by Brad

May 2, 2007

THIS IS THE TRUE VOICE OF THE GUTTER

Wallflower wallflower
Take a chance on me
Please let me ride you home

The Big Apple might have been savvy enough to claim the moniker as
"The City That Never Sleeps," but this little town off of Exit 149
(nicknamed, I think, The Little Stew) doesn't exactly close its eyes
during the overnight hours. I'm not delusional enough to ever think
The Little Stew will be mistaken for The Big Apple--not yet, anyway.
There's no hustle or bustle, and downtown, for lack of a better word,
is not awash in neon lights. Still, the sidewalks don't get rolled up
here after the sun goes down. There is movement aplenty.

My job often requires me to put in some late hours. It comes with the
territory. More often than not, I see people out and about in The
Little Stew. A lot of them are in cars, sure, but there are a
surprising number walking along the sidewalks, or the streets, acting
like they don't have a care in the world. Kind of like zombies.
Care-free zombies. Sometimes I get the uneasy feeling that the patch
of fog I drove through over by the lakes was some kind of portal and
I've been tossed into some world created by George Romero. (Note to
self: Put baseball bat in car to smash in zombie heads ... just in
case. Also, scour sporting goods store for cricket bat, which looks
like it could do more damage.)

They're loud too. We're in the middle of the season--some of you call
it Spring--where the windows stay open all the time and there are
occasions when I'm awakened at 3 a.m. by some guy hollering up the
street to another person. Nothing hostile, mind you. Just casual
conversation, with 200 yards distance between the two. I think one
night I heard one person yell out to another person and asked where he got his new shoes. My first thought was how the hell could he see the new shoes from such a distance? Do zombies have bionic vision? My next thought was are new shoes really a pressing concern at 3 a.m.?

This whole act of yelling, or even talking at full volume, during the
wee hours of the night runs contrary to my way of living. During an
undocumented period of my life, I lived amongst the ninjas. I wasn't
one of them, but they didn't hesitate to take me in and teach me their way of living. Chief among the ninjas, was the art of stealth. Walking without being heard, blending in with the scenery and definitely not being loud when talking. I became an invisible assassin, minus the assassin part. The ninjas, for some reason, are very selfish when it comes to teaching the ways of killing like them. I mean, anyone can squeeze a trigger or run a blade between the ribcage. But killing like a ninja is an art. Sometimes literally. I once saw a ninja
take down a corrupt philatelist with an origami swan. It was a thing
of beauty. Moved me to tears.

However, that was not to be for me. I only learned how to be
invisible, which upon further review, proved to be a problem for me
during my years when I hung out in singles' bars. The ninjas also
taught me a great recipe for a death-by-chocolate cake, but I'm really digressing. Besides, you don't actually die from the cake.

The late-night lurkers of The Little Stew are out and about. They are
loud and I'm powerless to stop them. If this were a perfect world, I
would be able to toss one of those flying death star thingies at Mr. Hey, Where Did You Get Those Cool-Ass Shoes and thin-slice his
brain. Had the ninjas been more sharing with me, I could take a blade
of grass and slash the throat of the dude who feels compelled to sing
Honky Tonk Badonkadonk at 1 a.m. Sadly, none of this is going
to happen.

The best I can do is sneak up on them and offer them a slice of
death-by-chocolate cake. But I suspect that will only add to the
problem.


Write Brad at exit149@gmail.com

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