Saturday Day

August 9, 2008
Seattle

Dear Blog,

I woke up alive this morning at 6:11, coffee pot time, related to actual time by making me exactly five minutes late for everything. I put on my adult clothes and ate uncooked oatmeal with milk over it. This is delicious for several reasons. First, it's easy. Second, heat and water turn an attractive collection of oats into something like a stoic puddle of starchy glue, so unbecoming of such a comely cereal grain. Third, an uncooked oat is much more of a challenge to digest, and with a stomach with a short attention span, I appreciate anything that keeps it occupied.

It wasn't raining when Michelle and I walked to work, though it had been. I commented that the earth smelt freshly bathed, which in the city is a heady, sort of concrete sweaty, kind of nearly pleasant stench. It was a cool, after-rain, August morning amble downhill to Parking Services. I don't remember appreciating it as it was happening. But it seems beautiful now. I was five minutes late.

Byron was fifteen minutes early. The man is a perverted, socially-inept, mild schizophrenic, and ours is a star crossed love that just shouldn't be. I should clarify: this is not in any way a romantic love, nor a love as between brothers, nor even one known between friends. Ours is something new, as of yet undescribed by poets, and totally one sided: His. I suppose it’s my fault, though, hanging those hearts in his eyes with that pity breakfast date, that pity Valentine’s Day card, the use of such strong words as “friend” in reference to him. He delights in crudity, and speaks to me without delicacy or decency. I alone know of his reprehensible online adventures and O! the things he’s seen! But I dare not burden the reader with any lewd description.

I hope that you can imagine my distress, then, upon discovering that I was to spend the entire shift today alone with Byron at the Central Plaza Garage. On the drive up he cryptically remarked that he had orchestrated our shift assignments. What? He must have hypnotized our boss then blackmailed him into putting us together, because I refuse to believe that Nick consciously and willfully allowed this to happen.

But it turned out fine. I ended up doing breaks, and in such a clever way that I was able spend most of the day at gate five with Michelle. And Byron was unusually preoccupied anyway with the important task of digitizing a pencil sketch of Bowser from Mario Brothers for some online collaboration of awful artists. The original wasn’t half bad. The final product was befitting of the web-site. He finished after my break, then turned his full attention to me:

B: Whacha writing?
J: Secrets. Important and interesting secrets.
B: You're writing about me, aren't you.
J: Of course not.
B: Oh. Then about Michelle?
J: Yes. And you mustn’t read it.
B: Alright.

Here he closes his eyes and points his enormous face at the screen, which I tilt downward. He giggles crazily, then sticks a few fingers into my sides.

J: No touching Byron! Never any touching!
B: *Crazy giggle* You know I used to be good at poetry.
J: Really? You should write some.
B: I’m kind of out of practice. I was mostly good at rapping.

He looks thoughtful for a moment, then:

B: Bitch, take this stupid pill
I want to fiddle with your deal
And you know I don’t want to spend no bill
You know me, just want to spill my seed.

proudly:

B: See, that was just off the fly!
J:
B: Am I annoying you?
J: No.
B: Am I entertaining you then?
J: In a way that no one else ever could.
B: *Crazy giggle*

But Byron isn’t the only hero of Parking Services. I can't forget the customers, those dears. Memorable faces today included Well-Dressed-Chemistry-Professor-with-Asian-Wife-in Front-Seat-Who-Kept-Repeating-YES-YES-YES-YES-YES, and the foreign couple looking for “The City.”

Byron and I closed up five minutes early.

It was a hot walk home, and I complained for the best part of it. Things in the apartment have taken a turn for the worst. A couple of apples went bad on the counter top, releasing a sour-smelling, brown liquid, which served as an open invitation for fruit flies and I am now cohabitating with about two dozen. I can’t describe to you how sticky the floors are, nor how they got that way. Michelle hardly wants to come over any more.

I laid down and fell asleep for four hours.

Now, Seattle is raining, Michelle is heating me up a cup of coffee, and she feels like she wants to bake me oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Or she could make a chocolate cake.

And I deliberate.

Blog,

Josh