The Hydrant Was Going As Usual, And Paul Joined The Crowd. He Found Himself Soothed By The Cool Spray From The Water. He Waited With Eagerness For The Small Boy To Finish Fashioning His Paper Boat, And Enjoyed The Craft's Jolting Progress Toward Certain Destruction In The Dark, Gurgling Unknown Of The Storm Sewer...



Tonight, a 16 yr. old kid, sitting on a milk crate, told me that he was amazed at how much energy I had at work. I laughed. I don’t remember what I was doing. I think I screamed when a freezer kicked into wheezy submission or something like that. I catch the kid looking at me sometimes. Usually I’m doing something stupid or letting the shit fly out of my mouth because I have nothing else to do. Whatever flits from the lips, floats to the air and usually dies a dusty moth’s death. Stomp on all creatures my mind says, because there’s more aimless flight where that came from. This little kid has also told me that I’m funny. He’s asked me questions about myself. I’ve usually given him a bunch of responses best not repeated back to your mother and given more than many pearls of wisdom that even Jacque Cousteau wouldn’t even have the strength to dig up. No. He is not gay. He’s not even happy. Like I said…he sits. Gay guys don’t sit at work. They talk. They appreciate the background music. They move their hands around. He does not. Doesn’t matter. Gay or not. I think…that he thinks…THAT I’M COOL!?!?!?

Apparently this kid knows nothing. I’ve told him. I’m pretty honest. I’ve told him how, about, sometimes, the best of situations comes out of the worst of situations – like WORK. I tell him about how crappy things have always been and about how I don’t know how to do anything and can’t stop the THINKING. And how sometimes when you’re trapped and if you have the opportunity to give a little mishy mashy talky talk just to dull the silence of the air – you just do it, to quote NIKE. You’re half-insane anyway, you have no choice. Talk talk talk. Just don’t be annoying. My girlfriend doesn't really know how I exist outside of her world. She would both be amazed and pissed as to why I have that type of energy in the outside world and not at home. I suck at home. I'm boring. Mopey. Aching. Tired. sad. Frustrated. This is because I have a choice at home. I have many things to do. Little time. Many distractions. This frustrates me. It's like sticking a Cheetah in quicksand and then telling him you're chopping off his legs tomorrow. You go slowly go nuts. Don’t have the younger folk think that everything stupid that you did before is cool, either – it just IS. Not cool. Just...IS. It exists as fodder for stories and nothing else.

When that kid tells me that I don’t act my age and after you start telling him about how you always wanted to do a 21 Jumpstreet-type thing, but now you definitely can’t pass for a high-schooler, but how you would still hit on the little girls and the hot dance and P.E. teachers combined. The only I know is that this kid knows that there might be something different in the future for ones not yet in their twenties-there may be hope to age gracefully. This is the TRUE grace. To STILL be a sort of clever MORON. This is buying insurance when the dealer might hit Black jack. This is okay. This is not normal. This is okay. This is not normal. This is not the people that you will see at your high school reunions. This is it, said The Strokes. This is The End Of The World As We Know It, said REM. This is FILL In The BLANK. This is all I know. This is what I don't. Which is a little bit of everything. And whole lot of nothing.

But this is it. And it’s all you and me are going to get. We’ll spend the rest of our years learning, so why not break the damn dam and spew filthy beauty for the rest of your youthful years? Take your fingers out of the dike, you pervert, and just let what the hell you don’t know – flow.

Take pity on all of the young children who look up to you –

And then.........

Create a fucking army of them.