house and a picket fence, she remembers good times and doens’t know how she ever ended up standing in a gritty gutter, waiting for money, waiting for a fix.

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