No time for poetry today.
The mornings are predictable, in the way that all small town mornings are. The only real difference is that today is garbage day. Tuesday. I set the garbage out last night and this morning when Maude left for work, she had to come back in to tell me that something had gotten into the garbage after I set it out the night before. I knew which little son of bitch it was, too. And if I didn't already know I could sure as shit guess by looking at it. Big dogs throw trash all over the place, leave big gaping holes in the bags. Whatever had gotten into the garbage gnawed tiny holes in the corners and sides of the bags. Small mouth. I told myself that at least the little fucker hadn't strewn our garbage all over the place; it was relatively easy to clean up. Maude left for work and I picked up the garbage, re-bagging it all so that the garbage men would pick it up and so that when they did it wouldn't make an even bigger mess. After that I go back inside, wash my hands two or three times, pour another cup of coffee, and light a cigarillo to get the morning chill out of my bones.
Winter's coming. Summer hung on longer than I expected it to and Fall has been shorter than I wanted it to be. I wanted to enjoy the changing the of the leaves. That was one of the things I missed. Leaves changing. Though I'm starting to realize that my brain, yet again, played another massive trick on me – the same trick it always plays. Things never work quite the way I remember them. I remember Fall in Eastern Kentucky and in the Ohio Valley where I was born and grew up. I can almost see them again when I close my eyes. Lots of vibrant colors; greens exploding into red, orange, yellow, like the last charge of the light brigade. I always think of that poem when I think about Fall. My 7th grade English teacher, Miss Mallory, made me memorize that poem and then stand in front of the class and recite it. Maybe it was the Fall when that happened. I don't really remember all that precisely because I didn't pay much attention to things when I was a kid. All I really remember about that year was that I had to memorize two poems – Charge of the Light Brigade and Poe's Annabelle Lee – and recite them in front of the class. I also remember that Miss Mallory had the biggest set of tits I had ever seen, and that was around the time I started noticing those kinds of things. Tits and poetry. When faced with the weight of those things, most teenage boys simply aren't bothering to look out the window and pine over the beauty of the changing leaves.
But when I close my eyes, I can almost see the leaves as I think they should be. And in my imagination, they are invariably brighter and more beautiful than they ever really are. Maybe I've watched too much television. Or maybe I stayed out of of the Midwest too long. I thought that maybe moving back to the Big Empty would unearth something in me; that small town boy, the one I also remember with probably too much revision and creativity. Over the years through the different places I've lived, I have always identified myself as a small town boy. I suppose the problem is that when a small town boy becomes a man somewhere else, those things that really made him a small town boy disappear.
These are things I mull over, trying to get the idea out of my head that I should walk across the street and tell the neighbors to pay more attention to their dog when they let it out. It's a chow mix; one of those hairy little snarky ankle biting bitches. That it's a tiny mop of a dog isn't the most annoying part. No, the most annoying part is that the people who's dog it is have a fenced in back yard and they don't let the dog shit there because they don't want to have to clean it up. Even if I did walk over there and thank them for the mess their useless little dog left me this morning, nothing would change. I'm already the neighborhood oddball because I don't obsess over manicuring my lawn and because I'm not a Bears fan. Being the neighborhood freak puts me in the running for town rube. There's already a couple of town drunks, a few trailer park whores, and the dog catcher ahead of me. But the drunks work, the whores perform a necessary, albeit frowned upon, public service, and the dog catcher grew up here. I'm a freak AND an outsider.
And that means, among other things, that when people's ill-mannered dogs get into my trash on an early Tuesday morning, my only option is to clean it up and say nothing. Because even though other people's trash has been similarly attacked in the past, they get around it by not putting it on the curb until after the dog has done it's business.
I suppose I should forgive the people their little snarky dog. They're from Ohio, originally. I know that because we've gotten their mail in our box by mistake before. But they're from Wooster, which might as well be in a different state. And while I remember being told about the divinity of forgiveness, I'm fairly certain that nowhere in the bible does it say I have to forgive people for not wanting to clean up after their pets. Although from what I hear at the bar in town sometimes, everything is in the bible, in spite of the fact that I don't remember it being there. One of the bartenders will, whenever the discussion borders on politics, say that all the troubles we're having are “in the bible.” I like the bartender well enough, so I haven't bothered to inquire as to her meaning, or ask her to prove it. I know how that'll work out, anyway. I'll be godless AND a freak AND most likely a communist … because here, they're all the same thing. Plus there will be the added bonus of wearing out my welcome at the only bar in town I can tolerate.
Maude keeps trying to tell me I need to be nice. “If people knew how you really were,” she tells me, “maybe you'd make some friends.”
“If people knew how I REALLY was,” I tell her, “they'd run me out of town on a rail. I'm sure they still do that here.”
I wonder sometimes if she wants me to act How I Really Am or How She Would Prefer Me to Be. That's probably unfair, I know. Sometimes she reminds me of how I wasn't always so bitter. That's what she calls it. Bitter. When my general demeanor gets in the way, I'm bitter. When it's funny, or poignant, she says I'm turning into a Cranky Old Man. She smiles when she says that.
Nice doesn't seem to fit into things, though. Nice gets you a smile and a handshake not much else. Nice is the trait bullies look for when they want someone to beat the shit out of. Nice. I was told once that I act like an ass because I'm overcompensating. Because down deep I'm really insecure. Well no shit. Everybody overcompensates for something. Everybody has some thing about them they don't like. Maude overcompensates for her deeply anti-social feelings by being nice to everyone. We're more alike behind closed doors than most people would think. I'm a little nicer. She's a little meaner. We share a bitter disappointment in the human race, and we both laugh about it on a regular basis. The difference is that I don't mind voicing my disappointment for everyone to hear. But I also know that she'll get where I am eventually. I used to try and be nice. But the world wears you down.
Everything about it wears you down until all that remains are those honest feelings and true thoughts that don't go away, that stay with you. The ideas that dance behind your eyes when you're busy mediating your way through another day, the ones that give you solace and feed your darkest revenge fantasies. I went to a counselor once at the urging of my family because they thought I was too depressed. I told the counselor that I had violent fantasies, that I used to imagine myself ripping someone's throat out. I described the sound I thought the esophagus made as it tore free... like hundreds of suction cups being ripped off hundreds of windows. A pleasantly gory series of syncopated pops. The shrink asked who I pictured in these fantasies. I told him I was imagining him at that very moment.
He offered to medicate me. I told him to go fuck himself. My anger and depression may annoy the shit out of everyone around me. But at least they're mine, goddammit.