Hello.
My name is Art Sparrokei and this is my website, Sparrokei.
I met an old lady the other day who told me she had a website. And her cat had a website as well. That the old lady runs, I mean. The cat's name was Ginger.
So I thought that maybe I should have a website, and now I do.
Thank you and I hope you have fun.
Art Sparrokei.
My name is Art Sparrokei.
Day Fifteen.
Mostly
This morning I was on Google Earth and found a star that I named mine. Once a girl kissed me and then looked to the stars as though it would make it more romantic if we kissed and looked at the stars. She said something from a movie about being such a small speck in this big sky and then wished on a star.
I think it was a satellite, I told her later when she told me her dream hadn't come true.
I found lots of mountains in places like Russia and Morocco. But from above they look like they're not mountains anymore, but squashed down and crumbly. I found one in Morocco that looked like a vagina. Or one of those sea slugs I learnt about on TV last week. Gastropods. It looked like a Gastropod sucking to the earth in fear of floating away.
I chatted to some people who had been to Morocco. I met them in the alley when I was sitting on the step. They had nothing more to say so I told them about the vagina in Morocco and if maybe they had been there, but they hadn't.
Maybe her wish didn't come true because she was holding on too hard. Maybe like the Gastropod. I don't think I hold on, but I float away. I like to float away.
Tomorrow I will look for a job again. If we are but a speck, there must be another speck to hire me.
Day Fourteen.
Final
Someone emailed me today and asked me who I am.
If I’m anyone, I think I’m that guy on the train who leans across and tells you that the answer for 9 Across is Aardvark. And when you look at me funny, I tell you it has a double A at the start.
Someone told me I’m like shares in resources. I go up and down, but must eventually go up. That’s what she said.
But resources aren’t going so well. What when the resources run out?
Tomorrow is the birthday of the girl that I thought I loved. I want to call. But maybe I want her to think I forgot? I want to call and tell her I forgot, but then remembered, and how is she? But she won’t speak to me, I’m sure.
I have a beautiful friend whose face lights up when she sees dogs. She can’t help it, and couldn’t say why. It’s something primal, I think. Like John Lennon sung about. Maybe it was John Lennon, anyway. Like that dogs were a primal enemy – a threat – and we’ve conquered them, in our own way. Like we can’t help but smile when we see them because we’re reminded of our own brilliance and power in cheating the primal. We’ve cultivated purely for the enjoyment of it, to fend off primal instinct.
That’s what I think, anyway.
Maybe I won’t call this girl.
Day Thirteen.
Sometimes.
Sometimes I wish that I was someone else. Like I was a whole other person. A different character with a different name, and Sparrokei was just some name I threw around on drunk dancefloors. I’m Sparrokei, I train animals for films, like that movie about the bears. My name’s Sparrokei, I write books about investing in property; are you looking to buy?
It would be more believable, anyway. My real name would be Romulus, I think.
My last paycheck came in today. I don’t know how long I have to make it last, but it could be a while. A friend asked me to help her today, and she said she’d buy lunch, so I went along. She’d been staying at another friends after the old man she had been house-sharing with made a pass on her. She held my hand the whole way we walked up the street, and would stop to look at me when I said something she thought that I thought was interesting. I train animals for films, and circuses. Lions are my speciality. She would have stopped, turned to me, really? She would have said. No wonder the old man made a pass on her.
She had dumped all her stuff in this hotel she worked at, and we were going there to get it all so she could move. I don’t know how you could forget how many bags you left somewhere, but she said she did. To suck me in, I guess. She had lots, I saw, when we got there. We started hauling them down to the street together until I gave up and sat there amongst all these pathetic plush toys and collages of photographs with girls doing stupid things with their mouths. Looked like they were blowing bubbles in some. All over the world – showing their teeth, like at the dentist, on the Chateau D’If, France; licking their own chins, almost, in London. The rest of the stuff was clothes and posters in garbage bags.
I would despise myself if my life ever came to a pile of garbage bags and ugly photos, piled on the steps of a footy-head hotel.
The days are tough, hey, says this tramp who’s wandered up to me and the mound of garbage bags.
I’m collecting cigarette butts, she says.
Yea, times are tough alright. I’m not wearing shoes, I realise.
You want a cigarette butt? You get a few together and you can make one smoke, or you can just have one puff of each, ya know.
I look to her and don’t say anything. I think of my car, the half-smoked cigarettes dropped at traffic lights all over the city. The way the smoke rises up afterward.
I’m gunna see Billy, she says, hope times look up hey.
I am Sparrokei. I own a chain of hotels. I import rare cars from England. I smoke cigarette butts.
I am Romulus.
Day Twelve.
Between.
It’s the afternoon already and I haven’t left home yet. I stood on the doorstep for some time, but I didn’t go out. Being near outside was enough – seeing the broken champagne glass someone left there, the garbage truck roll by and some school kids on their way home. When he had his back to me I threw a rock at the one with the dreadlocks.
Looking at the champagne glass, I imagined a high-heeled girl stumbling from the pub with a red face and a drink she didn’t know she stole. Glossed up for a night out but still single at midnight – I’m surprised I didn’t hear her last night.
You notice more about the world when you never leave your home. I read a book once about the verandah and how it’s a halfway point between the natural world and the created world. Like a viewing point – a platform at the zoo – where we can fool ourselves that, maybe, we’re experiencing the world, yet we’re still safe in our homes. Well that’s what I feel like.
I didn’t really see my neighbours before, but I’m getting to know them now. Well, not in the usual way – it’s not like we’re chatting in the alley and lending butter and eggs. On the North side of the house is Mr Good Wok and his family. They’re Vietnamese, I think, but I named them after the Chinese restaurant underneath their flat. They have a gigantic satellite on their roof that I think I could tap into if I got up there with a wire. But I don’t have a TV, anyway. But it might get rid of that crackle on the Arabic radio. Mr Good Wok has this little fluffy dog that coughs at night. He sits the thing on his lap to trim the curly hair around its eyes. One time he had a crab sitting on the table with him, all bound up and ready for Mr Good Wok soup.
On the other side is Gunther. This morning I heard him singing in the shower and slapping his belly like a portable bass drum. In my half-sleep I dreamt of a seaplane touching down and trimming the water with a whip each time that Gunther slapped his belly with a soaped-up palm. He sang a German marching song. As if Sinatra had been enlisted and was on foot to the front line.
His name isn’t really Gunther. I haven’t talked to him actually, but he looks like a Gunther. I’ve passed Mr Good Wok in the alley behind our houses, but he only ever talks about his dog. I animal lover – love animals. Dog is loud, coughing like kah kah, but ok – that’s what he says. He’s had complaints about the dog, and must be worried I’ll complain too. But the dog’s under enough stress with the crab and the haircut, so I let it be.
I hope my neighbours aren’t getting to know me as well. Maybe they saw me sitting on the doorstep, trying to reach for the champagne glass in the gutter, throwing rocks at the pigeon on the roof. I hope they didn’t – I hit the pigeon, and Mr Good Wok would be upset.
Day Eleven.
Once.
I'm sitting in my room listening to the radio. It's some guy speaking in Arabic then playing tracks that make me want to belly dance. And, because no one's here, I even try a little shake in front of the mirror. My brown cardigan waves and claps together at my waist.
There's not much to do when you don't have a job. It's only been a day, but I can't think what to do. Yet I still seem so busy. I woke and walked around the house for a while. Listening to the radio in a foreign language calms me. Like there's someone talking to me and I don't have to pay attention - I can just relax and look around.
I wish I could dance. I was in a bar once and a girl grabbed my face. She was going to kiss me. I think, anyway. I didn't know her name, hadn't said hi to her before. Then just as I think she was going to kiss me, a samba song came on and she said let's samba! And that was my weak point. I stepped all over her feet, and couldn't even do it when she tried to teach me. And so she never kissed me and I never got her name. I just pretended I had to go somewhere and then walked to the toilet. And I didn't have to go to the toilet so I just stood in the cubicle and tried a little shuffle. But I just can't samba.
This morning I went for a run. I watched a boxing film last night and my feet twitched for hours before I could sleep and I dreamt of being a champion. Like Rocky, or someone. I was fit and lean, and ate 12 weatbix - more than the cricket guys. So when I woke early, I stole Max's shoes and tried to run up the road. I'm a shell of my former self, I realise now. It was cold and I felt like some Russian running into the wilderness - my breath coiling up in mist. I would have looked good like that - all kitted up, sporty like, stretching my arms behind my head in the cold morning.
There's something romantic about the morning. The early morning, I mean. It reminds me of being at airports, but not going anywhere. Or fishing trips and my Dad shaking me awake - that it was time to get in the boat, that the flatheads wouldn't wait and we had to be quiet not to let them know we were coming. It was about paitence, fishing, not pulling the rod up until the fish had finished its nibbles and returned with its knife and fork for the big bite. That's what mornings remind me of.
When I started running, my jaw quickly ached from breathing heavy and my ankles felt splintered before I even made it to the park. There was an old lady leaning on a bus stop sign, weezing near death. She looked at me, breathless, like she pitied my growing old before my time. Why did I grow old before my time?
Day Ten.
Recognition.
I quit my job today. I wasn’t planning it, but I had thought about it for a while. I thought it was time – and I don’t want to overstay. Not at a party, a job, life. Nothing worse than turning around and all the balloons have lost their gas, hovering on the floor and Grandma’s cleaning up the leftover fairy bread. You should never overstay.
I jumped from the truck at a house out of town. The usual – groceries, bleach, kitchen scrubs. I said I was going for a smoke, and then came back to say – actually, I might just roll. And then I rolled. Walked to the station, bought a pie and sat in town.
A friend called just now, offered me money as soon as he heard I’d quit. Like all of a sudden I need money. They wanted me to take it, I could tell. Like it would make them happy – to see me eat a meal on them, to treat myself to a film in, or a dinner box special and eat in the park. It’s the first sign of the spiral down, I guess. Not the lack of a job but the sympathy – not my recognition of poverty, but another’s.
I often take a taxi back to work and then drive home. But today I took the bus. There was an old lady in front of me wearing wide-rimmed glasses who kept turning, as if to check I was still there (did she want me to be, or not?). One lens was fogged up and I’m sure she couldn’t see through it. Everyone was on their way home from work with their bus-faces on and looked to the men digging to fix some pipes on the sidewalk. A girl swayed in an awkward dance to headphones. She’d be looked at as strange without the headphones. Disconnected is disregarded, I said to the lady in the foggy glasses when she turned again. She winked, or blinked, it’s hard to say.
It’s like the bum on the street. He sits with his longneck, watches traffic, bites his bottom lips like it’ll fall off if he lets go; fingers his shirt. Everyone assumes of him, but if he was sitting indoors in the same indelicate way, would he be so different?
Day Nine.
Another.
Another lady is stirring me up at work about my name. I hear them all the time. Art? Like Garfunkel? Is that Paul Simon in the truck? Or, sometimes I get the one that goes – think you’re art, huh? Eye of the beholder, I guess, though you’re not selling much work, are you?
I want to make some joke about her name, but I can’t remember it. I look at the order slip I’m holding and it’s Barbara. But there’s nothing funny about Barbara. And she hasn’t ordered anything funny either – just your typical frozen veg and toilet paper. What am I going to say? Yea, well at least I get fresh veg and three ply toilet paper?
When I was young, I had to take a special letter to school to tell the teacher that my name was actually Art. She had called me Arthur, and then everyone teased me about it. She didn’t believe that I was just Art. When I had the letter and she called – Arthur can you answer this? I ignored. And when she got angry, I walked up to her and handed her the letter. My Ma said that I should write it if it meant that much to me, so I did, and then she signed it saying with her permission.
The teacher didn’t know what to say. But she called me Art after that. You’d have trouble like that with a name like Romulus. But Romulus founded Rome, slew his brother and all. No one called Art ever did that.
I went for tea again with the girl I met in the rain. She has long dark hair and concerned, deep eyes. When she looks at me I feel like she’s found out something about me. Like she knows I stole the newspaper off my neighbours’ lawn last Sunday. As if she knows I hid another cigarette in the drawer with the takeout menus, and I’m secretly thinking about it.
She has a habit of looking down when she begins a sentence, and bringing her eyes up at a point for emphasis. As she told me that all she really wants to do in her life is play music – she plays the cello – she met my eyes like she was slapping me in the face with an important revelation. I was nervous to look away from her and miss anything. She might be upset to go through this act and I was looking at a poster on the wall.
I hope she doesn’t know that when she told me about where she worked, I was really thinking about writing all of this down and so wasn’t listening. It’s like this monologue that starts in my head sometimes and I walk around narrating my day. It’s funny that – that in trying to capture one moment we lose another.
Day Eight.
Clouds.
People ask me if I’m happy, and I think I am. There’s a song I listen to sometimes, and it makes me feel like a king. Like I should tear off this face and scream; like the whole world is going on, ignorant that I am here. And just for a second they realise. Or I realise.
I’m stuck in traffic heading home. Next to me is a fat kid in the back seat of one of those big four wheel drives. He’s been eating McDonalds and is hanging his sister’s doll out the window, its hair jammed into the frame by the glass.
I used to wonder who it was at the front of traffic jams. As though there had to be one person at the very front who was holding everyone up. Would it ever be me? And when that day came, what would I do? Would I cripple and turn off, to let someone else lead? Would I slow, so that no one else had a chance to pass and would have no doubt about who was the leader?
Or would I speed and pull everyone along? But then, if I was to shoot out too far ahead, there would be no one around – I would no longer be the leader.
I was the leader of the traffic I think, once. I was travelling a little further than everyone else. They turned off, but I kept going. And soon, I was the leader. But of what? There was no traffic, and there were no cars.
When I was at school we had to write a poem about nature. Everybody wrote about the sun and the sky, or birds. One kid wrote about a wombat. I wrote one about clouds; about a man who was stuck under a cloud and so everything always looked dark – and everything ahead of him was bright, and everything behind him was bright. So that he always wanted to be somewhere else. I read it to my friends and we though it was funny – a guy stuck under a cloud. The teacher liked it; I got two stars, or whatever you got back then. But now I understand the funny look she gave me.
I’m still next to the car with the fat kid and his sister is realising her doll is gone. The mother’s looking out the window and rubbing her brow like she’s trying to get paint off her skin or something. The father in the driver’s seat is looking straight ahead, as if it’s better that way. There was a time they were hanging out to have kids, I bet. Now they look like they’d like to throw them into my car. But I wouldn’t take them.
I guess that’s how I feel sometimes. Under a cloud. And it’s following me – so that I never can get into that light. But just sometimes – I’m pretty happy usually, and I’ve got what I need.
Traffic’s moving again, and I duck in front of the family in the four wheel drive and take off. It’s great weaving through cars in traffic. Like escaping the cloud. I guess that’s what everyone’s always trying to do – moving so fast and the such.
I just like driving fast, though.
Day Seven.
Still.
It’s been one week since I started writing. You have to do something like that when you work a job like mine. There’s nothing to keep your mind going when you sit in a truck all day. Since I was promoted, I’ve got all the time I need. Instead of driving now, I sit in with the new drivers to make sure they’re doing everything the right way.
It’s a new role: the boss made it just for me when he noticed me showing a new kid the difference between bok choy and choy sum. He was impressed with that; that I knew my veggies.
So when these guys are driving, I’m writing and they get scared – think I’m writing a report on them or something. And that I’m enjoying it – my tongue out and squinting, keen eyes. That’s how I look when I read. Someone told me that and then I took a timer photo of myself just to make sure.
Sometimes I help the driver unpack the groceries when we stop, other times I say I have to make a call and go and smoke in the street.
When I got this job, and I was just a driver, I couldn’t believe I could actually walk into people’s houses. I would stand outside with all their ham, toilet paper and bok choy until they said well come on then, bring it in then. And not only did I get to see all that they bought, I’d put it in their pantry; have a quick look at their family pics if I had a chance.
Sometimes we’d get to chatting and I might get a cup of tea or something. I had a little routine, but I’m sick of it now. Oh! Chocolate biscuits? Well I bring the gifts, but I’m not Santa! I won’t say no to a chocolate biscuit though! Eventually it lost its ring. But it was never that funny anyway, now I think of it. Just the sort of talk that middle-aged women like; the kind who spend so much time with their rose gardens that they can’t make it to the supermarket.
It reminds me of the girl from Iran who told me that all she remembers is her Papa telling her to hide under the table because there were bombs coming. She said it flat and then looked to the sun so that her eyes squinted. She didn’t remember it at all – she remembered telling the story; probably had a thousand times.
It’s good writing. Being on the web with everyone else is good too. I don’t have that much to say though – some sites have so much more. Like Wikipedia. They’ve got everything on there.
Day Six.
Smoke.
I never used to smoke. Not for years. And I used to boast it at times or when asked for a cigarette – I’ve never smoked, not one, no. But everyone always asked me for cigarettes, like I looked like I should smoke and I wondered if they were right. But, that’s not why I started smoking.
There seemed to be far too many occasions when it would be perfect to smoke. After sex with tea, on a coffee date. Ducking into a phone booth in the wind and the rain to spark one as people look to a grey sky and worry about the barbeque they’d planned. In breaks of uni classes – that’s a good time to smoke. Otherwise I was standing outside fingering my pockets. Smoking began to fill those empty times. But now I’ve lost those times. I seem busier, really. Like smoking is now a full part of the day and I never relax.
A kid died today, eaten by sharks. I don’t know how I feel about that.
There’s a poet up the corner who hands out poems handwritten on a bit of paper. He says free words, but then puts his hand out for coins. I took one once and it said Is it the sweetness of the honey that draws the ant to death? Or death itself, and honey just the sweeter end?
I had stuck it to the wall in the toilet, and looked at it again this morning when I heard about the kid eaten by sharks. I guess we are drawn to death – like everything we do is a precursor to death, as much as it is homage to life. And these idiots swimming near sharks, jumping off bridges into rivers; it’s all about death. Cheating death; maybe that’s what it is?
Just as time draws us forward in seconds, death draws us forward in actions. I’ve been thinking about that for a while.
I haven’t smoked after sex for a bit. But smoking does help me pull girls at pubs. I kissed a girl the other night because I’d asked her outside for a smoke. Once I had a smoke on my mind though, I had to get through that before I could kiss her. But if I didn’t smoke, what would I ask her out for? So I could see if it was raining and whether I could still barbeque the next day, and did she want to come?
Day Five.
Wait.
I studied for a while, but it wasn’t for me. There were too many distractions. A guy in one subject who had a receding-hairline about six inches long – leaving just a puff of this thinning and curly hair on his pink scalp. Beautiful girls who wore their skirts too high and always seemed to drink coffee. And a gay Asian tutor who sometimes couldn’t pronounce the sound th – da meaning of da reading is dat. I’m happy now with how much I know.
I’m walking in town and nod at this hobo. He makes a noise, so I stop and chat to him. I like the hobos in town – I know most of them on this strip. The guy’s name is John. There’s also Mick the Bulgarian, Michael and Peter. Always simple names – like they were destined for the alleys. You never meet a hobo called Romulus. Or Maxwell. You can go anywhere with a good name.
John asks for a cigarette and I smoke with him. People are looking at me with him now. He doesn’t smell, but is covered in dirt and munches his top lip when he’s not speaking. There’s a small corn chip stuck in his beard, and I want to pull it out. He has beautiful teeth.
I try to look like I’m waiting for something, not that I just stopped to entertain a bum. We’re outside a sushi shop. You don’t wait outside for anything there: sushi maybe, but it’s ready-made isn’t it? So I point and say let’s walk here a sec, and we move up to a bus stop. A good waiting place. I relax against a signpost, and I look to him and the chip in his beard.
Yesterday was La Tomatina in Valencia, Spain. That’s when they throw tomatoes at each other. They use up to 240 000 lbs of tomatoes. Over 100 tonnes. That’s the sort of stuff I like to know, not uni stuff about cats.
What do you do, living in the street, anyway? I guess everything is waiting. That feeling that something's coming, but you don't know what and so you should sit and hang for it. I guess I know that. All this sitting around though, you'd hope what life brings next is gonna be good.
It would have been good to be there, Tomatina.
Day Four.
Death.
My bedroom walls are covered in cracks. There’s one that runs right along at a couple of feet high, then goes upward, and back along again. It outlines a big stone brick, I think. There’s faint cracks on the other two sides, so it’s almost like this little square in the wall. Where some of the wall folds back on the corner, I often pry it with my fingers. Just enough to feel like I could pull it right off if I wanted, but I don’t.
If I pulled off that bit of wall, there’d be something great there. I know it. I don’t know what, but it’d be something good. Like an old toy car, some money, maybe. An old coin. It looks like someone has dug in there and then sealed it up again – made themselves a little hideaway in my wall. I imagine myself finding whatever it is, and I’d be happy. Like I scratched a mosquito bite, the pain fading away and I found some pot of gold, or whatever.
I once loved a girl. I think I did, anyway. I am showering with the light off so that I can leave the window open and look onto the street. There’s a hobo there that always drinks longnecks on the corner and leaves them with the paper bag wet and curled around the bottle top. He always looks straight ahead though, so I doubt he’d see me anyway.
If there’s one thing I’m scared of, it’s slipping over in the shower. It’s one of those bath showers with curved sides that are a sure trap for the feet: dying to trick my foot and pull me down. How would it look, do you wonder? Someone finding me dead on the floor: shower running cold, lights off and the window open. My collection of soap-ends scattered in the bath – those last bits of soap that are no good alone, but that can be moulded with others to make a proper bar.
The hobo would be questioned: I never look up there, he’d say, he’s always up there naked in the dark. It would be them that would make me slip: the soap-ends. Is it worth it, I now wonder and pick up a few. The extra risk for the enjoyment of using that last bit of soap?
If I did slip but not die, it would be her that I would want to wake to in hospital. The girl that I think I loved.
There are nine million injuries caused by falling each year. How many happen in the shower? I slide the four soap-ends off the side of the bath-shower with my foot and squash them through the drain.
Day Three.
God.
My housemate’s trying to tell me something about cats. That if I didn’t know a cat was called a cat, what would it be? It’d be a cat. But he reckons it wouldn’t be. That nothing exists without association, he says. It’s something he studies at uni. But I don’t know what he’s going to be when he finishes, knowing about that.
A name like Romulus would be good at uni. You need a good name there, I reckon. A good image, uni is good for image.
Someone asked me if I’d found God. I don’t think I have. Or if I have, I didn’t recognise him. I met a guy in a servo once and his name was Jesus. I told him I’d read his book and he told me to fuck off.
I’ve finished work, so am back in town. Driving to the beach would be alright, but I’m out of inspiration. There are no more cigarettes; none under the seat, or back at home. Billy wasn’t at work, so I couldn’t ask for one either.
I once hid a cigarette in the house, just for the enjoyment of finding it later when I would need it. Like I could fool myself. But I couldn’t. As soon as I was down to my last puff, I remembered it. In fact, I had remembered it through the whole cigarette. I knew it was there, waiting for me to find it. I knew the way it laid in the drawer – it was under takeout menus and a frame someone gave me. I’d thrown some mail on top of it the other day, tried to make it look careless, but I knew it was under there; I knew the cigarette was waiting. I could have told you how many days old it was. Not now, but I could have then.
Day Two.
Coffee.
There’s a guy I go see in the hills behind town, East. The direction; his name’s not East. I call him Chip. I go when I’m passing by, or want to borrow something. But I think I just go to see him. It’s good to get out of the city. You breathe better, I’m sure. When I’m in the car on the way there, there’s a ritual I follow. There’s a petrol station, round half way. I always stop for fuel there, make sure I’ve got near nothing in the tank so that I can fill her proper. Then I tear out of there. Straight onto the freeway and back into the pace, like I’ve paused for just one second to catch my breath and I’m out again, flying back with the boys, and I have to regain my pace. It feels impressive. It must look good; this Merc flying from the station, seeding into the line of traffic and cruising forward.
I met a girl the other day, and I might love her. I mean, later – not yet. I don’t want to love her yet. It was raining out, and everyone was hiding undercovers – sprinting between awnings and frantic. She ran in the street. That’s where I met her. If it hadn’t have been raining, I’d not have met her. We were the only ones in the rain. So I said, we’re the only ones in the rain. If we left together, there’d be no one in the rain, and that’d be a shame, but why don’t we get a coffee anyway? And she knew what I meant, I think.
When I’m near the mountains, I always announce their hint through the clouds. There she is, I say. And there’s a wall of mountain ahead, pine trees and all of it. I take a big breath in and say – feels better already, I’m feeling better already. Breathing and the like. That’s what I say, whether there’s someone to hear it or not.
The lights are out in town. Powers off and the traffic lights just flash that yellow they do. It’s a flat, flower yellow. Frantic yellow. You turn those lights off and no one knows what to do. Town goes mad. People scream, buses overtake bubble cars, and people run to try and make gaps they wouldn’t make if the bus didn’t scream to stop and the bubble car almost run in its arse.
I don’t drink coffee. I got tea, and ate her biscuit as well. You can’t ask someone for tea though. We’re the only ones in the rain, and if we left there’d be no one in the rain, but why don’t we get a tea anyway? It doesn’t work like that. It raises many problems. If I was invited for pancakes, I’d want pancakes; not waffles.
Day One.
My Price.
How different would my life have been if my name was Romulus?
A man died today, poisoned by asparagus in a seafood restaurant. I don’t like seafood, or asparagus. But it was asparagus sauce. How different might my life be, or not be at all, if I liked asparagus, asparagus sauce, seafood?
I light the stub of a cigarette I found under the seat of the car. I saw a man drop ten cents on the floor of the bus today. He looked to it, almost bent, then walked on. His price is more than ten cents. Maybe his price is twenty cents. Or more. If I could have picked it up from my seat I would have, but I was too far. He straightened his cord jacket when he turned back and walked on, but he looked sheepish. He thought about that ten cents later, I’m sure of it. I did, well, I am now, aren’t I?
I smoke with the cigarette out the window. I only have a few minutes of it, it’s that short. And this is the best way to savour it. At the lights you must be able to see a drift of smoke rising up from the car door, my hand careless with the stub, and I’m gonna drop it on the ground just when the light goes green. It looks good at night, I think. There’s a red ember on the ground, smoke teasing upwards. And the car behind me would think who’s that there up front? Who dropped their cigarette to shine like that at night?
You have to keep testing yourself. To find your price. Mine always seems to be lower. Or at least the test gives me lower choices. Later today I bet that man will want for ten cents more. And he won’t have it. Some kid, who doesn’t yet know about the prices, will be buying lollies with it. You can get three sour worms for ten cents. Well, you used to be able. It’ll make his day. He doesn’t care that he had to bend for it on the bus, that his shoulder caught the dress of the lady next to him, and rode it upwards when he stood again. He doesn’t even give a shit.
I met a guy in the surf the other day. He was looking around for something. So I looked around for something as well. Just because someone’s looking, you always think there’s something to be found. I was looking for fish – whiting, maybe – it seemed the obvious thing. But, turns out he was looking for a wedding ring. Just swim that way man, that’s the best thing you can do, I said and pointed West to the horizon. Poor guy, I shouldn’t have said that. I was swimming in my underpants, had forgotten my shorts. I wasn’t to be giving advice. I was crouching in the water, looking shorter than I am, but not giving away that I was in blue underpants that stick to your body and show the contours of your dick when they’re wet.
I found five bucks in the surf that day. Sort of felt bad for the guy without the wedding ring, and looked for him swimming West. Thought about giving him the five, but it paid for the parking spot right on the beachfront. It was worth it, that spot. Someone would have seen the Merc there and thought – what a spot. What a spot for a car like that. That guy’s just parked right at the front; last spot before the water’s edge, and just cruised in for a swim. He just doesn’t give a shit, just came for a swim, probably swimming in his undies. That’s a happy man there. That’s what I think they thought.
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