Home Alone

I went by the mall tonight. The wife is at work and I was trying to figure out what to do. On the one hand I'd love to go someplace exciting, like into L.A. or Hollywood. If I tried hard enough I might be able to talk to a girl and make her laugh, flirt with her. But on the other hand I might drive for an hour and a half and then totally strike out.

Also I'm tired, and there is nothing worse than "trying too hard" when you're worn out and off your game. I probably look old now anyway.

I didn't want to risk the drive of shame, returning home all dolled up and smelling of foo-foo juice, a washed-up loser who spent $20 in gas to drive to where the hip, happening, young people are, but was such a dweeb he might as well have been from another planet.

At the mall I passed by the shoe store. Sure enough the girl was there who I'd flirted with a few days ago, when I was with my wife. When I came in tonight she was happy to see me, and gave me the smile of a mall girl who knows she has a regular, a guy who comes by because he likes her, not because he's checking to see whether the new Nikes are in. I found it weird since I assume she knows I'm a lot older than she is. Maybe she thinks I am only 27. A lot of people do. We talked about the shoes I was still looking for, she told me to come back this weekend. I made a point of asking which days she works, and she made a point of telling me exactly when she gets in - and closes.

When I see her next and order and prepay for the shoes, I will ask for my dollar back - otherwise she's double-dipping. She'll laugh.

If I want to pick her up, I'll use my butter-wouldn't-melt look and say something like "I can't keep coming back and buying shoes just to have an excuse to see you, and you'd probably see through it and think I was a total stalker, so, can I have your number?"

I hope I don't, but right now I can't see anything wrong with it.

I swear I'm mentally ill. Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me – bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But then I'll still be fat, though. Nothing's gonna change that unless I do. And right now the chances do not look good. I have to start, I can't stay stuck in this rut. I'm almost 35 years old and in a lot of ways I'm not much further along than I was when I was 25. Or 18, or 15. I'm going to go do some situps and pushups and stuff, and then take a shower.