I gave in.
I vowed that I wouldn't, that I would just sit home all night playing CK2, and to hell with what was sure to be a disappointment, but the flush of success gave me the courage to get my ever-expanding ass (now 215 pounds) out of the chair and to the gas station, trembling my jelly belly and spindly shoulders in hope and anticipation.
I passed out of the night and into the bright, too-honest fluorescent light of the station's interior. Empty, save for Barry, the beefy black middle-aged man with three kids and two mortgages who gets by mainly on his wife's administrative assistant salary and wins on selective football bets.
"Hey man, you seen a girl with pink hair today?"
Barry scratched his cheek, peering up at the ceiling in thought.
"Nawh. Why?"
I shrugged and walked over to the chips aisle, where I stared at the red, blue, and burgundy bags of Doritos regular, cool ranch, and spicy nacho. It's funny, when you stare at a stationary object long enough, you begin to see the flash-bright outlines of it moving to another area. It's as if your eyes and brain can't tolerate stillness and needs motion, change to prevent going into hysterics. I could sense Barry looking at me, so I picked up a half-filled bag of Spicy and turned it over to read the nutrition facts and ingredients list with pretend intensity. I read somewhere recently that Doritos cause cancer, but what the hell doesn't these days?
This is what my life has been reduced to - melancholy meditations on snack chips I'm not even hungry for. For all my unhappiness about not having a girlfriend, hence why Pink Pixie Girl set my scarred, frozen heart just ever so slightly aflutter, the stark truth of the matter is, I don't even have friends. I mean, even the worst kinds of nerds have at least somebody they can talk to or hang out with even on a semi-regular basis. But I rank lower than that - my limited human contact is defined by cashier interactions that could just as easily be done by a machine. In every sense of the word, I am completely expendable and unworthy of notice. When I die, at most I will have a two line obituary in the death notices, and the only grave I will be buried in is a pauper's plot, unmarked and unvisited.
It's the reason why I still smoke, despite the very real knowledge that it will give me cancer long before any level of Doritos consumption. It's one of the last pleasures left to me, and while one could argue it's a form of long-term suicide, the truth of the matter is, I simply have no reason to want to prolong my life. It just doesn't matter. And maybe I've said this before. When you live as a recluse, time has no meaning, and with only yourself to talk to, repetition is a natural habit and consequence. After all, there's only so much you can say to yourself after a while, without fresh new experiences, and even though I save all my money for travel, I'm not able to leave often enough for it to be constantly refreshing.
And that leads me to another thought, as I squeeze the top half of the bag to verify that yes, it's just air, empty as my existence. As much as I genuinely enjoy traveling, there's the constant awareness that I'm doing this alone, that I've been doing it alone ever since the days of family vacations ended (when I went off to undergraduate). Even in a sea of millions of people, such as London or Istanbul, I am Lone Fish in my own Lonely Planet.
Yet, some part of me refuses to give up entirely, which is why I'm still standing here in this stupid aisle, holding this stupidly overpriced and underfilled Doritos bag. I'm hoping she'll stumble through that door, that she'll be more than a one-off event.
Half an hour later, during which I've examined in great detail the same doughnuts, ice cream treats, and sodas that I see every night, I buy two Mountain Dews and trudge home. Barry doesn't ask. I don't volunteer.
Stupid thing to get Mountain Dew. Now I'll just be awake and alone longer with my thoughts, and I'm too depressed now, too dispirited by Pink Pixie Girl's failure to come sprinkling her vibrant hereness dust, to want to bother with video games.
Guess I'll just watch The Office, the US version. There's comfort in shared misery and humor with mundanity as its source.
CSI: Miami? Death, death, death. Monotony, monotony, monotony. Too dangerous for so grim a mood.
I vowed that I wouldn't, that I would just sit home all night playing CK2, and to hell with what was sure to be a disappointment, but the flush of success gave me the courage to get my ever-expanding ass (now 215 pounds) out of the chair and to the gas station, trembling my jelly belly and spindly shoulders in hope and anticipation.
I passed out of the night and into the bright, too-honest fluorescent light of the station's interior. Empty, save for Barry, the beefy black middle-aged man with three kids and two mortgages who gets by mainly on his wife's administrative assistant salary and wins on selective football bets.
"Hey man, you seen a girl with pink hair today?"
Barry scratched his cheek, peering up at the ceiling in thought.
"Nawh. Why?"
I shrugged and walked over to the chips aisle, where I stared at the red, blue, and burgundy bags of Doritos regular, cool ranch, and spicy nacho. It's funny, when you stare at a stationary object long enough, you begin to see the flash-bright outlines of it moving to another area. It's as if your eyes and brain can't tolerate stillness and needs motion, change to prevent going into hysterics. I could sense Barry looking at me, so I picked up a half-filled bag of Spicy and turned it over to read the nutrition facts and ingredients list with pretend intensity. I read somewhere recently that Doritos cause cancer, but what the hell doesn't these days?
This is what my life has been reduced to - melancholy meditations on snack chips I'm not even hungry for. For all my unhappiness about not having a girlfriend, hence why Pink Pixie Girl set my scarred, frozen heart just ever so slightly aflutter, the stark truth of the matter is, I don't even have friends. I mean, even the worst kinds of nerds have at least somebody they can talk to or hang out with even on a semi-regular basis. But I rank lower than that - my limited human contact is defined by cashier interactions that could just as easily be done by a machine. In every sense of the word, I am completely expendable and unworthy of notice. When I die, at most I will have a two line obituary in the death notices, and the only grave I will be buried in is a pauper's plot, unmarked and unvisited.
It's the reason why I still smoke, despite the very real knowledge that it will give me cancer long before any level of Doritos consumption. It's one of the last pleasures left to me, and while one could argue it's a form of long-term suicide, the truth of the matter is, I simply have no reason to want to prolong my life. It just doesn't matter. And maybe I've said this before. When you live as a recluse, time has no meaning, and with only yourself to talk to, repetition is a natural habit and consequence. After all, there's only so much you can say to yourself after a while, without fresh new experiences, and even though I save all my money for travel, I'm not able to leave often enough for it to be constantly refreshing.
And that leads me to another thought, as I squeeze the top half of the bag to verify that yes, it's just air, empty as my existence. As much as I genuinely enjoy traveling, there's the constant awareness that I'm doing this alone, that I've been doing it alone ever since the days of family vacations ended (when I went off to undergraduate). Even in a sea of millions of people, such as London or Istanbul, I am Lone Fish in my own Lonely Planet.
Yet, some part of me refuses to give up entirely, which is why I'm still standing here in this stupid aisle, holding this stupidly overpriced and underfilled Doritos bag. I'm hoping she'll stumble through that door, that she'll be more than a one-off event.
Half an hour later, during which I've examined in great detail the same doughnuts, ice cream treats, and sodas that I see every night, I buy two Mountain Dews and trudge home. Barry doesn't ask. I don't volunteer.
Stupid thing to get Mountain Dew. Now I'll just be awake and alone longer with my thoughts, and I'm too depressed now, too dispirited by Pink Pixie Girl's failure to come sprinkling her vibrant hereness dust, to want to bother with video games.
Guess I'll just watch The Office, the US version. There's comfort in shared misery and humor with mundanity as its source.
CSI: Miami? Death, death, death. Monotony, monotony, monotony. Too dangerous for so grim a mood.