After a dull day at the shop, I came home and read the newspaper. How’s that for a fine Friday night?Not even sure why I read the paper. 25¢ for a pack of lies, yesterday’s baseball, and tomorrow’s toilet paper. 

Dinner was six tuna sandwiches in bed, and after wiping away the bread crumbs and fish droppings so the roaches won’t eat me while I’m asleep, I typed these few pathetic words into the diary.

That’s all I have in me, though — tuna, and now yawns. Time to click off the light and go to bed alone, for the 300-somethingth consecutive night.

♦ ♦ ♦

A few hours of fitful rest, interrupted by a few gunshots out the window, and a few roaches waiting for me in the bathroom when I got up to pee. Terry said good morning as I passed through Pike’s bedroom, which is their bedroom in reality. He’s not even home, so now this woman I don’t like, can’t stand, whose last name I don’t even know — this morning she’s my flatmate instead of him.

It pisses me off, and I ought to make a stink or do something about it, but I’m going back to bed.

♦ ♦ ♦

Guess I’m awake. Good Saturday morning.

The clothes I’ve been wearing to work since Macy’s days are getting smelly, and I didn’t have anything clean, so I opened the big plastic bag in the corner of the room — my dad’s wardrobe, or the portion thereof that I inherited after his death.

Even at his fattest, Dad wasn’t as huge as me, so when Mom handed me the clothes, I think it was intended about 50% as charity, and 50% as nagging me to lose weight.

Well, I have lost weight. Last time I bought pants, I was a 50-inch waist, but those pants are baggy now, so my guess is I’m a 48, maybe even a 46. Squeezing into Dad’s britches, though, would require me to lose more. His pants are 44 inches, and 42, and 38, and 36… the complete chronology of his cancer, via his waistbands — a very effective weight-loss program, and one I’m certain to sign up for eventually.

To my surprise, though — I’ve delivered the baby, have a cigar — most of his shirts fit. I’m going to work in this lovely floral print number, probably from a Mom ^ Dad vacation to Hawaii. The shirt even looks good on me. Thanks, Dad.

♦ ♦ ♦

As I was handing out the shop’s flyers on the sidewalk, a bunch of square dancers were sashaying and allemanding and do-si-do-ing on the other side of Market Street. Some kind of show, I guess, with amplified sound, so the calls carried over the din of the traffic.

It was high-quality square dancing, too, not a class for beginners. Everyone knew which way to twirl, and even the overhead hand-claps were perfectly synchronized. The only thing missing was the ordinary billowing hoop skirts, since these dancers were all men with nobody in drag.

After an hour or so square dancing, the men all shook hands and hugged and started breaking up for the afternoon, and Jose and an assistant started packing up the mike and speakers. Cool — this has been a Jose Sounds Sensational production!

I used to be that assistant, unplugging the microphone and reeling the cord over my elbow and arm. Seeing Jose, I thought about waving, or even darting across the street to say howdy, but… I didn’t. Saying ‘hi’ would make it seem like I want to work for him again, and I don’t.

♦ ♦ ♦

A few hours later, another blast from the recent past. I offered the shop’s flyer to a well-dressed man on the sidewalk, and he offered me his flyer, and we laughed and traded pieces of paper, and he continued walking.

I glanced at his flyer and saw that it announced a new play that had opened last Friday night — Dahlia’s play. The play I typed the script for, or at lest the early versions of the script. At least once and maybe twice, Dahlia told me that in addition to my pay I’d get a complimentary ticket to the show, but I have not been comped a ticket. No hard feelings. Like everything else in life, only literally, the show goes on even without me.

Pathetic Life
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