I Don't Want To Discuss Anything
It's not that hard to help a stranger when that is your intention but that was not my intention this afternoon, so the idea of helping someone became a thing almost loathsome to my considering of it. My intention was to carry Bernadette across some god awful distance away from this bucolic overkill into the hell of a newly designed sprung out of nowhere steroidal enhanced strip shopping center, in America, between Gainsville and Manassas, VA. A place of so many stores spread out over so many acres with fake cobblestone on grids leading to more stores hidden away lining quaint main streets of a wild west town except without saloons and dry goods stores but instead the ubiquitous gourmet coffee houses and bread stores, that's right I said bread stores. All the vehicles angled into spaces look more or less the same and new and shiny. When you leave a space someone else is always waiting to enter it and I can't help myself from thinking of making a living selling parking spaces to manic shoppers driving SUVs that cost more than every house I ever bought. What, you are questioning my math? I'm a bottom fisher real estate mogul, screw you. My parking spaces cost ten dollars.
I wasn't there yet, I was still close to home getting my mail at the PO next to the cafe caddy-cornered to the 5star of the stars and heads of state which is located near me, but still, believe what I tell you, in the middle of nowhere, that is if you are the type to judge a place as somewhere by its propensity for having anything resembling activity and life form.
Timing may or may not be everything and I may possess some beneficial aspect of it but not so much that I'll ever notice. Honestly I don't think I have it much. And not at all on this day unless helping this guy get from one place to another is my assigned mission in life, which frankly what the hell do I know, it may be, and as long as I'm asking questions why am I so put out by this absolutely miniscule act of kindness to this man whom I suspect will remain, despite my frequent run ins with, a total stranger to me. We will trade names and short personal histories on occasion and it will mean little or nothing to each of us, except to him a type of leverage...oh there I go pretending to know something about another when I have barely scratched the surface of myself. Forget it.
I don't believe I was the only human coming out of the PO at the time but I knew he would collar me, people just do, wherever I exist, asking me questions that are none of their business like which way you going? I mean really, think about it, the nerve of that guy asking me which way I'm going. I could see Bernadette sitting there in the vehicle innocently waiting on me, probably bored but not yet to the extent that it was causing her ulcers, and I had no way to signal, have not even gotten to the stage in the relationship with her where she would know that signals might ever be necessary. If I rub my leg or pull my ear and nod my head that means to dislocate your shoulder and writhe in pain or otherwise according to your judgment pretend to be in need of immediate medical care and so, no sir, I can't take you around the corner or up the road to old man Mitchell's, I have to get Bernadette to the doctor, and furthermore, get this, I don't want to discuss anything, no, not a bit of small talk, not about the condition of my vehicle or the reason for you needing a ride in the first place or the fact that your own vehicle had the starter stolen from it. When was that anyway? 1959? You're not fooling me mister, I know the only running vehicle you have is that riding lawn mower, on which you travel considerable distances, even on the highway and that you are so much considered a local character that even the rather aggressive highway patrolmen (I of course mean patrolpersons) in the area leave you alone.
Poor Bernadette, look at her writhing in pain and this guy caring not a bit about it. Callous bastard. Where is this man's compassion? Oh, no, it's always about him and where he needs to go.
There's another guy around who uses his thumb and the road to Culpeper as his own personal transportation system and I fell for it once, I believe it was the first week I arrived in this area, something like three years ago. But he stank and his reportage of personal drama was of no interest to me. There, my selfish motives revealed. I still see him occasionally but I just drive on by, experiencing that pang that has no real definition, but feels less than clean.
Heading down the road though, finally, having dropped the guy off and trying to pull away politely while he goes on and on--I can only see his lips moving now that he is outside the vehicle--about how nice is the 10 year old Jeep I am driving. This is crazy it comes to me, going off forty miles to eat Vietnamese. It seeps in and out of my consciousness as we drive through this sparsely populated part of Virginia and it really bangs up against my head when we hit the first significant population and just like the riding lawn-mower guy who bums rides there are alternate days when such a thing doesn't bug me. But this is one of the days it does. People. So many of us with questionable aims. Out and about because we can't face the inside. Wasting gas and clogging intersections.
And I wanted to do this. You have to shop occasionally. There are needed supplies. We were going for some after eating Vietnamese. I like the Vietnamese place because it feels like something I own, and it comforts me that the man is always there. I go away and come back months later, three years running, and the man is always there to greet me with at least the appearance of sincere appreciation for my patronage. Do you think that would be easy? Do you think you could do that, and not appear like a faker? Yes I want chopsticks, damn right I do sir, it is here I got over my fear of them.
There is this thing that is coming to me about all this. This ridiculous but thank God only periodic angst regarding the routines of life. Because this should all be fun. Being with Bernadette I like and she likes being with me, but there are shoppers everywhere now in America, in throngs as aggressive as fish with teeth, a phrasing I use only because my spell check for the fish you know I mean won't show up. I was never in advertising but I majored in it as a college dropout and that would be my slogan to sell these programs that can't spell what I mean--Software As Stupid As You. Another one I like is Buy My Shit, Make Me Rich. You can have that one, its a gift.
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