Crocodile Chum

It shouldn’t have been this hard. By your second year of creative writing a mindless essay like this should be achievable in your sleep. This was this first assignment, these aren’t even to distinguish talent it was just to get a sense of who each person was. Despite that being the truth here he sat staring at an almost blank screen and lacking the foggiest where to go next. The idea was simple: write a three thousand word story about your earliest memory. He had been bird-dogging one sentence for over an hour.

“The human brain is a funny machine.”

His mind would not go there. He was trying to rack his brain and he could feel fuzzy visions but nothing would culminate. Try as he might it seemed the summer before eight grade was end of the tunnel. After talking so much shit about how pot had no effect on his memory was this going to be the moment he found out the contrary? Overall, what he claimed was right as he rarely forgot anything and most folks avoided confrontation realizing truth and proof were not foes to take lightly. Despite that reputation he stood at the base of his own mental great wall, sure followed long enough a break would appear but it would only lead him into a valley and his doom. It took one stupid fucking thinking exercise to find out that he had erased his childhood. The only time in most lives that we are truly happy. Finding out the reason you hate society is due to an inability to remember when everything was okay was not really what he had on tap for the day. It was early and he had only made it as far as showering in his daily routine before he sat down to try work adorned in only his briefs. He walked to his closet and snatched one of the t-shirts off the hanger. He inspected it finding what he thought was the ghost of a tagless tag. He pulled the shirt over his head thinking it was backwards. he remedied the situation still feeling the shirt was backwards he took it off and threw it away. He had a lot of t-shirts.

It was that stupid moment between seasons that people called see-saw weather. This was the time of year it was easy to understand schizophrenia by simply going outside. The kind of weather that made a place like Florida make a whole lot more sense. How can we expect anyone to act rationally if the world around them refuses to follow suit. The eight blocks between him and coffee slipped by unnoticed. The familiar scenery acted as paper for the day’s sheet music and the current bridge was pointed notes manifested in sunlight and heat. He turned the corner into a 108th street freeze out and silently cursed everyone and everything that had not been able to make decision and roll with it. If this was what a period felt like then men did win the win gender lottery, but not for the reasons that feminist and activists would have you believe. Ignorance is only a fault to those who can perceive it.

“Mornin’ Esteban, que paso?” Alison was neither Latin nor Spanish but she had taken to talking to Stephen in Spanish everyday when he arrived. At first he had played along out of confusion, now it was part of their aesthetic and it was the way it was and would continue to be.

“Todo bien, un poco crudo, pero hago mis propias malas decisiones. How’s your morning going love?”

“It’s the same as it is everyday, folks come in and I ask them how they are….” her eyes spun in away they seemed unattached from her sockets, “They respond with a coffee order and complete disregard for me as a human. If they outlawed caffeine the white house would be smoke and ashes within a week.”

“Everyone has a cross to bare, some folks don’t understand it would be easier to carry it if they kept their head up. Speaking of coffee orders I’ll do my regular and let’s go cherry today. When is your break? You wanna sit and imbibe with me.”

“I hate it when you use words I don’t understand, you know that. My break is in half an hour, I’ll come over and drink a cup of coffee and we can have a normal words conversation.”

Stephen took residence with his back to the door. He felt like jetsam accidentally grouped with the flotsam; it was fine to live in obscurity, but to be considered with the likes of rest of this garbage was enough to put a noose on the breakfast menu. The pastry shop offered an oasis in desert major city existence. They did not have wifi and were cash only. A lot of folks would consider them a holdout wheezing their last words as the world sprints past them: “Damn. You. Kids.” That is what an alligator would have you believe, evolve long enough and eventually you predict the terms. There was typically a crowd but everyone respected the atmosphere. Conversation was minimal and most people were here to stare at their macbooks and pretend to be prolific.

Half of a cappuccino and most of a cherry danish later he found himself in familiar water. The screen was still blankish and the brain was still funny machine. What constitutes a memory? Is your earliest memory the first thing you remember or the first thing you understand? Since it was becoming increasingly obvious that recalling his early life was in the cards just not on the table he decided to take another route. He tore into a yarn about the first girl he ever kissed, more specifically about the first time he saw her. HIs earliest memory of his first love.

Arriving back from the memory of that Monday in the sixth grade when Shannon Harper had transferred from wherever the fuck she had transferred from his attention was stolen by a flashing light bulb on the back wall of the shop. The bulb blinked in and out at a diner’s interval casting stale white light on the aged cream wall every few seconds revealing a case study in yellow. At the end of the third “open” flash he blinked and shifted his sight south, it could have been Shannon Harper ricocheting around his head or it could have been the light but the girl the light was heralding was what he would have created had he been the lead in Weird Science. She froze him, took his breath away, stopped his heart, she did all those things “the one” supposedly does to you. There are the people who are beautiful and you appreciate their form, then there are the people who are everything you’ve ever wanted and you can’t look away. I could sit here and think of more poetry but for fuck’s sake she was Sloane Peterson wrapped in a ZZ Top riff. It hurt to acknowledge she even existed.

It was early. It was too early. Actually, it may not have been early. The sky was not a color. It was the blank white that feels florescent but looks like the nothing come to consume Atreyu. Where was she? She broke her paralysis and charted the bed with her hands. She dare not look around as she was scared of what she would see. Any day she woke up and didn’t know where she was or how she got there was as terrifying as it was a reminder to call her mother. Her search came up fruitless and she started to take a visual inventory of the room. The doorknob turned and the door opened qucikly.

“Mornin’! Do you think there’s any tequila left in Mexico?”

She smirked and burped and the same time and with a noise that typically preceded vomit squeaked, “Fuck you. How am I in Manhattan?”

“How are any of us anywhere really? Also I don’t know HOW you are but I do know that you rode home in a cab with me last night because you insisted we go home and watch Fight Club because as you said ‘that is some badass shit!’.”

“Ungh Huh. Well did we watch it?”

“No you fell asleep as soon as you got in the cab and then as graceful as a sasquatch ran up the stair here to miss the toilet by three inches with all of your vomit. You did clean it up and given how drunk you are I was impressed at how good of a job you did.”

“I’ve always said I’m a better human when I’m drunk. I need coffee and some form of pastry.”

“The best pastry shop in Manhattan is two blocks from here. It’s great, they don’t have wifi and they’re cash only so you can escape for a while.”

“Perfect….” she stretched full sprawl like a cat, “I’ll get my caffeine while I watch John Henry hammer himself to death.”

“Caimons act defan to bring the food closer.”

“Don’t drop that bayou double speak on me, it’s to early for that bullshit. I’m going to caffinate. Care to join?”

Cindy thought for a second, pinched her face and chirped, “No. I have to go downtown and run a few errands. You should go to the pastry shop though it’s really great. Go slow down for a while, you were in sixth gear with no brakes last night.”

“Yeah I think I snipped that wire a few weeks back. Better that sometime than you constantly riding ’em. Have you ever actually been drunk, let alone shitfaced?”

“I get as loose as I deem acceptable, and we both know I have plenty of fun in all states of undress and the opposite.”

“The beauty these days is we get to choose what cross to bear.”

Aneesa found the sun a nuisance and put on sunglasses to remind the galaxy that humans would be having none of it’s business come hell or high water. It was the best time of year. Sure the weather volleyed like a tennis match but the colors were worth the instability. The shame of living in Brooklyn is Central Park was mostly a foreign territory. It had been years since she had walked alongside it in the morning watching it perform it’s symphony for the world. Subtle changes in green and height knocked out a driving, smooth rhythm that looked like Powerhouse by the Metropole Orchestra sounded. Every few steps a dash of red or orange crashed percussion on the fluid melody and at some junctures the colors collapsed on themselves like break beats and the ever changing time signature of the city churned up out of the dirt. She flicked her butt to the curb and went through a narrow doorway into the coffee shop. Cindy wasn’t whistling dixie this cafe was a breath of fresh air in an atmosphere of Nordic minimalism and unknowable inside jokes.

After a pitstop at the counter to order she zigged and zagged through the mass of college kids forgoing the straight but maintaining the narrow like her conscious was clean. She found a seat at the back facing towards the front door. As she had nothing to read and abhorred looking at her phone in public the constant flow of people would be her television. Unfortunately this television only had one channel and given the overall waspiness of the crowd had Yahtzee had a slightly different premise she would have taken to running around the room screaming “NAZI!”

She decided to watch the women behind the counter interact with the zombies before their morning fix. Watching someone who is keyed up and has been going for more than an hour have a conversation with someone who has not accepted their days’ fate was like watching a monkey try to seduce a football. Each customer assimilated into the same role. There was the rogue asshole that was too chipper for anyone in the morning, however fuck that guy because that is the only way to sort that out. For the most part folks approached, were greeted well, and responded with barks and disregard. Watching sonder in real time is enough to make anyone feel invisible and with a hangover and nothing to do invisibility fit well. She watched each person enter and exit consumed by varying degrees of stress. Some were dealing with their day to day seemingly well but no one looked as if they escaped unscathed. Life may be a highway but riding all not long leads to riding all day long and eventually you’ll veer off into an accident. We may all need out mask to face the day but you need your seatbelt to survive the commute.

What was she doing with her life? At thirty-one still playing the bartender game was becoming groundhog in it’s repetition. Aimless idealists move to New York on fire and go home, a decade later, a pile of ashes. Right now she was smoldering and the overwhelming heat was calling her to exit the kitchen. There were no men here, for her at least. After going on the same date too many times she had aborted the online dating scene and going to the bars every night was a fire she was too used to playing with and being burnt was the only way to feel alive. My name it is Sam Hall and I hate you, one and all. Damn your eyes. It was time to set roots and the dirt here was infected. She had the money to go. She had had the money for a while now she just didn’t know where to go. The idea of going to find herself made her gag and she had never been one for aimless wandering. A couple of weeks in one country with at least a whisper of a plan was what she considered playing it fast and loose. She could go home for a month but that was defeat. My name it is Sam Hall. Damn your eyes.

Her dad had listened to nothing but folk and country tunes. What the old timers would call real country or honky-tonk. The song about hating everyone had been the only one she had ever liked. It was the only reason that a later point she had given Johnny Cash a try and subsequently found out that although repressed she really did love country music. The words lurked like the slender man in her head. She couldn’t always see them but she knew they were there.

She took a quick survey of her situation: a half drank cup of darjeeling tea, a mostly eaten cheese danish, a full glass of water, and deep emotional scars that could have been dealt with had she just faced them down at conception. Spectacles, testicles, wallet we’re off like a herd of turtles to our end. She took a survey of the room and the light above her head starting to blink on and off. She felt like she was being accused on Law & Order and Briscoe had just lost it and punched the light. It was swinging back and forth revealing her locked gaze like an emotional metronome. She knew they had nothing, these dirty flat foots. She caught view of one the less assuming college types staring directly above her head with a glance that could only be described as hallucinogenic. It seemed a little early on a Tuesday for this kid to already be tripping balls but c’set la vie and cheers to arrogance of youth. His glance shifted and they locked eyes. She saw him fall in love and she wished she had not listened to Cindy that morning. Damn your eyes.

Alison stared through his head like she did four or five days a week. This guy came in almost everyday and everyday he acted like it was his first time in. “What’s inside that? Is it made fresh everyday? Which is your favorite?” He had the worst game of any dude she had ever encountered. Hi, I’m socially awkward and I can’t find my ass with two hands; good news is I’ll be at the very least comfortably middle class so it’s easy street if you can handle only missionary position forever. She handed him his coffee extra sugar and chocolate eclair and bid him a good day. All these ivy league nerds have different things figured out, some of them more than others. The ones that have it completely figured out and seem like they’re enjoying it are the ones I keep an eye on. That’s the kind of psycho batman played when he ran down the hall naked with a chainsaw in that movie. That movie was fucking crazy. That’s what happens to white people when they snap. Naked in a hallway with a chainsaw, shooting kittens in the street; this is what happens when you only have missionary.

A pretty Indian girl walked up to the counter and payed out. Alison watched Stephen stare like he had seen Jesus in her posterior. She shook her head and Aneesa smirked.

“Is he still staring?”

“Yeah, he looks like he’s seen another level truth in your butt.”

“We caught eyes and I think he saw his future.”

“He’s a nice guy, you should say hi on the way out.”

“Unfortunately for him he caught me with foot out the door, it would never work with me and an ivy leaguer. I’ve got too much self respect.”

She dropped a dollar and the resulting change in the tip jar and turned for the door. Alison watched Stephen watch his future walk away. Aneesa called her sister to ask if Birmingham was worth a damn.