He walks into a coffee shop after parking crooked in a nearly vacant parking lot. He wants to take full advantage of Happy Hour and highly alcoholic IPAs. He reads a sign on the door that says he shouldn’t park in La Reyna’s lot.
On the wall there are gig posters. He doesn’t bother reading any of the bands. He’s not a fan of live music, or music. He’s deaf. The idea of music insults him. He does like beats that he can feel, though. Beats are important to him. They sync with his inner strings. Everything percussion. Music stripped down to integers.
Stripped.
He sits down at the bar next to a girl reading some shit on her Kindle. He wants to sell her his book. He would like to become a salesman. But he’s mute. The idea of speaking insults him. People everywhere insult him. He isn’t bitter, though. He can smile when he sees his reflection. He’s good at smiling at himself. To others, not so much.
At himself, yes.
To others, not so much.
He doesn’t distract the girl on her Kindle. He looks at the beer bottles on the top shelf and has trouble reading them even though he isn’t blind. He uses his hands to square off the approximate shape of a menu. His message is moved from his world to someone else’s.
A menu is laid in front of him.
Resplendent.
He flips it over on its belly and reads the list. R U I N A T I O N is what he points to, and he’s mighty pleased when he’s brought an IPA labeled 7.7%.
Sweet.
He tips the contents back into his gullet and feels a renewal of spirit.
There’s nothing quite like drinking on an empty stomach. This is where he wants to be. If anyone were to ask him any question about any topic, he’d respond HERE. But he wouldn’t be able to say the word. He’d write it down, first on the air, like a bit of cloud wisp, and then on the back of his hand.
He tips the contents back again.
And again.
He likes putting his drink down fast, pounding away sobriety, life’s too boring to sip.
The girl reading her Kindle starts to pack her shit up. He shakes his head. It’s something he’s feeling, he can’t finger the word, but it’s something hard. He sees a little blotch on her bottom lip. It’s there. Probably something venereal. He wants to kiss this blotch. He wants to press his tongue against this blotch and look directly into her. There’s nothing wrong with this blotch. This blotch is.
He walks into the bathroom marked GENTS. He looks to his right and sees a white sink that seems clean. He looks to his left and see shoes inside the stall wall, shoes concerted on relieving large intestines. He then sees a urinal that reminds him of Duchamp and his piss art. Above the urinal, he reads:
JESUS WAS A SNOWMAN
THAT MELTED
ROMANS 2:12
Nothing else is on the wall. No gig posters. No beats. Silence reigns supreme in this bathroom except for this piece of scripture. He unzips and lets things flow. He notices how crooked his flow is, like something crimped. No one else enters the bathroom. It’s just him and the concerted shoes. He tries to be serious. He decides he doesn’t want to take anything seriously. He doesn’t want to look into anything that has consequence. He wants to be nonsense.
He laughs a little.
To himself.
It’s funny to him.
To him, yes.
To others, not so much.
But even though he knows very well his laugh is silent, he stops because he doesn’t want to cause any discomfort to the shoes inside the stall. He wants these shoes to be carefree because he has been in the same shoes.
On his way out, he sees an 8.5 x 11 poster on the door with a hand and a close-up of all the bacteria on that hand. Some of it’s purple. He doesn’t like that color. Some things will always be terribly dirty.
He passes a succulent terrarium on his way back to the bar. He wants to speak to these prickly pears, but he knows there are things in life impossible, so he goes back to his stool and sees that nothing remains of the Kindle reader and her venereal disease except for her glass of ice water, plastic. He doesn’t touch this glass for fear of not remembering anything about this afternoon. He tips back his R U I N A T I O N and wants to toast to his own ruination, which doesn’t bother him at all.
The thin girl behind the counter looks like she’s singing something to herself. He can’t hear what she’s singing but he’s sure it sounds like a harp. A mustachioed guy sits next to him and takes out a thousand pages worth of Roberto Bolaño.
He wants to sell him his much shorter, unimportant book.