Break Fast

I may as well come clean about something else. The other night when the wife was out, I passed by the grocery store on my way home from the mall, feeling like I was looking very tired. There was a really hot chick working the 15 Items Or Less line. She was in her late 20's or early 30's, had a lot of makeup on, bleached hair, looked a lot like Mariska Hargitay. No wedding ring. Semi-clawlike fingers, a sure sign of a bitch and/or a cigarette smoker. When it comes to women who smoke, I can spot one just by her fingers. Generous women have rounded fingertips. Hippie hands. Dirty smokers have selfish claws. It sounds fanciful but I have an amazing expertise at it.

She too had her "I'm not looking at anyone because I'm very good looking so I don't want you to think I'm the slightest bit interested in you" attitude on. I swear she didn't look up at one single customer as she rang them up. Plus that particular store is in a pretty ghetto area and almost exclusively scummy people go there.

Anyway, when I got done paying for my groceries I asked her where the rice milk was. I followed her directions to aisle 3 and grabbed two containers. They had almond milk too, which the wife drinks, and knew I should buy it since we were low on both mine and hers. But then, only halfway consciously thinking about it, I decided it would fuck up my excuse to flirt. If I was "feelin' it" I was considering saying something about how I had a craving for horchata, and wanted to cheat and make my own by adding cinnamon sticks to rice milk. If she was the slightest bit not a bitch, she'd laugh and I'd be off to the races. But buying almond milk too might fuck it up. Why would I be buying that? What am I, some kind of milk freak? If I were in normal spirits I could make up some wisecrack off the top of my head about it and play it off.

As it turns out, she didn't even look up at me on my second trip through the line, but it didn't matter, I was just not feeling it that night.

Breakfast

Today for breakfast I had rice milk for my cereal. My wife didn't have any almond milk. I dawned on me that I really hadn't thought much about not getting it for her. I just thought about making the right impression on the checkout woman.

Break / Fast

I really am a wreck of a human being. I should be shot. I can't even make a To Do list any more. I've done it so many times, I feel like a parody of a real person. I never get everything done. I never get totally caught up in my life. I would but I run out of energy. I start doing something, anything, even a simple task like cleaning up, and I think "Oh my god, how on earth am I going to make it all the way to the end?" It feels like walking from Los Angeles to New York: You walk for an hour and realize you're incredibly far from your goal and you haven't made one iota of a difference in your journey yet, not really.

In my opinion this is why goofy people get caught up doing the stupidest little tasks. They feel like their whole life is shit, and they are ineffectual, so they just focus on doing some little tiny thing. This is the guy with the piece of shit broken down 70's car with four different tires and the red tape taillight and the plastic window, packed full of his worldly possessions, and McDonalds trash, and his sleazy angry wife in her threadbare t-shirt. The car leaks coolant and automatic transmission fluid and motor oil, and it needs brakes. He's working on installing fog lights in the auto parts store parking lot.

I really am just a horrible person. I need to get another job like my last one, getting paid over a hundred thousand dollars a year to do nothing all day. Instead my poor wife is the one working. I make more than she does, just from my severance package and unemployment, but still I feel like a total sleaze. I should be bringing home lots more money so she can be happy. So she can have whatever she wants. So I can provide for our daughter. And so I can maybe have a few of the things I want.

I made somewhere over $200,000 last year and all I bought myself was some clothes (on clearance, 50% off), four books off Amazon.com (used), a pack of blank CD's, the big hard drive, and I spent $500 to fix our computer. So I could surf for porn.

I did spend money on the wife. I let her buy whatever she wants. It's an easy way to make her happy, and to be different. And it is an easy way to impress her friends and coworkers. Maybe I can sleep with them, etc. Come to think of it, I have fantasized about pretty much every one of them and have evaluated the possibilities and how it could go down. Pardon the pun.

I did also spend money on my girlfriend. She has never once paid for dinner. Or anything. Hotels and motels, alcohol...
I fill up her tank whenever she lets me. I have the oil changed in her car sometimes. And I buy her gifts. I pity her, and I want to provide for her. Another part of me hopes it will redeem me in a way. And yet another part hopes it will make her decide that she'll do more of the things I want in bed, as a reward.

I'm not proud of that last part. I'm just telling you how I am.