Choice

It’s your choice. It always has been. Hide where you are told to hide. Be what you are told to be. It is your choice. Good boy. Sundays here. Take this train. Read this paper. Vote this way. Good people don’t do that. Good people don’t have those. Good people don’t and don’t and don’t until they don’t even know they 're don’ting. Choose. Be good like you have been told. Be good for you? Your own version of good? Your own version of joy? That is selfish. You are better than that. You are good.

Wake up. The alarm went off and you slept through it. The world is on fire. Let’s buy a new couch. How about a big screen TV? There is a sale. We can figure out how to pay for it later. We have to buy it now. Think about the savings. Re-decorate. Re-finance. Re-energize. We can’t afford not to save this much money!

The Want Ads are full of ways to pay. I will move from the bad news to the sales news to the death news and be there before I finish this cup of coffee. Can read the rest on the train.

The train is good. Lots of the same folks every day. Every day folks. I am one of them. I am somebody on that train. I am the guy that finishes the paper while he drinks his coffee and looks all serious and stuff. Plus, I wear a hat. I pull it down over my eyes a bit and enjoy my coffee. The girl at the coffee thing at the station knows just how I like it. I usually get a cup before I take the train. I make a point of it. She knows how I like my coffee. She has nice tits and a pretty smile. She likes me. So I tip her. The more she likes me, the more I tip her. She likes me a little more each day. She even flirts with me. One time, there was only her and me. It was like a date. Sweet. Arousing. Sinful. I wanted to miss the train and take her to a hotel and be with her and love her and fuck her and hold her and cry and be somewhere with someone that just wanted to be with me and nowhere else in the world. I think she wanted it too. Wished she had asked me. Then the train came and I had to get to work. Had to go to that meeting and do that important briefing. I am somebody there, too. Just a different somebody. Not the somebody who loves the gal at the coffee wagon. Somebody else. Somebody that does not do those kinda things. Somebody good.

She is not there in the evenings. She gets off at 11, picks her kid from school, and then heads home. She lives on the other side of town. Rents a place but keeps it nice. The coffee place closes after lunch or something. How would I know? It just ain’t open late. Not much demand for coffee by the time I get back to the empty station, get into the empty car in the almost empty parking lot, and take the pretty much empty back roads home. Sometimes I have to stop at the store. Don’t like that but I do it. Sometimes I have to put out the garbage cans. Don’t like that but I do it. Sometimes I get home and have to go back out to some dinner or Church thing or family thing or some fucking other thing. Don’t like that but I do it. I am somebody good. Gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.

Sometimes I have to stay in town and work late. More than sometimes but not as much as I do. Sometimes the office is empty and but not as empty as that train station, that car, the parking lot, or those roads. Sometimes I get the stuff done I stayed to do. Sometimes I do other things. Read things. Go on the computer and look at things. Think about stuff. Lots of stuff. Sometimes it is good to be alone. Sometimes it is sad to be alone. I don’t care. Sad alone is easier that sad with company. Sad alone is quiet. Sad with company is noisy. I like quiet. Sometimes.

Lives of quiet desperation? Fuck quiet. There are millions of me’s out there. Millions doing the right things and saying the right things and pleasing everyone and everything while we die each damn day, inch by inch and second by second. I shall not go quietly into that not so good night. I wanna live! Let’s put on some shoulder pads and fight over a damn pigskin. That will help. Keep your goddamn penalties, put them in a box, and slap shoot them into your mother-in-law’s face. Let’s get some really, really big guns and blow the living shit outta something. I got bills to pay and somebody has to pay like I pay cause I pay big. The bigger the bomb, the better. We need really, really big bombs. We must help those that suffer and crush those that make them suffer. We must police the world. Let’s jam the American dream right down their throats. Ready or not, here we fucking come! Ack-ack. Attack. Tora fucking Tora. Alle-alle-in-free. You’re it. You’re in my fucking way. You’re different. You’re doing shit I wish I could do and I can’t do it so you can’t do it either. Fuck you. I hate you. Tell me more about yourself, please. Don’t let anyone know I asked. Just between you and me. I need to know. Make it quick, please. I have a train to catch. I was supposed to be home a long time ago. Can we talk tomorrow, please? I will have to work late so we can talk for hours. Maybe we can meet for coffee? I like coffee. I’ll pay.