Tony the Gansta
He's a regular, sort of, in for lunch with his girlfriend and another couple.
He's dressed a bit like a car salesman, suit and tie, hair slicked back, his friends are odd, the guy, big, quiet, short sleeves and arms covered with Tattoos. His girlfriend is beautiful.
They eat and they talk, Tony and his wife with Tattooed guy and his girlfriend, and after a while Tony borrows the private room with Tattoo to chat. They close the door, they need the privacy.
And while Tony, he looks like a car salesman, he's not, when you approach the table you overhear what he's talking about, not the subject, but the adjectives...."He's a fuckin loser...", "Damned cunt" .... "she's a fuckin"... his vocabulary would make even a car salesman blush.
While they're in the private room the girls stop talking, they just sit in front of their phones and text away. It's a business meeting, they don't have to be social when the men aren't around.
The men, whatever they're talking about, it takes a while, half an hour, but the women are fine.
I wonder what it's like, this ganster life, Tattoo, he's got a beautiful girlfriend with a look of perpetual boredom frozen on her face, Tony isn't doing so bad either, it's probably boring, a regular job, regular customers texting and phoning at awkward hours, that drug-addled urgency, deliveries to far flung parking lots in the North East, the glamor, it's not there, you only have to see them to know, it's just a lousy job like everyone elses.
It's a $300.00 bill for lunch. They pay in cash.
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- Category: People
A regular transit customer
He greets all the girls as they get on the bus, he's sat up near the driver, slouched, but when they board he sits up and smiles and waves and says hello.
There's something not right with him. It's late at night, I've seen him on the bus before, he must have a job downtown. There's a large scar on his forehead, his eyes go in different directions, his face looks as though he'd survived - barely - a severe automobile accident. I'm not sure if he was born this way or it was an accident.
He's alone, after he says "hi" he gets all shy and slouches over again, forefinger stuck up his nose.
He misses a girl getting on the bus, misses his greeting, and so she doesn't pick up that things aren't quite right with him and sits near the front of the bus.
Eventually he looks up, recognizes the new arrival and waves hello. "Hi" he says. "Cold outside, isn't it?". He doesn't sound slow.
"Sure is" she replies, and he gets all shy again and begins picking his nose. After a few minutes he screws up his courage to chat. "When I get home I'm going to watch Fear Friday on...." and he names a channel.
"Oh" she says, regretting now that she sat so near the front. "Do you like horror movies?"
"Love them" he replies. "They're my favorite. I love zombies and vampires and ...." and the conversation begins. The bus is quiet.
There's something unnerving about him, the ambiguity of his disability, and there's something so perfect about his favorite movie genre, the girl now, perhaps she's entertaining thoughts of him following her home as he outlines in vivid detail the gory details of his private obsession, yet it's somehow a moment that Jack Nicholson would be proud of....
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- Category: People
Waiting...
3 parcels in transit. Tibet, the US and Belgium.
Every day hurrying home after work, the one thing to look forward to... (well, that and some scotch or rum). But the mailbox is empty.
I check my confirmation emails, it's been a couple of weeks, the packages SHOULD be showing up soon...
But nothing yet. When they do it'll doubtless be 2 or three in a day, the staggered order times all log jamming together until finally they arrive all at once; the pains I took to provide small incentives each week will have been for naught.
Nothing today. But there's still tomorrow, and if nothing comes tomorrow then it wouldn't be unreasonable to have high hopes for Monday...
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- Category: Miscellany
Nabokov - Lolita
‘… overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.’
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- Category: Rejected
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