Keruvalia
10-12-2004, 03:04
My blog entry for tonight ... thought I'd share with NS. :)
So I'm driving home from work as I normally do in the evenings, heading north on I-45 heading towards spot in the freeway where six lanes of 70 mph traffic bottlenecks into two lanes of dead stopped traffic in a matter of 1/8th of a mile, and I'm listening to the weather person on the radio making vague promises of a Canadian cold front to bring cold weather to our 75 degree December, when in front of me merges a sedan with a New York license plate. Traffic has come to a stand-still and I'm left to stare at the strange blue and white plate mixed in a sea of brake lights and frustrated shadows.
I begin to contemplate why a person would come from so far away in the family sedan to find themselves in the armpit of the world, also known as Montgomery County, Texas. Perhaps it was a traveling salesman doing business with a Houston petroleum company or maybe they had moved away from this God forsaken place and had returned only to visit relations and brag of their better life or, perhaps, they were fleeing litigation. There really is no way of knowing, but what else can one do when the traffic is stopped and the radio only offers the pop culture phenomenon known as “80s retro” other than speculate about the dim outlines of the other people in the other vehicles?
No matter what the man with the New York plates may be, staring at the plate has made me want pizza. I'm not sure why, but whenever I think of New York, I almost immediately think of pizza. I have never had a slice of pizza in, or anywhere near, New York, but that is the association my mind has made. I remember that there is a convenient grocery store at my freeway exit and begin planning my escape to its brightly lit aisles and piped Christmas music. Nearly on autopilot, the van drives me to the appropriate place as I think about what sort of pizza I would enjoy. I decide upon baby bella mushrooms and bleu cheese scattered on top of a cheap, store brand cheese pizza and perhaps some cracked pepper and garlic.
I find myself walking into the store and selecting a cart and then let my brain ooze back into reality so that I can properly select the products I have come to purchase. I mindlessly head for the specialty cheese section when a voice invades the back of my head, slightly mussing my hair and leaving a sticky film on the back of my neck. The voice says, “Can I help you find something?”
Normally I would politely decline assistance and go about my evening, but something in the voice made me turn my head to see what sort of being to which it belonged. I was certainly not disappointed. What stood before me was a human carcass arranged in female form, terminally thin, pierced in various places by tarnished balls of cheap silver, thin black tattoos, and giving off the appearance of someone you'd have to pay $9.95 per month on the internet to watch have sex with uncircumcised migrant workers.
To say she was ugly would be paying a great disservice to ugly. What she more had was the pathetic look of someone who grew up believing she could not be attractive enough for love and subsequently used sex as a replacement. Such techniques probably worked in her youth, but now the pitiful creature was at least 30 and clearly staying put in a name tag wearing, dead end, wage jockey career.
She smiled at me with bad teeth and breath which I could only imagine smelled of Cool Ranch Doritos and crack and said, “I said can I help you find something?”.
I didn't decline her offer. I'm not sure why. I was completely repulsed by the vision before me, but something in me nodded and smiled back. Perhaps it was the 4/8ths of white blood that courses through my veins and called upon her as a person of possibly similar cultural genetics to wake up and clean up and get out of this hell hole she had dug herself too deeply within. I wanted to shake her and tell her that there were people who might possibly have vanished all the way to New York just to escape the daily poisonous fart that exuded itself from every pore of every rock in this horrible part of the world and that it wasn't too late for her, but I instead found myself saying,
“Yes. I'm looking for bleu cheese.”
She pondered for a moment my statement. Her slightly sunken eyes turned even more hollow as invisible synapses fired within what might be left of her brain cells and she finally formed a reply.
“I don't know where we have that. I only eat the yellow kind myself.”
She was not joking. I did not laugh. I said that it was ok and thanked her for her help and scampered away as quickly as I could.
I am now home. The purchases, awaiting my attentions, are safely tucked away in my kitchen. I wonder if this evening could have gone any better.
So I'm driving home from work as I normally do in the evenings, heading north on I-45 heading towards spot in the freeway where six lanes of 70 mph traffic bottlenecks into two lanes of dead stopped traffic in a matter of 1/8th of a mile, and I'm listening to the weather person on the radio making vague promises of a Canadian cold front to bring cold weather to our 75 degree December, when in front of me merges a sedan with a New York license plate. Traffic has come to a stand-still and I'm left to stare at the strange blue and white plate mixed in a sea of brake lights and frustrated shadows.
I begin to contemplate why a person would come from so far away in the family sedan to find themselves in the armpit of the world, also known as Montgomery County, Texas. Perhaps it was a traveling salesman doing business with a Houston petroleum company or maybe they had moved away from this God forsaken place and had returned only to visit relations and brag of their better life or, perhaps, they were fleeing litigation. There really is no way of knowing, but what else can one do when the traffic is stopped and the radio only offers the pop culture phenomenon known as “80s retro” other than speculate about the dim outlines of the other people in the other vehicles?
No matter what the man with the New York plates may be, staring at the plate has made me want pizza. I'm not sure why, but whenever I think of New York, I almost immediately think of pizza. I have never had a slice of pizza in, or anywhere near, New York, but that is the association my mind has made. I remember that there is a convenient grocery store at my freeway exit and begin planning my escape to its brightly lit aisles and piped Christmas music. Nearly on autopilot, the van drives me to the appropriate place as I think about what sort of pizza I would enjoy. I decide upon baby bella mushrooms and bleu cheese scattered on top of a cheap, store brand cheese pizza and perhaps some cracked pepper and garlic.
I find myself walking into the store and selecting a cart and then let my brain ooze back into reality so that I can properly select the products I have come to purchase. I mindlessly head for the specialty cheese section when a voice invades the back of my head, slightly mussing my hair and leaving a sticky film on the back of my neck. The voice says, “Can I help you find something?”
Normally I would politely decline assistance and go about my evening, but something in the voice made me turn my head to see what sort of being to which it belonged. I was certainly not disappointed. What stood before me was a human carcass arranged in female form, terminally thin, pierced in various places by tarnished balls of cheap silver, thin black tattoos, and giving off the appearance of someone you'd have to pay $9.95 per month on the internet to watch have sex with uncircumcised migrant workers.
To say she was ugly would be paying a great disservice to ugly. What she more had was the pathetic look of someone who grew up believing she could not be attractive enough for love and subsequently used sex as a replacement. Such techniques probably worked in her youth, but now the pitiful creature was at least 30 and clearly staying put in a name tag wearing, dead end, wage jockey career.
She smiled at me with bad teeth and breath which I could only imagine smelled of Cool Ranch Doritos and crack and said, “I said can I help you find something?”.
I didn't decline her offer. I'm not sure why. I was completely repulsed by the vision before me, but something in me nodded and smiled back. Perhaps it was the 4/8ths of white blood that courses through my veins and called upon her as a person of possibly similar cultural genetics to wake up and clean up and get out of this hell hole she had dug herself too deeply within. I wanted to shake her and tell her that there were people who might possibly have vanished all the way to New York just to escape the daily poisonous fart that exuded itself from every pore of every rock in this horrible part of the world and that it wasn't too late for her, but I instead found myself saying,
“Yes. I'm looking for bleu cheese.”
She pondered for a moment my statement. Her slightly sunken eyes turned even more hollow as invisible synapses fired within what might be left of her brain cells and she finally formed a reply.
“I don't know where we have that. I only eat the yellow kind myself.”
She was not joking. I did not laugh. I said that it was ok and thanked her for her help and scampered away as quickly as I could.
I am now home. The purchases, awaiting my attentions, are safely tucked away in my kitchen. I wonder if this evening could have gone any better.