50yen

She wore a black tuke. Her bangs met near her eyelashes, and would bow to touch them with every move of the head. I thought of the first line of a Touson Shimazaki poem. She had lips pink and full and soft like the petals of a cherry blossom. There was a run in her stockings that ran up the left thigh, under the flaps of her olive-green parka. She spent the entire time on her iPhone.

I woke up, my eyes opening upon a ceiling that seemed for only a few seconds quite unfamiliar. I took a deep breath. I could hear the dog moving about on the ground below the couch, the tag on the collar dangling as the body seemed restless. I looked to my right, to a blank TV and a tungsten lamp that kept burning. I looked to my left and noticed the noontime sky sparkling a winter-overcast corpse blue light through the crack of the drapes.
Then I remembered the sink.
I got up and rushed over. I felt almost as nauseous as the night before, looking at the mess that I left. I took another deep breath, trying to avoid the smell of stagnant stomach acids mixed in the with the vomit-hash of Popeye's Cajun-style fries. I tried to rinse it out, but it only clogged the sink.
What the fuck happened I asked myself, knowing full in well what did transpire. I just didn't want to face it again the next day.
TUTTURU~
A text message. I fumbled my phone out of my left pocket of my jeans, and pressed around on the touch screen rather arbitrarily until the message popped up.
Where are you? I thought today was your only day to clean
I fucking knew this was going to happen, I thought.
I looked about the condo. The colours of orange tungsten and black and cream of the floors and furniture blurred in my eyes. I fixed my vision on the bag of Tostitos corn chips. My stomach felt of angry hunger.
Then I remembered 7:00 on the LED of the DVD player. I got up off the couch then and buried my hand in the bag, pulling out ravenously whatever chips I could get a hold. I remembered I finished them all.
I sighed. The sink wouldn't drain. I dug around through some drawers to get the right kind of utensils to start scooping any of it out. The orange colour of the Cajun seasoning started washing off the potatoes. I threw everything that I could out before I started to get sick again. The sink still wouldn't drain. I pulled out my phone and started tapping out a message.
I'm on my way, just picking up some bins
Fuck fuck fuck, I thought, spinning about the kitchen. I pulled out some CLR from one of the cupboards. How much do I pour?, I asked myself. I didn't know. I wasn't even sure it was going to do a thing, but I dumped a bit in.
"Shit shit shit," I said, staring at the chicken sandwich on the coffee table. The one sandwich I didn't eat. The one I thought would be too old for me now. Or that my stomach wasn't settled enough to handle it.
I went to the washroom. I looked at my face in the mirror and felt in my mouth the grossest sense of disgust.
The sink didn't drain. I fished the plunger from out of the cupboard and gave a few pumps of the drain. There was a gurgle, then the water slowly started to lower. I sighed and replaced everything. Once I was sure everything was reset, including the condition of the sink, I rinsed everything that I could.
I replaced my jacket, and waved and mouthed a goodbye to the dog that whined from the floor up towards me. I drew my hat down and closed the door behind me. When I reached the front lobby I noticed the guard wasn't the one that worked earlier that morning. I could only nod, uncertain about how my voice sounded after all that happened. The snow sat on the ground like flour, light and fluffy and easily kicked up with every step. I looked at the brickwork sidewalk outside the front of the condo, looking for that broken cigarette of the early morning hours. I could hear a car struggle from the alley way across the street. I felt sick, and uncertain where to go aside from home. I went out to the street, and down to the subway station.
I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't. I had a whole room to clean.

I woke up to the sound of laughter. My room was dark, only sparsely lit by the setting sun. I felt like rolling over and falling asleep again but my mind didn't want anymore of it, so I got dressed and went into the kitchen to cook up something to eat.
Bleary eyed, I flipped some eggs around in a frying pan until they were to a consistency that I would find delicious. I brought my food back to my room, smiling at my boisterous roommates as I passed. I finished my meal in front of my computer when the message popped up on screen.
"I got your letter today!" she said.
I asked her what she thought of it. She was thankful. She pinned the drawing to her desk, she told me, because she thought it was amusing. I told her how I have been having trouble sleeping. In the last few days I wanted nothing to do but sleep. I want to get my life on track, and I wanted to get something accomplished, but I always just fell short of sleeping all day and all night.
She told me she would only get 4-5 hours of sleep a night. I asked her if she was lonely. She didn't respond right away and I worried that I might have pried too much.
"To tell you the truth," she laughed "I have been."
I offered to send her some more drawings. She told me I didn't have to. I asked her if she was going to write me back and she said she wanted to and then a few minutes later went offline.
I stayed up until 4am, not sure what to do but listen to music and read useless facts online. I decided to brush my teeth and to go to sleep. I felt a bit more contentment in my friendships.

Two weeks later, I awoke at midnight from a 13 hour sleep-coma by the sound of my ringing phone. I answered, only to find my brother on the other end of the line. He asked me if I wanted to hang out with him at Anna's place. She took the phone from him and asked me to bring alcohol and chocolate. Bothered that my roommates started watching shows without me, and that I didn't want to spoil things for myself, I decided to go.
I wrapped both the bottle of tequila and the bottle of scotch that was on my desk in a t-shirt and placed them in my bag. I left my apartment 15 minutes later than I thought I would, having skipped any kind of breakfast and putting on the easiest accessed attire.
When I got to the building, I phoned Roy, who met me at the front door. As I went inside, the smell of mold and weed permeated the stairwell. Each step was accented by a bright creaking sound, which I tried futilely to avoid. The hallways were lit by low-placed fluorescent lights. Each apartment door was a fireproof slab of metal, which contradicted the turn-of-the-century building itself. Their unpolished metal surface and lackluster colour emphasized their anachronistic juxtaposition with the rest of the building. I felt like I was traversing a movie set.
When I got inside the apartment I was met by Anna and Alan. I removed the bag from my shoulder and withdrew the bottles from it. I passed the tequila across the coffee table to the pair and kept the scotch to myself. We got about 5 turns into a game of cards when I decided to quit and took a few mouthfuls of scotch. Anna pulled me aside to the balcony at the back of the building. She asked how I was doing, since I haven't seen her in over a year. I felt kind of misplaced still, but answered truthfully as I could. I told her about work, that it was killing my slowly inside, and that I all I wanted to do was sleep. I wondered why she cared about it at all, when before I could ask she told me.
"I don't know why," she mumbled, "but you're always there in the peripherals, like you're not really in the friends-circle. It makes me wonder about you sometimes..."
She complained about how cold it was outside. I could see my breath hanging in the air, but I wasn't really bothered by the temperature. We moved back into the kitchen, and I took a quick look out into the parking lot below and wondered why it hasn't snowed yet. I truly missed the snow.
As we sat at the kitchen table, I played with the bottle of scotch: peeling back the labels and swirling the contents around.
"Why didn't you look me in the eye?" She asked.
I gave a confused look.
"When you came in," She specified, "you didn't make eye contact. You don't like me?"
"That's not it..." I fumbled. It really wasn't the case, but I didn't really know how to explain it further.
"I really don't look people in the eye much..." I hummed, twirling the bottle some more.
"Why?"
"It's just thing..." I hummed some more.
"You should do it more often. It bother's people when you don't. Especially girls."
The scotch that I rushed into me started to take effect. My teeth went numb and my body slowed down. We went back to the living room, and I played a few more round of cards. When half of them went to sleep, my brother, Roy and myself left at 4am to get something to eat.
The world outside was cold and empty. The only people I saw were taxi drivers.
I bought some snacks--some potato chips and cola, and as we waited for Roy to get his drink at the Tim Horton's, my brother told me how depressed the world has made him as of late.
We returned to the apartment. In hushed voices we complained to each other about those things in our life that plagued us. I was only up for 6 hours, when everyone else decided to go to sleep. The lamp was turned off and the room went dark. As I laid in the fold-out couch, I looked up above, out the window into the brightening necrotic-blue winter sky. The sun was rising. I could feel my heart pumping in my chest. It wasn't racing, nor was it pounding heavily, but I was still very sensitive to its movements. I got up, put on my shoes and jacket and wrapped up my bottle of scotch but left the bottle of tequila. When I got downstairs I could feel a chill coming over me. My breath trailed from my mouth, visible in the cold morning air.
The sky became brighter. I wondered about the letter I sent to Melanie. She never responded and I never saw her online since. I doubted that I would see her again.

If someone asked me a year ago whether I would enjoy spending my days off waking up in the afternoon, spending my time in a warehouse-wide apartment living room with cold feet reading RSS feeds on my phone while I eat tamagoyaki and drink Red Bull--I'd say "that's oddly specific..."
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Lately I've become too disinterested to leave the house.
I feel like if it would snow, my thoughts would change. That feeling of a light snowfall, carrying a cup of hot chocolate and walking the streets alone at night is one that can't ever be recreated easily.

 

I hope it snows before my birthday. </p>

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Halo of the Sun.

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When I met up with her she was tapping away at a Nintendo DS. She saw me cross the street and smiled and I apologized for being late. We walked side-by-side down the street and she told me about all the different restaurants. I remembered I originally sent a text to her about ramen, but lately I didn't feel like it so I agreed to finding something else. The crowds built on the sidewalk in front of the sushi places. As I drifted through a pool of people she pinched the sleeve of my jacket, trying to keep pace. We walked far enough, and decided on having Korean food.
We talked enough. I mostly mentioned how tired I've been. I didn't sleep well in a week and I couldn't think of much to say. I laughed when the banana pepper's spiciness took her by surprise. The grilled fish was filling. We paid and left.
We retraced back towards our meeting point. Somewhere in between that spot and the Korean restaurant was a cafe I thought would be a good place to go. The place was packed--the only available spot to sit was a couch in the corner.
She told me about school. One of her group members wasn't helping at all, and it was making life for the rest of the group grueling. She mentioned them using a stereo microscope, and how she wasn't able to join because she was nearly blind in one eye. I got up and ordered a cake and shared it over complaints about the dysfunction in education. When we finished our share we both leaned back on to the couch. I could hear The Beatles playing on the radio, swelling in and out as the conversations picked up and died around the place. She rested her head on my shoulder, and I continued to listen for music. She turned her head and spoke directly into my ear. Every nerve down my neck to my shoulder began to shout. The skin about it began to crawl. She told me how she needed to finish a paper, that she forgot and that she needed to leave soon. She told me she didn't want to go, and all those obnoxious little nerve cells agreed.
When we arrived at the train station, she asked my why I told her how I couldn't be bothered to do anything these days. I blamed it on how tired I've been, and I conjectured that my lack of motivation was due to depression. I just wanted to be honest. We parted ways. I threw my headphones on and stopped at the top of the platform stairs to try and select the track that I wanted. Once the music started, I looked up one more time to the train leaving the station.
Through the small window, I saw her wave.
I walked to my brother's work. The music carried my pace. I felt tired, and wished to see the sun again. When I reached my brother's work, he told me that he'd be another 20 minutes or so. I told him that I would find something to do to kill the time before then. I walked over to McDonald's, and waited to order some fries. I waited in line for five minutes, no one was taking any orders. I left. I went to the convenience store around the corner from my brother's work and bought some yogurt and a can of Red Bull. I sat outside the store and ate and drank and sometime after finishing I sent a text to thank her for the evening.
I went back to my brother's work. He was finishing in a couple of minutes. I paced around the ATM a ways from the front security desk. He disappeared to go change out of his uniform, and I dragged my feet back and forth while I looked over the ads around the machine. My memories hung onto the taste of grilled fish.
My brother came back to the desk, and we left. We walked, since the subway was shut down early. He talked about how shitty his job was, about how it was slowly killing him. I agreed. I explained how it kills you from the inside out. How it drains you of a soul and slowly demoralizes you into a zombie-like state. I had no motivation. I was tired all the time. Maybe I was depressed.
We walked to a station that still had running subway trains. I gave him some money for cab fare, and we parted ways. I walked the other four or five kilometres home. Somewhere along the way I decided to stop in at the gas station near my house to pick up some coke. In line a boisterous Jamaican man noticed I had some kind of Rasta-coloured jacket, but ignored the boombox-carrying Boba Fett that sat like a badge on the left breast of the jacket. He started telling me the Jamaican Patois name for cocaine. I nodded slightly. A man waiting after me to pay for his gasoline shuffled forward. I waved him up to the till, thinking the loud Jamaican man would continue having a conversation with me. He seemed to get angry at the man I allowed through, claiming that his actions were one of disrespect. He continued getting angry at the man, and towards me for allowing it. He tried to get the man to pay for a lighter to make up for it. Getting no response, he then asked me to pay instead. I was confused by it all. He kept yelling to the other men about disrespect and violence and shooting up things and I really didn't want any of it so I paid the $1 for the lighter to get him to leave.
After paying for my coke and leaving I could hear him draw further away. His yelling continued, not at anyone in particular. It felt thankless paying for his lighter. His anger about disrespect seemed ironic.
I got home. I didn't know what to do, so I laid down in bed. I wondered when I would see her again.

Like Love: a poison the mind wants but the body rejects.

 

I'm tired.

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I've been pretty bored these last couple of weeks. I'be been killing time by fighting Super Mutants in Fallout 3 and reading a 1930's crime novel called "The Scorpion."

 

I'm going to run away and join the circus.

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

Supervisor caught me for a third time on my netbook. NEETbook, as I like to call it. It's a wonder I haven't been fired yet, because the first time around it came with a notice that if I was caught again, I'd be fired.

Then again, I'm too good for this company. I don't do anything and yet I do more than the rest of my coworkers.

I spent the entire time he was here flicking a pen around and taking sips from a can of coke that had about half a shot of whisky mixed in.

I really just want to go home an sleep or play Fallout 3.