Microwaves and Insomnia (cont.)My xanga soul is dying, or my writing soul is dying. There used to be a time when I would check you everyday xanga. Now I don't. The thrill is gone. The effort is too great. The success, popularity, or fame was due to me always commenting.
The rules have changed now and I'm too lazy to play along. I'd rather have people genuinely come across and find me interesting enough to stay. But we all know quality was never a priority when it came to my site. These days I play with facebook. I'm not in the mood for writing in general either.
Part of me wants to believe that my previous inclination to write everyday or every week something new was always me. Now I realize a large part of it for the past two years when I wrote the most, was driven by xanga. This can considered bad or good.
Now it's all gone. I doubt it was all xanga, I think something in me is different.
you can find me on facebook now anyway. www.facebook.com/sebastian.h.paramo
Or google me. I'll be leaving for South Korea in August.
I leave you with another chapter. I don't know if I'll update again, but it's nice to have a portal to the past always open. Goodbye
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It was Saturday. I hated Saturday. I don't care if everybody likes'em just because it's another day off for them or it's the day after Friday. Saturdays were dreadful and coming home early didn't help me any. Saturdays reminded me of the way things used to be. Before I came to this town. Before I ever met Margaret. Margaret had become the only reliable thing in this town. The first day I moved into this ratty ass ranky danky shit-hole, I was disappointed. I found out it was full of old people.
“Well, at least you'll feel alive, son.”
It was actually the opposite. Those senior citizens were younger than I ever was.
They had balls and dress-ups and the old man down the hall, I'm sure had more ladies in his bedroom than I ever have had in my lifetime, and that's only what I know of since I've been here. Then I met good old Maggie, I had been living there for a good solid week. Getting all settled in, listening to cats fucking in the hallway, lounging around at 2 am, catching up on bills and listening to the witty banter of couples on Cheaters in the background. She was loudly protesting, coming home. She was banging on walls and I don't think the neighbors cared, they were all enjoying the Viagra or whatever elixir of sex they had yielded in their bedrooms.
I ignored it, but she wouldn't stop trying to open my door.
“What do you want?” I stood up perplexed and put my ear to the door. I looked through the peephole and found her leaning on the door, breathing heavily.
“Let me. Into. My. Apartment.”
I opened the door to find her immediately slumped into my life. Our life has been erratic ever since.
Saturday evening was my dinner date with the boss. Maggie had been gone all day when I came home and the only productive thing I had done was make an early dinner in a box and gone to the big-box store we all know as Wal-Mart to buy some socks. I had to be prepared for tonight. My socks were terrible. Then, she came in with a loud thud and I fell for it as usual. Everything, all my socks, the crumbs, the plastic dinner box: fell off me and into the clutter of other discarded boxes from yesterday below me.
“You just now waking up, sleepy head?”
“No, I was waiting for you.”
“Well, comb your hair, we're going out tonight.”
“What do you mean we're going out tonight? I'm not the hot stuff I used to be, you know and we never go out. Aren't you content to just come home and fuck me?”
She put a shopping bag away in my room. She was dressed real killer tonight. I kind of wished we didn't have to go see my boss.
“We're going.”
“No, we're not. I was waiting for you all day. I need to tell you something.”
I sat up and wiped off the leftovers hanging out the corner of my mouth. I stretched.
She raised the sunglasses from her head and took them off and went on to put her long curly reds into a scrunchy. It was her presentable hair, she had always said.
“What do you need to tell me?”
“I'm going to Yusef's house for dinner. He invited me”
I went up and into my room following her into my room. I headed for the closed while she paused for a moment to check herself out in front of the stand out mirror. She was fixing her face or whatever. I spoke to her from inside the closet as I dressed.
“Well, I guess you can go then. I don't really need you to have fun.”
“He invited the both of us.”
I picked out an old green button-up. It was way in the back of my closet. Hardly used and still presentable. Taking it off, I threw it in the hamper and came out to stand next to her while I buttoned up.
“Why would he do that?”
“He says I don't eat enough real food and he thinks your my girlfriend.”
I told her as I buttoned myself up. She came up to me and began straighting my collar.
“Oh really? Why the hell would you tell him that?” She laughed and stood back to admire her work. She then went over to my closet and took out a tie. I didn't know I even had a tie in there.
“It's okay if you don't want to go. I understand. I don't like going out in public with you either, much less be associated with you that way.”
I didn't know how to tie a tie and she knew this right away when she handed it to me and I looked at it strangely.
“I didn't say I wasn't going. What time does the bus leave for it?”
She tied my tie and dressed as she was, which wasn't too bad for a dinner party, away we went.
My arm was hurting. I rung the doorbell.
Before we had come we were arguing about the “proper etiquette of going to a person's bosses house.
It began awkwardly as we sat in the back of the bus dressed as we were, we were out of place. Her long dress was accentuated with red here and there. Red patterns, red hems. Her skin was cool to the touch, even as I wore my pants I could feel her chill. She was warming them against mine and her touch was both thrilling and strange. I was suddenly aware of the awkward atmosphere I was in.
I was sitting on a bus with a woman I'd never been out to public with until now. We weren't dating, but my boss thinks we're a couple. All I ever knew about Margaret is based on the first night I met her, the nights and few afternoons I spend in her bedroom among other places in her former apartment and the little she talks of her outside life.
The landlord, I don't think was even aware of her abrupt move to my place. On the way out to the bus she was more than anxious to leave. When we came to the landlord's floor she kept behind me and walked slowly. Her hands clung to me like a nervous kindergartner about to be left by her mother on her first day of school. We made it okay.
Now, we were here and she was holding my hand with a brave smirk. As if she was the queen of the streets. She felt more at home than I did among these people. The night crowd on the bus was different from the morning one.
She asked me first, “So are you excited to be seeing the boss tonight.”
“Not really. He begged me to come. When I told him I was living with you he insisted.”
“Kind of strange isn't it. You've never told me about your boss. What's he like?”
“You never ask.”
“Well, I'm asking now.”
“He's a guy. He has a wife. We have lunch together sometimes. That's all I know really.”
“I look forward to meeting this character then.”
“That's another thing. I hope you aren't how I think you are in public or with people. This is kind of a big deal, you know and I don't want any of your lewdness out there. So be polite and nice.”
“What do you mean, “how you think” I am?” She raised her voice a bit loud and people started to stare.
“I mean things like this where you raise your voice and people start to stare.”
She looked around, as if stung by an insult.
“I don't think that's very fair. You should know me by now. We're living together. I don't think you should assume to think I'm a bad character just because of some ridiculous impression you have of me. What is this impression you have of me anyway? How am I lewd? You think I'm going to be lewd with your boss?
“The first night I met you, you were drunk. You go out a lot. More than I do. You were kicked out of your apartment and you can be loud sometimes.”
“That's not true,” she said it softly.
“It is, I'm afraid.”
I felt badly about the whole situation then. She was no longer loud now. Her face looked soft, her spirit lighter, and less fierce. People were beginning to look at us again.
“If that's all true why didn't you tell me? Why do you fuck me?”
“I thought you knew? This is how we are. We don't love, we don't feel. We fuck and we're two sad people. We don't have much hope.”
She looked at the window for a brief second. Her reflection was there in the class, clandestine. I didn't know what to think. Fierceness returned to her face.
“Whoever you think that person is, it is not me. I can't believe you sometimes. You really don't know me as well as I thought.”
“I guess the next few weeks, we'll get to know each other.”
“We will.”
Later we arrived. I told her she was to act as my girlfriend. Difficult to do when we're not doing so well right now.
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