Roller City...

How come I'm not winding down with a movie and eating that pizza in the fridge? Why am I not getting some much-needed sleep after a long, boring night serving drinks to drunks? I've got a big day tomorrow/today involving fixing up cars, tow trucks, money, getting tattoos, more late-night bartending, and Star Wars figure trades. Yeah, you heard me, Bubba. What am I doing?

I don't know, Pa. I don't know why I have trouble sleeping. I don't know why I can't graze like the rest of the herd. Life is strange. Always has been. Getting older, my movie audience is getting younger, though. It's kind of...creepy. Sometimes I feel like I'm still at a roller skating birthday party, with all of the flashing, fucked-up lights going around and around, as I, myself, go round and around, making myself feel even dizzier. The skates on my feet are metal, heavy, and clumsy. I lost one of them somewhere, and I have to keep one of my legs up very high, and sway from side to side, so that I don't fall. It's kind of tiring. I don't even know how I got invited, anyway. Nobody's paying attention to me. I always feel like I'm tagging along, and when everybody else stops to take a break, and maybe get something to eat - I'm too poor to buy anything.

When I slow skate with the girls, they don't look at me. I feel that they secretly wanted to be with someone else. Before the last note of the song, they're already gone, rolling away on brand new, un-rented pink and purple skates. Before I know it, the DJ's already called the last dance, and it's all over. I end up waiting alone in a dirty parking lot for my father. Everybody else piles into mini vans piloted by young-looking mothers. Sometimes there are five or six kids leaving together in the same car. Nobody asks me where I'm going. Finally, about an hour later, my angry father pulls up. I'm the last kid in the parking lot. My feet hurt on the ride back home. My father doesn't ask me how it was. He doesn't ask if I had fun. He doesn't ask anything. He just guns his creaking van back to our oil-stained driveway. He's already in the house by the time I get out of the car. I walk past my older brothers room. He slams the door. I'm back in my room. There's nothing much in there. No posters on the walls to look at. One shelf for toys. Two windows. The night. And silence...