Friday

stripper on the roof

I work in an office. An old warehouse, actually. Situated between three of the best gentlemens clubs in the city. The one directly across the street, the one with the gold Pegasus statue stashed on the roof, is appropriately enough called, Choice. Reassuring customers and strippers alike, that, yes, you are each making a choice and by the soft glow of the neon lights, it is a good decision.

Today, as my gaze wanders out the window for the four-hundreth time, I notice a young woman, wrapped in a sweater, on a day not less than eighty degrees, sitting on top of that roof. That "no access" roof with the gold pegasus statue. Sitting behind the gold winged-horse, deep brown hair blowing in the wind, she watches the customers down below laugh and egg each other in. She turns back to the horizon, pushing her head up further and inhaling all that the open sky has to offer.

I turn to my computer screen and when my gaze strays back she is gone. Back down the winding stairs to the lit stage below. Back to two dollar cherry cokes and nonsensical intimacy. To sweaty hands at the small of her back. To the smells of cheap cologne and tater tots, new dollar bills and old coins. She will lose herself in her work, something that I can not do. Instead I will sit here and wait, watching for her to re-emerge, waiting for her next breathe of air.

Monday

trash in the sky

One last swig of Tang and he was out the door. Hurrying across the street, pushing his 1991 H210 teal-blue vacuum cleaner in front of him. His janitor keys, which he always stashed in his back pocket, usually fell out halfway through the crosswalk. Which he both predicted and could not prevent from happening. Until last Friday, when the mysterious new janitor handed him a chain belt in the break room. The moment he attached his keys to the chain belt, now attached to the loop on his pants, he felt a sense of "connectivity". He looked up and she was smiling at him. A genuine smile. And so today he ran without worry.

But he would quickly think of other things to worry about: One of the four tiny blue flames underneath his burners had blown out - emitting enough gas to blow up his treasures (and Mo, the cat). And then there was his demented mom, living on her own in the midst of the up and coming "hot" gay neighborhood. What club would he find her in at the end of the day, drug riddled and sweaty from dancing on empty tabletops, tipless, toppled.

How had he made it to forty-seven? What if today was it? Really it. Like the guy smirking at you on the corner, what if he was your last conscious image before your heart just - pop! - done...but enough of those thoughts, cause his therapist, whom he'd been seeing now for ten years had given him a new mantra "the glass of life can always be full - if you fill it. Drink up!", and then she would demo this by pulling out a beautiful Belgian beer glass and a bottle of Jack Daniels from one of the top drawers of her filing cabinets, and she would put it all away in one fast swig. He appreciated her sentiment (and her long red hair), and so he would try his own version of this every morning using an old marmalade jar and Tang.

He had to admit, things were looking better. The new girl hadn't ignored him, like everyone else. She had even given him an entire pack of gum on her first day. For no reason. Just like that. No one had ever given him gum. Sometimes people would hand him their trash, instead of dumping it directly in the receptacle, which always made him feel recognized and at the same time shitty. Because in the end, what does the handling of trash have to do with anything but dealing with other people's crap.