Brian
Well-known member
(I'm in kind of a dark mood right now. Please excuse the melodrama, but I needed to write something. I'll be fine in the morning.)
In ten years I'll probably be a burned-out Fire Medic, bitter about work and not looking forward to another day of kneeling in piss doing chest compressions on a corpse. The lights are turned down low in my inner-city apartment, which is cluttered and messy because nobody is going to see it but me. The TV is on to another History Channel re-run about the beginnings of the still-going war in the Middle East, bathing me in the pale glow of the screen in the otherwise dark room.
I'm slouched in my recliner, scruffy-faced and red eyed. It's late afternoon, though the heavy curtains are pulled tight and only a few beams escape in to my dusky dwelling. There's a loaded .45 on the table next to my chair; guns are outlawed and it's unregistered. But it's a bad part of town and us honest folk need to defend ourselves. An attempt at dinner lies forgotten on the counter, next to an empty box of Macaroni and Cheese. A bottle of whiskey hangs in my hand half empty. So much for not drinking...but what's it matter now, anyway?
It's been ten years since I knew the brief company of a woman. Nothing came of it; I didn't even get a hug. But in the early sunset of my life, I have to count it. Her name was Stephanie. She was beautiful and friendly...and absolutely uninterested. I remember the smell of her perfume; it was fresh and buoyant, and reminded me of the caressing feeling of an air conditioned room after a hard day's work in the hot sun when I was a young man. I remember wanting to hold her tight and to bury my nose in her hair. I remember it lingered on my car seat for three days, even though she sat there so briefly. I stopped trying shortly after that; something about me was obviously put-offish on some sort of universal level. Such is life.
At 32, I wish that ten years ago I had done the smart thing and gone in to Cardiography. Another 15 years and I could be sailing the world and sipping wine, enjoying a warm afternoon on the Spanish Main; instead I am here, on a blue collar salary, eschewed by my neighbors who want nothing to do with the creep next door or his dark apartment. I can hear them talking about me, from time to time, through the thin common-walls. You're right, lady. I never have company over. Please accept my apology for saying hello last Christmas Eve. I thought you might like supper since I heard you yelling at your now ex-boyfriend over the phone last week. If you're going to be a catty bitch about it, I won't bother you again.
Another swig of whiskey finds me gazing at the clock. After just coming down from last shift, I'm due in the morning for another. Politics and backstabbers; my 'Union Brothers' who talk from both sides of their mouth and preach false loyalty. Drunks and addicts comatose, passed out in the street. Teenage bathroom miscarriages in the projects, and yard upon yard of EKG tape scrolling out on to piss soaked carpet as someone else's grandma croaks. 'Young and ate-up', that was what my partner told me ten years ago when I had my first fire job. 'Youll hate it someday. Wait and see.' I denied it, and chalked my enthusiasm up to having found my calling, my place. Something I was good at and could wake up to and retire from. I wish I had listened. I miss Dale. He was the only honest, trustworthy person I've met in this business. I would have died with him. Instead, I helplessly comforted his widow at his funeral. Later that night I remember screaming out every choked back tear. I never thought cancer could take such an ornery bastard. And never could I have wished for it to take my friend.
There are no heroes and no role models. Only a union mob, screwing each other one minute and crying for more taxpayer dollars the next.
Not that the dollar is really worth anything now. Thank you, Washington.
I turn off the television and rub my eyes to try and think of something happy. They feel like sandpaper. I push myself up from the chair and lay down on the couch; bed is too far, and I've always slept better on a couch anyway. My feet itch and my hair is greasy. It's been a week and a half since I shaved with more than a trimmer. Any more civilized person would shower; but every one of the three bastards on my understaffed, overworked Engine company will smell just as bad tomorrow, and as many times as they've tried to **** me they can smell my B.O. day and night. And there's certainly not anyone here to gripe at me. Though I wish there was. I wish there was...
I would give anything to be griped at...and I would give everything to have a soft hand brush through my receding hair and tell me that tomorrow won't be so bad.
I pull the blanket over my head, close my eyes to the world, and wait for it to turn 'round once more.
In ten years I'll probably be a burned-out Fire Medic, bitter about work and not looking forward to another day of kneeling in piss doing chest compressions on a corpse. The lights are turned down low in my inner-city apartment, which is cluttered and messy because nobody is going to see it but me. The TV is on to another History Channel re-run about the beginnings of the still-going war in the Middle East, bathing me in the pale glow of the screen in the otherwise dark room.
I'm slouched in my recliner, scruffy-faced and red eyed. It's late afternoon, though the heavy curtains are pulled tight and only a few beams escape in to my dusky dwelling. There's a loaded .45 on the table next to my chair; guns are outlawed and it's unregistered. But it's a bad part of town and us honest folk need to defend ourselves. An attempt at dinner lies forgotten on the counter, next to an empty box of Macaroni and Cheese. A bottle of whiskey hangs in my hand half empty. So much for not drinking...but what's it matter now, anyway?
It's been ten years since I knew the brief company of a woman. Nothing came of it; I didn't even get a hug. But in the early sunset of my life, I have to count it. Her name was Stephanie. She was beautiful and friendly...and absolutely uninterested. I remember the smell of her perfume; it was fresh and buoyant, and reminded me of the caressing feeling of an air conditioned room after a hard day's work in the hot sun when I was a young man. I remember wanting to hold her tight and to bury my nose in her hair. I remember it lingered on my car seat for three days, even though she sat there so briefly. I stopped trying shortly after that; something about me was obviously put-offish on some sort of universal level. Such is life.
At 32, I wish that ten years ago I had done the smart thing and gone in to Cardiography. Another 15 years and I could be sailing the world and sipping wine, enjoying a warm afternoon on the Spanish Main; instead I am here, on a blue collar salary, eschewed by my neighbors who want nothing to do with the creep next door or his dark apartment. I can hear them talking about me, from time to time, through the thin common-walls. You're right, lady. I never have company over. Please accept my apology for saying hello last Christmas Eve. I thought you might like supper since I heard you yelling at your now ex-boyfriend over the phone last week. If you're going to be a catty bitch about it, I won't bother you again.
Another swig of whiskey finds me gazing at the clock. After just coming down from last shift, I'm due in the morning for another. Politics and backstabbers; my 'Union Brothers' who talk from both sides of their mouth and preach false loyalty. Drunks and addicts comatose, passed out in the street. Teenage bathroom miscarriages in the projects, and yard upon yard of EKG tape scrolling out on to piss soaked carpet as someone else's grandma croaks. 'Young and ate-up', that was what my partner told me ten years ago when I had my first fire job. 'Youll hate it someday. Wait and see.' I denied it, and chalked my enthusiasm up to having found my calling, my place. Something I was good at and could wake up to and retire from. I wish I had listened. I miss Dale. He was the only honest, trustworthy person I've met in this business. I would have died with him. Instead, I helplessly comforted his widow at his funeral. Later that night I remember screaming out every choked back tear. I never thought cancer could take such an ornery bastard. And never could I have wished for it to take my friend.
There are no heroes and no role models. Only a union mob, screwing each other one minute and crying for more taxpayer dollars the next.
Not that the dollar is really worth anything now. Thank you, Washington.
I turn off the television and rub my eyes to try and think of something happy. They feel like sandpaper. I push myself up from the chair and lay down on the couch; bed is too far, and I've always slept better on a couch anyway. My feet itch and my hair is greasy. It's been a week and a half since I shaved with more than a trimmer. Any more civilized person would shower; but every one of the three bastards on my understaffed, overworked Engine company will smell just as bad tomorrow, and as many times as they've tried to **** me they can smell my B.O. day and night. And there's certainly not anyone here to gripe at me. Though I wish there was. I wish there was...
I would give anything to be griped at...and I would give everything to have a soft hand brush through my receding hair and tell me that tomorrow won't be so bad.
I pull the blanket over my head, close my eyes to the world, and wait for it to turn 'round once more.
I hope that your dark mood has passed, Brian.
