FINITE: BABY ITS COLD OUTSIDE

I’m headed back home at dawn after work. Some people were going to LIV after the club closed. Tamie and I are starting a thing called the ‘anti after-party movement’. We just need to slow down the rhythm. Why go to bed at ten am when you could be in at five and pretend to be a normal human. It was now daylight and I hadn’t slept a wink. Dreary and depressed I hopped in a cab.

I’ve been renting a room for a few months now from an old Polish lady. I pay $660 a month, which is the best deal ever. Her name is Mrs Rabinowisk. She smells of what I believe to be Polish cabbage. It’s weird because she mostly eats KFC but this vestigial odor jus seems to follow her everywhere. She might not even have ever been to Poland, I wouldn’t really know.
She is always playing a card game alone. She displays them in order and turns them around one by one. There’s never any expression on her face. Winning or loosing doesn’t seem to give her either satisfaction or surprise.
About once a day her friends or relatives come over to just sit around and chat in their native language. They all look incredibly similar. As if you had taken a chunky woman mold and carved in different versions of the same face. They seem to have a ton to talk about. None of them look like they have either husbands or jobs. They always show me pictures of their grand children and grin.
I don’t really mind. I’ve been all over the place this week. I think the last time I was at the apt was last Thursday. Yeah, today is Tuesday, hard to keep track. I kind of like the place. I can close my door shut and I have my own bathroom. For two or three nights a week I come back here and collapse. I take long showers and pass out for ten hours at a time. I’m out every other night.

Right now I feel numb, anesthetized by exhaustion. I hope no one is around.  I know that tomorrow I’ll wake up and aim to do something healthy. I’ll probably fail.

I think of those who live in countries steeped in poverty, who are continually victims of crime and injustice, but who nevertheless party like their lives depend on it. They must feel like one youth infected by the thick of the beat. They rave and they rage because it is their only means of escape. Guided by the centrifugal energy that emanates from their bodies. Tired of obsolete rules and regulations. Empowered explorers of modernity. I shut my eyes to blur this crude image of humanity.

The cab pulls up in front of the brownstone. The rush of working the door faded as fast as the high after a one-night stand. I’m back upstairs. Flirting with folly I curl up in a ball and search for sleep.