Please Put Your Skin in One Place

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People say the funniest things like, “I might have done that,” or “I  could have been the one to do that.” Well, its only strange if you don’t agree that we aren’t who we were before who we are now. I suppose you might be mad to think you are who you were but mere seconds ago, no less years or even decades. You might hold onto a name in a feeble attempt to bind some semblance of coherent consciousness over time, yet not everyone chooses this method. A name might help others recognize you, but it won’t stop your skin from falling off. We are disgusted at molted carapaces laying about, all the while we creep around shedding our skin everywhere we go. A least the crustacean or any arthropod has the decency to leave their skin in one place. It makes for an easier cleanup!

I had to start going to a different grocery store. This store was much larger. One where people didn’t leave their skin laying around. How am I suppose to pick out a grapefruit that won’t squirt me in the eye when I’m stepping on people’s skin, and nearly slipping and falling. There were different people here, though some of them were the same. I wasn’t entirely surprised by this feature, maybe people have duplicates. Even duplicates of duplicates. Some might even consider duplicates of duplicates of duplicates, yet I digress. Standing in line, each beep at the register indicated another duplicate was duplicated. I didn’t have anything, so the cashier let me leave. Everyone seemed upset, even though I was just following everyone else. I will try to pick the right grapefruit next time. I might have to try a third store, there was too much skin laying around at that last one. No stone left upturned as they say. I walked on.

I liked the beach but hated the sand. The forest was excellent, unless it was wet, then you were wet. But I suppose being wet isn’t always a bad thing. Assuredly, there were people who wanted to and willing became wet and even sing about it. I saw this in movies often. You learn things from movies, but I had to unlearn most of it as soon as I had seen it. Look at the man smoke, but don’t smoke! Look at the people laugh and drink, but don’t drink! Look at the people fuck, but don’t fuck! Keep being told not to smoke, drink, and fuck places and sooner or later you figure out you aren’t suppose to smoke, drink, and fuck. There was sand bleeding into my shoes.

I left home when I was young, younger than today, trying to find places to smoke, drink, and fuck. I did, but it came at a cost. Here’s one misanthropic mustache and a double neurosis on the rocks please and thank you. I couldn’t keep track of whether I was anal retentive or anal expulsive because it was either always coming out or stuck way up in me. Do you expect me to keep a fecal journal? I had a hard enough time trying to find the right place to shit, before people told me not to. Telling me not to curse as well, but I manged to do that plenty in my youth as well. Every other word was a ‘fuck’ or a ‘shit’ or even a ‘cunt’ if they really had it coming. And by ‘they’ I don’t even mean another person, though sometimes it would be. Sometimes it was a trashcan that was too far out into the alley where I went lurking. Or an envelope that wouldn’t open properly. Especially a milk carton. I saw that all the time. I bet the man would whisper ‘cunt’ under his breath when the milk spilled all over him. It was people like him that deserved to have a bird shit in their mouth, but it was always me who got the shit in my mouth. Or maybe that hadn’t happened yet. It’s always back to the shitting and the pooping. “Christ on a cracker!” Or was it “Christ is a cracker?” I can’t remember any of those frivolous sayings anymore. My feet sank deeper.

I grew up looking at books, but never understanding them. I witnessed the pages move before my eyes, but I never fully took in the flavor of any particular narrative. That is to say, I mean, I understood the narrative, yet the meaning was lost on me. Each word would make sense, but the more that were strung together the less each compounded notion would make sense. Try and put two paragraphs together and I was nearly completely lost; however I always found more meaning when I would rearrange the paragraphs. That was until the librarian came in kicking and screaming and took my knife. I dumped in the wrong place again. I at least learned to mimic what I knew to be the right thing to say about the material in school. I learned how to say just enough so that they would stop bothering me. Behavioral problem this, learning disability that. I always wished they would just get it over with and just call me stupid, like everyone else did. I drew mostly stick-figures to pass the time. The black heads would fight the white heads. I noticed how that related to the puss emanating from my face, but the racial component was lost to me until a black guy punched me in the face one day. In was only in that moment, that I realized how easy I had it no matter how stupid everyone thought I was. Dumb people do dumb things. Smart people outsmart each other and then they go ahead and outsmart themselves. I’ve dealt with both dumb and smart people, but I think its hard to tell the difference between them. It was definitely time to leave this cursed place. Waves crashing were replaced by children wailing and the sun was giving me a headache. I was worried I might shoot someone. I would have to get a gun first.

I had a professor once who wrote books but kept them in his closet. He would make students cry over the introductory elements of Ethics. Suicide was a common thread of discussion. You might be surprised that a fool like me who ponders bird shit was able to attend such a prestigious class, well you should know that they let just about anyone with three-hundred dollars take an ethics course at community college. My friend might as well have been hanging right there in the class room, though, so maybe it wasn’t worth my money. I had to leave and get water. Maybe I was the only one who was crying. Maybe I couldn’t handle these difficult topics. I was ruined. I came to this class to show how morally superior I was to everyone else and now I’m hunted by ghosts swaying under florescent lights. I was suppose to go to college. There wasn’t two ways about it. I went and played and danced through the motions, but that swaying body continued haunting me. Was it my fault? I was stuck in the sky. I was told to never get stuck in the sky and that is exactly where I ended up. I read a bunch of dead losers and some live losers. I didn’t appreciate anything I had learned till much later, and by then it was useless anyway. Drugs made you smart and stupid just like the books you pretended to read. That women with her kid on the swing was doped up, I’m sure of it. These kids playing volleyball were probably on drugs too. 

I was all wrapped up in this miserable miracle they call adolescent. I think some people never leave this stage. Gently floating in a salty sea, these people rest and resist change. Living forever liminally as a lush featherbrained lunatic. I see these people in sandals and many colored shorts with large beaks and short guts. I might be one of these people. I spent most of my time walking or sitting alone now. Sitting various places and walking to other places to sit. This ever elusive grocery store continued to plague my mind, which raced with the question wracking my brain and making me physically ill. I knew people could see the anguish on my face. They must have thought my mother died. The amount of pain with which I writhed on a city bench. All the mistakes I had made in my life danced through my head, picking and prodding my fat fleshy brain. With cattle prods they tortured my weary soul, picking and prodding, picking and prodding. All of these moments culminated into this single unsolvable problem. Still, a thousand splendors stood before me, yet my feet felt dry and baked.

It’s hard to be told to, “move along” so many times in a single day. Constantly people must have found me so displeasurable they call someone else to tell me to leave the area. “Do you have a home,” they would ask? My ID was up to date. Each interaction made everyone feel silly and hurt my ego. “Why don’t you just go home and clean up?” What a preposterous thought! A country that touts freedom, yet you aren’t free to stink on a bench. I should be able to stink on a bench if I’d like to stink on a bench. To stink on a bench is to be free. They told me I could make a formal complaint at the station, but I knew that was a trick. I’d never see the light of day again if I went with any of them. Image the skin left in their cruiser, or worse the concrete slab they call a bed. They don’t clean that, and even if they did it would come crawling back. Skin on top of skin baking itself into ever nook and crevice available. I’d been there, and when I was there I wasn’t thinking about how much other skin was also there cluttering up the place. Now, the very thought of it ruined me. I would have to be more careful about where I sat in the future.