It is the last Friday in August. Last night was a rainstorm coming home and I was wet but not terribly so. There’s hardly anyone at the fruit stand this morning which means they’ll be hardly anyone at the fruit stand this afternoon.
I am supposed to go out to see Elaine tomorrow but I’m lazy and I’m much rather not but once I do it I’ll be fine. It’s the stage fright dilemma. Getting to the stage is the problem once I am on stage there is no problem. I slept very well last night and I have no complaints. I plan on repeating that this evening.
Bill is upstate New York Mike is with his beloved Wade and I am at the fruit stand.
And try to figure out what I want to do for lunch part of me wants to get halal food even though it was quite dull last time. Wendy’s is always a possibility and that’s quite dull as well but it’s a hamburger and french fries and you know that can’t be bad or is it?
Once again this is being dictated into the phone so I have no idea how it will turn out until I edit it before I post this evening. It seems to be a nice day.
The last Friday in August. Summer still exists for about another month give or take a few days. September is my birth month and also one of my least favorite months only because it reminds me of going back to school.
School was always a problem for me, remembering my sister telling me how I was hanging onto the fence horizontal to the ground screaming for my mother. I’m wondering why she had abandoned me. That’s how school started for me and I never really got over it. I stopped clinging to the fence and crying but internally as I was saying it was the same.
Like I posted the other day, my sister Annemarie phoned me a week or so ago claiming that Elaine my sister-in-law desperately needs my assistance. I contacted Elaine and she did not leave me to believe that she desperately needs my assistance but wouldn’t mind a visit. There’s also a bag that she has for me of books or magazines or perhaps clothes that have been put on the side awaiting my arrival.
There is so much awfulness ready to be seen with the touch of the screen. I admit that I have no reason for it myself watching a drunk girl who was arrested for killing a bride on her wedding day while drunk driving. Her sense of entitlement is what drew me in and like a bad accident I couldn’t take my eyes away. I watched the bride’s father in court crying his eyes out over the loss of his daughter. That was enough that’s all I needed to see and I had to turn it off.
It is a beautiful August day though and outside on my spot smoking a cigar that I got for free from Slippery Rock Pennsylvania.
As I was sitting there in my spot, a man came up to me and asked me if I had $2. Took me by surprise and I was not about to open my wallet since I know better. When I muttered no, he remarked oh you’re just chilling and shuffled away. When he turned the corner I opened my wallet and pulled out two dollars.
I was going to finish my cigar, throw it in the garbage and if he was there and walk over to him and give him $2. But he was not there and I felt a little bit bad.
I usually see the same people day in and day out. There’s the handsome black runner, the Asian guy walking your dog with an older white gentleman following 10 feet away. I did not see either one today.
Two and a half hours left until the weekend.
I have to send a note to Elaine asking me her what time I should stop by tomorrow. It turns out that Elaine is in the Poconos so I will not be going out to see her tomorrow.
Right now I’m at my desk at the fruit stands listening to James Brown Live at the Apollo Vol 2. I am drawn back to the late 1980s and I was hanging out with Julio for one of the first times. His parents were in Spain. He had the house where we were hanging out listening to James Brown. We are all younger than the world seemed fresh little did we know…
Am I an empath? Do I have too much empathy that when I sit down outside I pick up everything from anyone who is walking by? I wonder if that’s why sometimes I feel a little blue when I’m outside watching people walk by.
Before the day at the fruit stand ended, I received a message from Yancy, asking me to be at the big fruit stand Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I was supposed to be there onWednesday as well. I responded affirmatively with an ‘Of Course’. Team player- Me!
David Sedaris essay by Google Gemini
It is the last Friday in August, which is a bit like being at a party where the host has already put on their coat and is pointedly turning off the lamps, but everyone insists on lingering by the punch bowl anyway.
Last night brought a torrential rainstorm. By the time I shuffled home, I was thoroughly soaked, though not quite in that tragic, cinematic way where you look like a drowned rat in a melodrama. Just wet enough to feel vaguely punished by the atmosphere. This morning, my minor, localized fruit stand of an office is utterly deserted. When a place is empty at nine in the morning, it is a mathematical guarantee that it will be a ghost town by three in the afternoon, which leaves me alone with my thoughts—always a dangerous arrangement.
Tomorrow I am supposed to trek out to visit my sister-in-law, Elaine. My sister Annemarie had phoned me a week ago in a state of mild hysteria, claiming that Elaine was in desperate, dire need of my personal intervention. When I finally called Elaine, however, she sounded entirely serene and suggested only that she wouldn’t mind a brief visit. She also mentioned having a mystery bag waiting for me—filled with books, or magazines, or perhaps discarded clothes. I am lazy by nature, and the thought of leaving my apartment makes me want to lie down in a darkened room, but I suffer from a severe case of stage fright. The agony is entirely in the getting to the stage. Once I am actually standing there, I am usually fine.
As it turns out, the universe has spared me from my own good intentions: Elaine sent word that she is currently in the Poconos. Crisis avoided.
With Elaine away, Bill upstate, and Mike off with his beloved Wade, I am left entirely to my own devices. At lunch, I suffered the agonizing dilemma of deciding what to eat. Part of me craved halal chicken and rice, even though the last time I had it, the dish was as bland as wet cardboard. Wendy’s was the alternative—equally dull, but there is something deeply comforting about a hot paper bag of salt and grease. You know it’s terrible for you, but can a hamburger and french fries ever truly be a mistake?
September is lurking just around the corner. It is my birth month, but I have despised it since childhood simply because it signals the brutal return to school. School was a horror. My sister loves to remind me of my very first day, when I was found clinging to the chain-link fence, pulled completely horizontal to the ground, screaming for my mother at the top of my lungs as if she had traded me off to a passing circus. I eventually let go of the fence and stopped weeping publicly, but internally, I have remained suspended horizontally from that chain-link fence for the rest of my life.
To pass the time, I sat outside on my usual break spot, puffing on a cigar I had acquired for free from Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, and scrolling through my phone. The internet is a endless buffet of misery. I found myself hypnotized by a video of a young woman being arraigned after a horrific drunk driving accident that killed a bride on her wedding day. The girl’s staggering, petulant sense of entitlement was so monstrous I couldn’t look away, followed immediately by the shattered father crying his eyes out in the courtroom. It was devastating, and I had to close the app, disgusted with myself for watching it in the first place. Am I an empath? Do I absorb the terrible, invisible radio waves of everyone who walks past me on the street? Is that why sitting outside on a sunny afternoon can suddenly make a person feel so overwhelmingly blue?
While I was pondering this, a man approached me and asked if I had two dollars. Taken off guard, I panicked. I know better than to pull out a wallet in front of a stranger, so I muttered a quick “no.” He looked at me, said, “Oh, you’re just chilling,” and shuffled away. The moment he turned the corner, guilt set in. I opened my wallet, pulled out two dollar bills, and decided I would hand them to him as soon as I finished my cigar. But when I stood up, he was gone.
Usually, the street offers its familiar cast of characters—the handsome Black runner, or the Asian gentleman walking his dog with an older white man trailing precisely ten feet behind him like a reluctant shadow. Neither of them appeared today.
Back at my desk, with two and a half hours left until the weekend, I put on *James Brown Live at the Apollo Vol. 2*. Instantly, I was yanked back to the late 1980s, sitting in my friend Julio’s house while his parents were away in Spain, listening to that exact same record. We were so young then, and the world seemed absurdly fresh, completely unaware of the indignities awaiting us down the road.
Just before the clock ran out, a message popped up from Yancy asking if I could cover the main fruit stand next week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday instead of my usual schedule.
“Of course,” I typed back immediately. A regular team player.