part of the problem
freezing my ass off
on a street corner
i see them coming from
a few blocks away
i can already hear the one
trying to calm the other down
one of them is mental
and the other is about half-way gone
the mental one is always shouting
about minorities in the neighborhood
he’s been waging his own personal war
against the latinos and arabs for a few years now
this morning he’s at it again
they’re killing me! he’s shouting
there’s more of them and they’ve boxed me in!
no, it’s a cage!
it’s a goddamned dirty cage
and we’re surrounded by all of them!
stop it, the other one says
just stop it right the hell now
he grabs the mental one’s arm
and pulls hard as they make the corner
i catch their eyes
the mental one recoils then his face slacks
as the other one points to me and says
see, i told you
he wasn’t a goddamned chinese
the lift
we were sitting
on the yellow-painted curb
in a strip mall
calvin, tom and i
there were girls in the parking lot
but, as usual, none of them would talk to us
we watched them laugh and giggle
in their short shorts with tanned legs
wondering what magic it would take to land one
we were killing another summer night
in the southern suburbs of pittsburgh
too dumb and young to realize
that this was time that we’d never get back
that this was one of the better moments of our lives
he seemed to show up out of the blue
a sixer of iron city hanging from his fingers
a brown bag with another cradled in his arms
one sixteen-ounce pounder,
sweating and cold in his other hand
he said, you look like industrious young men
but you probably don’t know a goddamned thing
about a hard night’s work
then he parked it on the curb with us and drank
he watched the girls with us
said, if i was your age
i wouldn’t be sitting here like a pack of fags
hindsight is 20/20, i said
he said, i’ll give each of you a beer
if you can go over there to those girls
and just one of you comes back with a name and number
not one us took the bait
christ, we really were a pack of fags
the guy laughed
boys, he said, i’m tired
i’m sick and tired
how’bout i give you my other six pack
if you guys just give me a lift up the hill behind us
i shook my head
i’d been warned about strangers
i wanted to make sure that i had plenty of days left
to sit in strip mall parking lots and look at girls that i’d
never speak to
but it wasn’t my car
calvin said, all right
he got up off the curb and took out his keys
tom stood too
the man sat there for a moment finishing his beer
he gave me one from the promised six pack
a down payment he called it
he slapped me hard on the back
and three of them headed toward calvin’s car
when they drove by
the man was still drinking his pounder
even though calvin had a thing about us drinking in his car
he gave me the thumbs up
made a finger trigger and winked
i stood and watched them go up the hill
until the car drifted behind the kmart
then i sat back down next to the can of beer
watching the girls as they danced to a radio song
that i’d hated all summer long.
for the common man
bill smelt of urine
they complained
he smelt of fecal matter at times
and of vomit and bad breath
the first day i was there they told me
that bill’s wife left him for another man
she left him with nothing but a bottle of pills
and a deep, incommunicable sense of worthlessness
this all happened before you arrived, they said
but bill became my problem anyway
i hadn’t been there a week
geraldine was at my office door every morning
with her tight jeans and her tits hanging out
you’ve got to do something about bill, she said
which one is bill? i said
the depressive
i looked out of the office onto the main floor
there were a group of people i hardly knew
drinking coffee and staring into computer screens
they all look depressive, i said
geraldine rolled her eyes, i’m serious, she said
i’ll go to the union
i hung around bill for a few weeks
got close to him while he sat there playing video poker
who knows what he thought of me
lingering around like that
he was probably too concerned with his philandering ex-wife
he smelt no worse than i did
smelt no worse than anyone on the bus or train
still…
i can’t work in these conditions, geraldine said
i’m filing a grievance against you and bill
good christ, i said
i brought bill into the office
i sat him down across from me
and handed him the company’s policy on grooming
we just sat there and didn’t say a word
i felt like such an asshole
i sat there with bill staring at the floor
remembering all of the offices
and all of the small men that i sat across
middle-management wastes by the dozen
who had problems with my hair, my beard, my clothing
my earrings, my voice, my face, and my very being
now i was joining their ranks
this shit happens to all of us, i told bill
a man can never please the masses when trying to please
himself
bill nodded
are you writing me up? he asked
they were the first words he’d spoken to me
and the idea seemed absurd
no, i said
i’m just trying to keep us out of union entanglements
bill got up and left
an hour later i found the grooming policy
rolled into a ball by the garbage can in the staff room
while they all sat there talking about bill’s ear hair
i slam dunked it into the cylinder
raised my hands up into a fit of victory
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