Writing and Shit (original) (raw)

I think I knew he was coming before he even walked in. In a way, it almost seemed like I felt the same way I did when we first knew him nearly ten years ago. Kind of like how when you listen to a CD you haven't heard in years, feelings from the time you last listened to the music suddenly burst forward through space and time and wash over your entire body. Of course, I'm probably just making up all this stuff about feeling and sensing in retrospect. That's one of the problems about writing in the past tense, about only being able to live in one moment of time. You continually rewrite what's done and over with, adding in thoughts and feelings, most of which probably weren't there to begin with.

So maybe I didn't feel anything before he walked in. Maybe I just saw him out of the corner of my eye and only my subconscious registered the fact that I knew him. He walked in, set one of his overflowing bags of who knows what on the wooden bench next to the front door and stood next to the pay phone, as if waiting for someone. As if he could fool anyone into thinking he actually had money to sit down and order food.

I looked up and saw him and my first instinct was to quickly walk away, before he had the chance to recognize me. Yeah, I'm an asshole. What can I say? But at the moment I was taking money from a customer and couldn't just bolt into the back without giving her her change. So I kept my gaze fixed steadily on the counter below me as I did my work, hoping that if I didn't look at him, he somehow wouldn't be able to see me. Well, somehow it didn't work.

"Don't I know you?" the man asked, approaching the counter.

I pulled together the most puzzled expression I could muster and shook my head a little bit, obviously entirely unaware of who the man was. "No, I don't think so," I told him, pushing a rogue piece of hair behind my ear.

He sort of half smiled a bit, knowing that he knew me and knowing that I knew too but was pretending not to know for one reason or another. "Yeah, I remember, when you were just a kid...."

"No, sorry," I said quickly, smiling to the man politely and then looking off to my right towards the back of the kitchen that couldn't be seen by anyone at the front counter, pretending someone had just called my name. I nodded to my invisible coworker, letting him know I'd be right there, and then smiled innocently at the man once again before turning away and walking to the back, hoping that by the time I had to go back up to the counter again, he would be gone.

"Hey, Mike."

He moved to my side, looking at me with a questioning gaze. Mike, the shy, quiet kid who only seemed to say a few words each time I worked with him. But what he did say was always either extremely funny, or extremely thought provoking. I guess that's why I liked him, because there seemed to be something very important just beneath the surface. And though he'd never allow me to know what was there entirely, I treasured the few glimpses I got each week.

"We should totally do this one day," I told him, enthusiastically, pointing to an article in my Outdoor Adventure magazine about rock climbing someplace in the New Mexican desert. I knew he would never actually do anything like that, and I probably never would either, but it's still fun to pretend.

He smiled, the small dimples in his cheeks flittering into existence for just a moment. "I haven't been climbing in so long. I really miss it, actually accomplishing something, and straining, and stretching. Just reaching for something that seems so impossible a lot of the time, but doing it anyway and finally reaching the top. It's orgasmic." There were the dimples again.

"God. Imagine camping under all the stars, a billion times as many as we can see in the city. And the complete silence. No cars. No sirens. Nothing." I looked off, pretending to ponder something but really just resting in silence.

"Hey, that bum is back again," he said, walking to the right silver cooler that lined the back wall. He pulled out a small salad and a cup of dressing, thousand island, and set it down on the counter.

Oh, no. Not him again. It had been a week. I had successfully avoided him the rest of that night. And while we had our share of regular bums that came in to try to get free food, or just for a moment's respite from the cold Chicago winter, I was sure it was the same one as last week. "Sophisticated bum?" I asked him.

"Huh? Sophis --. What?" He grinned in his confusion.

"Sophisticated bum. Tall. Big glasses. A couple canvas bags filled with a bunch of junk."

Mike nodded and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so."

I peeked around the corner up towards the front desk and spotted him sitting on the wooden bench in the front lobby, his head down and his eyes closed.

"Explain," Mike said.

"Oh. Well, he's this bum who is this really nice guy and everything. He used to buy us beer all the time when I was like, 15. Anyway, he came in the other night and he looked at me and remembered me even though it's been almost ten years since the last time I saw him. And he asked me if he knew who I was. And being the asshole I am, I told him no and then walked away. I got scared," I said, pausing, and then added, "I'm not sure why." I shrugged a shrug that makes anyone understand anything simply by dismissing it.

The phone rang then, as it always seems to do in the middle of stories, whether for good or for bad, and Mike picked up the receiver and began taking some person's food order. I picked up another of the four phones to call Bart because it was 10 o’clock at night and I had nothing better to do. It's sort of funny. He was the one who called me constantly while he was away in Oregon chopping down trees. Now, I miss him more than when he was away. I guess it's just a matter of need.
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...The End...? Ahaha, I'm so frickin funny!