20 Dream).

At some point yesterday, I realized I had this heightened, broad sense of anxiety, like a looming cloud that cast its ominous shadow over everything, and I couldn’t determine either its source or what it applied to, at least not with any real degree of certainty. I hate it when it rains, mostly due to the fact that I’m generally anxious while driving and such weather conditions only serve to exacerbate my anxiety, and I constantly felt like it was going to rain yesterday. It never did, though, and the forecast, at least in my phone, called for a cloudless, sunny day the following day as well. On top of that, there was to be no rain for the next few days.

It was also Sunday, so perhaps the anxiety dealt with the fact that, while the previous Sunday had gone smoothly, at least with respect to my car, on the two Sundays prior to that I had issues with my car and had to have it towed. I did feel better once I made it home without issue (though I did see a deer on the side of the road and had a moment of panic, thinking it might leap in front of me), and then had some beer and eventually went to sleep.

I awoke today, however, to find the anxiety still lingering. And it was dark outside, raining and thundering nonstop. And, as has been the case consistently as of late, I remembered a single scene from a dream, the potential interpretation of which only served to compound my worry.

In the dream scene, I’m driving along a road through some moderately-sized town during the day. Suddenly it comes to my attention that none of the traffic lights are working. This worries me slightly, but mostly arouses my curiosity — a curiosity that only grows when I discover that I’m also the only car on the road. I don’t even see people walking around, if I remember correctly.

I was a bit hesitant to consider interpretations, which typically involves a Google search for potential clues as to its meaning. Almost all interpretations of my dreams as of late have been dire, and I didn’t wish to reinforce my already-present, non-specific, ominously-generalized anxiety.

My curiosity won me over, of course; it rarely fails to.

Dreams regarding traffic lights are supposed to deal with control issues, specifically about waiting for a “sign” (the traffic lights) to tell you what to do. If the lights are all off, then, there are no signs and one is forced to proceed at their own risk without guidance, without a clue, and so they may suffer obstacles. Or simply suffer.

Great.

So now I shower, after which I shall embark on my anxiety-fuelled trek to work.

Baby Gator (9/4/20 Dream).

I live in a house, presumably with others, and have this big, cluttered, messy bedroom. Someone came over and brought with them a baby alligator and then they leave for some reason, failing to take the baby gator with them. I don’t recall who this person was, but they never popped back up in the dream again.

I’m a little afraid if it, but I want to catch it and bring it back to the person because I don’t want it to surprise me and bite me when I least expect it and I don’t want to have to continue worrying about it. Though I attempted to pick it up so I could put it in some confined area and ultimately bring it back to this person, it constantly either evades my capture or bites me, but the bites are akin to how a puppy might bite you. I even tried to capture it with my ball cap, using it like a net, but only met with failure. It would be gone for awhile, out of sight, hiding somewhere in my room, and then I’d see it again. At one point, I even saw it in the hallway.

At some point the alligator either became a baby bat, or this was another animal in the dream that was nipping at me; in either case, I was afraid that through it biting me I might get the Corona virus. I do think it was the same animal, however, transforming the way things often do in dreams, unnoticed by the dreamer, as when a human dream character changes from one person to the other but their role in the dream remains the same. I think this because at various points in the dream it seemed to transform (without me realizing it within the dream itself) into other types of baby reptiles.

The strangest and perhaps most vivid scene in the dream involved me finding it again while smoking a cigarette. As I watch it, it begins behaving strangely, not running away, moving slowly, and looking sickly, as if it might be dying. It starts exhaling these thick streams of smoke, and I worry that it swallowed a fallen cherry off my cigarette and will die. I believe I even saw something like an ember glowing through its skin. I don’t want it to die or be in pain, and it hurts me to think I might be the cause of its suffering. As I watch it, it looks as if it’s in agony for a second, but then seems to liven up, keeps going, and appears fine.

Violations.

8/31/20

I hate training people.

Given my position as detail maintenance man, it doesn’t happen too often, thankfully, but it happens far more often than it should. Glen, the morning maintenance guy, has been here for some time, as have I, the night shift guy. For some reason we can’t seem to find someone reliable to cover the weekends, however.

I got along with the last two guys, both of whom were from Kentucky, although when I caught word that both were Trump supporters I made an effort to avoid political discussions with them. This was easy enough, at least for the second guy, as his accent was so heavy that it was, often enough, all I heard. I’m not trying to be a dick, but often what he said seemed like alphabet-soup-of-the-mouth to me. I’d often give neutral or ambiguous responses and focus on working off of what little I could understand. I didn’t want to tell him his communications were garbled to my ears — again, he was always polite, and I only wished to return the favor.

Both had a tendency to not do their fucking jobs, however, which got on my nerves — and which is ultimately why they don’t work here in our fast food grease palace anymore. This is also why they hired the new guy, who I’m tasked with training for the next two days, and who will then be trained in the mornings by Glen.

So far, based on direct, personal experience, he seems like a cool guy, and on top of that, a hard worker. He’s also not a white guy from Kentucky, but a black guy from here in Ohio — Cleveland specifically — and that’s a nice change of pace.

They went for something different in hiring this guy, and its infinitely better, at least in terms of his work ethic and general personality.

I was just beginning to like the guy roundabout mid-shift when Marjie, one of two assistant managers now, pulled me aside and gave me the news. Evidently, when store manager Kelly’s boyfriend came into the dining room and saw him, he claimed the guy was a child molester.

Fuck, I thought to myself: please don’t make this be true. Particularly because

As soon as she told me that, my mind flashed back to earlier in the day, when we were alone out by the dumpster corral. Feeling nervous in the awkward silence and feeling the need to fill the verbal vacuum with something, anything, I asked him why he left his last fast food job to come here.

“To be closer to my son,” he said, and, at the time — which, again, was before I heard Marjie’s news — I felt he said it suspiciously awkwardly, like he was hiding something.

I will not rush to judgement until all the facts are in. I will not rush to judgement until all the facts are in. I will not rush to judgement until all the facts are in…

Earlier, I caught Marjie in the office, behind a closed door, screaming into her phone. More than once, in a barking, threatening voice, she bellowed: “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE. GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HOUSE.”

Me and the trainee were nearby, and he turns his head to look at me. “Is she mean?”

“No,” I said with a bit of a laugh. “She’s actually pretty cool. She usually only gets like that with her boyfriend.”

The boyfriend she has had issues with forever, and finally kicked out of the house — only to let him move back in again. And she’s back to square one in that respect, as she’s been complaining about him again lately, saying how she wants him to move out.

And I personally like the guy, I should say — its just that she doesn’t seem to like him once they’re together again, but seems to forget that fact once they’re separated again. It just frustrates me. And that frustration wouldn’t be so intense, perhaps, if this wasn’t a recurring theme in countless people I’ve known throughout my life. This is such a tired, common, frustrating story to hear. And yes, not to sound sexist, but in my personal experience in most cases they have been women. I’m not saying my very limited sample represents the whole, but that has been my experience.

None of this I told trainee, of course, and all of it was true, though it turns out that this was not who Marjie was screaming at through her phone behind the closed office door.

No, it was her brother. Her brother by marriage, she later emphasized, and after she told me what she told me, her placement of that emphasis made a lot of sense.

Her and Kara had hung out. The girl has gone through a rough patch — I’m beginning to suspect her circa two and a half decades of life has been composed of nothing but a series of relentlessly rough patches, as a matter of fact — and she really needed it. A night out with friends. Some fun. Marjie brought her out drinking with aforementioned boyfriend and the aforementioned brother and she seemed to be having a great time. Marjie even complimented her boyfriend for helping her out to make Kara seem comfortable. They drank, they taught her how to play pool, and she was joking around with Marjie the whole time, smiling, laughing, and thanking her for bringing her out.

So then they go home and Kara elects to sleep over at Marjie’s house, which is evidently not something she typically does. A suggestion of trust building in her toward Marjie. And Marjie went to sleep, and enter: her brother.

Apparently he’s always joking around, getting handsy with Marjie, grabbing her boobs, which Marjie told me without shame and with a shrug. He’s not blood, she tells me. Still. Given that they were all getting drunk that night, Marjie told him specifically: do not touch Kara.

And so he touched Kara.

And she won’t talk to Marjie about it. Or to Kelly. She’s afraid they won’t believe her, that they’ll get mad at her. I feel a sinking in my chest. A knot in my gut. My blood begins to boil.

“It sounds like there’s history there,” I say to her, and then Marjie mentions Kara’s stepfather. Molestation. She told her mother, and she didn’t believe her.

This was the history I suspected. Traumatic, repeating history, where the past is always present and shows her no mercy.

I felt sick.

Later, I’m at the sink in the stock room, detail cleaning the filter boxes for the fryer vats — an activity that I know will take some time — when Ronald comes back to do dishes. This necessitates us being close in proximity, of course, and I don’t know if I had ever stood that close to him before, at least for that length of time.

That’s when I realize it. I can literally feel it. He’s one of them. I can feel the energy around and within his body drawing off the energy around and within my body, particularly on my left side. After a few minutes, it feels like energetic chunks are missing from that side, if that makes any sense (it probably doesn’t) and my energy feels uncomfortable, weakened, and lopsided. I feel violated, and I’m not exaggerating. I try to talk nice to him, but I don’t have to say much, as he just won’t shut the fuck up. I eventually have to escape the situation. I run back to the break room to check my phone, which is charging, and then go out the back door for a cigarette. All hoping this horrid feeling in my energy corrects itself given the distance, which was not happening, and to kill some time so maybe he’ll be done with dishes by the time I get back.

He isn’t. So I tell him I’m going to get out of his way and clean dining room and he should just tell me whenever he’s done.

As I’m cleaning tables, I see Paula outside, who is here off the clock, and is stoned, waiting for her curbside order. I ask her for a hug, which probably seemed weird, but my energy felt slightly better afterward. I only hoped I wasn’t leeching off of her as he was leeching off of me.

It struck me how violated I felt, as intolerable as it seemed, must be nothing next to what Kara has experienced. Continues to experience. For one thing, the energy violation may have been unintentional. Clearly that’s not been the case with the violators in her own life. Not merely has her energy been violated, either, but her body, and apparently again and again.

It constantly astounds me what us humans are capable of doing to one another. Kids being raped by caretakers or neighbors is a disturbingly common story I hear, and while it reminds me how lucky I’ve been in my own life, it doesn’t improve my outlook on our fucked up species. I constantly feel bad that I can’t grow close enough to Kara for her to trust me, but I’m not certain she can bear to trust anyone anymore given how often that trust has been violated, and I sure as fuck can’t blame her.

And what would I say to her? What could I do for her to make things better? What could anyone?

Remembering Rosie Finch.

After I awoke, I sat on the toilet and let my mind wander. All I could remember regarding the dream I’d been having just before awakening dealt with walking around with a broom and dustpan, sweeping things up towards the back of some house — and though the house and property seemed vaguely familiar, I can’t quite place it in memory. I also remember walking by a small group of people from work and jokingly patting them on the head as I passed by. In any case, I made it around to the side of the house, where the main entrance was, where I was finally alone and was about to enjoy a cigarette when I awoke.

I checked my phone, which was on my nightstand, and found it was 11:36 AM — six minutes after my alarm should have gone off, but I don’t remember even hearing it. Nor have I been able to retrace the mental steps that brought me from thinking of that dream to thinking about Rosie Finch, but I find it highly unusual that she erupted in my mind, seemingly out of nowhere.

I met her my Freshmen year of high school, just as my life was beginning to take a strange, dark, surreal turn and the stress shot up to unimaginable heights. It was in math class that I first met her, I think. She was a quiet girl in a red flannel sitting at a desk near the window, and I recall exchanging words with her and finding her to be pretty cool.

At first, anyway.

Soon enough, I discovered that I was by no means the only one attracted to her. For Homecoming, a bunch of us met at her house, a group largely composed of guys who wanted her. That’s where she first revealed her awesome capacity to be a raging cunt.

Days prior, I was in study hall when a guy I knew made like he was going throw a wadded up ball of paper at me. I ducked and, like an idiot, slammed my face on my desk and busted one of my front teeth. I had been as self-conscious as hell about it, and it certainly didn’t help when she began laughing at my chipped tooth and referring to me as “chip.” Shortly thereafter, her and another girl named Rosie spent an entire period of art class trying to outdo each other making fun of me — not about the tooth by that time, as I had gotten it fixed, but about damn near everything else, including my new “interest” in aliens and UFOs.

As their insults of me continued to feed off one another, I remember just staring into space, distancing myself from all and everything as I nervously and intensely played with the rubber eraser in my hands (better than a stress ball, as it turns out). They only stopped their verbal assaults, and quite suddenly, when one of them spied my gummy eraser and asked me what I’d made, what that was. I held it up and it looked like a duck, who Channing, a friend of mine, elected to name Belzebub.

I eventually began drawing him, even attempting to make a comic book starring the character. I’d hate to have to credit the Rosies for all that.

A year or two after graduation, we came back into contact with one another. I don’t recall the particulars, but I think she bumped into me at the grocery store I was working at at the time. We hung out once at her place, where she introduced me to iced coffee. However much a coffee addict, I preferred it hot. We hung out again, this time at my parent’s house, in my room, where we made out, I fingered her, and she ended up sucking my dick, if I remember correctly.

It was this particular memory I stopped at and really considered this morning, really trying to examine and feel it out, as I was suddenly feeling quite suspicious of myself. Did that really happen? I’m fairly certain it did.

The last time I saw her was long after graduation when Channing and I were hanging out at a crowded diner in a town nearby where I still lived with my parents. Though she was sitting right beside me, speaking aggressively to whoever it was who was sitting right across from her, she never acknowledged me, nor I her. She had a shaved head and one of those puffy jackets on.

Why was I suddenly thinking of her this morning, however, particularly after that dream? The only thing I can think of is that perhaps it stemmed from that part of the dream where I was patting coworkers on the head. One of them I think was Devin, who I have described to others as a gay man hiding in a glass closet. Everyone can see it, no one is going to judge him for it, so I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just come out of the closet, breathe in the fresh air, and just be who he is. What better time in human history to be a homosexual, after all? There will always be total assholes among us, but he would have a welcoming community as well.

I contrast him with another guy I work with named Ronald (not to be confused with Ronnie) who “came out” as gay after a pretty, blond-haired girl at work claimed he said inappropriate things to her in the kitchen. I didn’t see that coming, nor did another gay guy I work with, and he can generally smell his own. For this and other reasons, I’m fairly convinced Ronald is a homophony. Bisexual at the very least.

Ronald and Devin, they’re sort of polar opposites in my mind. Yin and yang.

My greater point is, I think Rosie was a closet lesbian. It was in the 90s that I met her, too, when that sort of thing wasn’t nearly as widely accepted as it is now. There were always stories about her and another girl I went to school with, one of a few that eventually committed suicide. Aside from the manner of her ultimate end, there were other reasons to suspect the girl had a rough life, and I always got the sense that Rosie was considerably damaged as well, and maybe that brought the two of them together for a time. Though I don’t imagine it was all of it, was a lot of it the fact that she was gay and her parents perhaps considered all that a sin? Were they homophobic and, as it was with another kid hiding in a glass closet whom I once knew, did they threaten to kick her out of the house and disown her if she was gay? I’ve often wondered if that is the case with Devin; if that’s maybe why he’s hiding.

I didn’t think to look Rosie up on social media. I have no interest in doing so, really. I do wonder what became of her, though.

Lotion.

8/29/20

I felt your look, my dear cashier. You went along, scanning away the rest of my weekly groceries without so much as saying hello or glancing up at me, but you have to shoot me that loaded, judgemental look as soon as you spy the hand lotion.

Yes, I just purchased a bottle relatively recently. Yes, its what you think. I’m a 41-year-old bachelor.

Still, for all you know I just have extremely dry hands.

The Cursed Car Meets Roly-Poly Trash Panda.

After I called off work on Monday, Tracy texts me, unprompted, asking if I needed a ride Tuesday, the following day. I accepted and she dropped me off at the shop, where the car was done and waiting, even paid for thanks to my parents — though this added weight to my guilt. The mechanic, Lex, I’ve known for a while now, and I’ve always found him a kind, trustworthy guy, and his wife is an incredibly sweet lady. As she handed me the keys from across the counter, I said to her, “As much as I like seeing you guys, hopefully, I won’t be back soon.”

Finally, it was over. At least for a while, so I hoped. Happy to have my car back, I start it up and turn out if the parking space and approach the exit of the small lot, and as I do, I hear a haunting, familiar sound. A cracking sound. Convinced I was being paranoid, that it was all a product of my overactive imagination, I continued onward to the exit and then had precisely the same experience that I had had on that Sunday. I put my foot on the brake and though the car stopped, it went to the floor — just as I had experienced when the brake line busted some time ago.

In disbelief, I open my car door and look to confirm. All too easily confirmed. Lex must have heard it all the way from the garage, too, as he came running up, a look of panic, frustration, and embarrassment on his face. He drops down to the ground, takes a look at it, asks me for the keys, and then drives it back into the garage.

Back in the office, his wife asks when I start work, and I tell her in about twenty minutes. She drove me to work and we decided that when the car was done she’d park it at my work and leave the keys under the seat. I tried to relax over a cigarette before going inside, taking my temperature with the third-eye gun and waiting by the time clock.

Two minutes before I’m to clock in, my phone starts vibrating. Its Lex. I pick up.

“Bad news buddy,” he says. “When it happened again, it cracked the frame.”

He explained that when the frame cracked, the break line had also busted, which was why the peddal went to the floor. He said he was fixing the brake line right now, and he should have the frame by tomorrow — and assured me, with apparent emphasis, that it would be done by tomorrow. The part would cost 250$.

At this point, I felt exhausted, furious, drawn into that all-too-familiar dark well within my psyche. After I clocked in, I went about my usual — gathering trash, collecting them in the gondola, and then rolling it out to,the corral to,the side if the store, which housed the dumpsters. There, I made another call to my parents. I’m almost thankful I got the answering machine. I gave them the rundown. Later, my father texts me, referring to the “cursed car” and how he thought we should start looking around for a new vehicle for me.

So I was back to my parents rescuing me financially. Back to relying on friends for rides. Back to feeling ashamed for not being able to stand on my own, thankful for the friends and family I am lucky enough to have, but feeling guilty for taking advantage, no matter how necessary that was, given my pathetic, stagnant lot in life. A lot which I was stuck in because I was apparently incapable — due to lack of focus, lack of ambition, and an incredible reservoir of ceaseless anxiety — to overcome; to rise above.

After texting Moe, he agreed to pick me up and drive me home after work, and we bullshitted a bit in my apartment, which certainly helped my mood. I then had to call my dad the following morning to take him up again on his offer to drive me to work. He picked me up at 2 and, on the way, spoke to me of the plan him and mom had put together.

My parents had just sold their truck, as they had inherited the truck of my uncle, who had passed away. Their thought was to sell my car, get me that truck, and that they would buy a new truck. Despite the guilt, it was a relief. I never thought that I would feel so happy at the prospect of getting this car out of my life, but here I was. The thought was that this would happen in a month or two; the car only had to last me that long.

Despite the fact that Lex had yet to call me back, my father drove us not to my fast food place of employment, but to the shop instead, where Lex said he was about done with the car. My father paid (again), we said our goodbyes, and I waited a short time inside.

The door between the lobby, office, waiting room — whatever you want to call it — and the garage was open, and from that perspective I saw them take my car for a test drive. I’m not sure this was a typical proceedure, but felt even if it was, Lex felt it necessary to do it this way on this particular occasion due to what had formerly happened. Evidently it was a good thing, too, as the car came back shortly thereafter and whoever it was that had done the test drive said something to Lex regarding something about the transmission, something they had failed to do, which Lex sounded frustrated about.

A few moments later, I was told the work on the car was finished. I went outside and the car was already running, driver side door open and waiting. I adjusted the seat settings and nervously backed up and approached the exit. Aside from what was clearly an entirely fucked up alignment, which I believe I then and there decided to have some other shop align, all appeared to be fine and fucking dandy, though given experience, an undercurrent if skepticism remained that I was utterly unable to shake. I made it passed the exit this time — at last, success! — and made it to work, in fact, with no other issue along the way.

I at first decided to get an alignment at a shop in the town I live in on Friday, the first day of my weekend, but discovered upon calling them on Friday that they — of course, of course — don’t do alignments. Trying to control my frustration, and determined not to return to Lex’s shop so soon, I figured I would bring it to another shop, this one in the town where I work, early on Monday, the second day of my work week. After consulting with a friend of mine at work, whom I will call Jiffy, as well as Moe, both suggested another shop in town — even closer to work than Lex’s shop, which was already incredibly close, and essentially on the same road. I decided to go there for an alignment the following Monday.

Before I was able to do so, Sunday evening happened.

As I’m leaving work at 11, I’m going back and forth about stopping at Circle K to get a lemonade and some bean dip for the big bag of tortilla chips I still have at home. I feel this strange fear telling me not to stop, to just drive straight home, but I decide to ignore that gut feeling and stop at Circle K anyway. I park, leave the car on, take my other set of keys, and lock it. I go inside, get a lemonade and settle on a jar of Salsa Con Queso. Once back in car, put it in reverse, stop, and put it in drive.

I step on the gas — and I’m still going backward.

Did my dumbass not put it in drive? I check. Its certainly in drive. I step lightly on the gas again: I’m still going in reverse. The shifter is all loosy goosey, too. Frustrated, I drive it in reverse to back of the lot, my door still open, and put my foot on the brake a short distance from one gas pump. I’m still screaming fuck and other obscenities, and in the process I think scared some little kids in the back seat of the car at pump. Guilt on top of rage now. I can’t put it in park at first and I can’t just keep my foot on the peddal, so I use the emergency brake. Then I turned off the car.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Try to breathe deep.

I get out and look under the car, then pop the hood and look down into its guts, as if I would even know what I’m looking for or would even know if something was out of place. Then I sit in back in the car and try to start it again.

Nothing. It wouldn’t start. Lights on the dash lit up, but nothing else, not the faintest noise.

I take out my phone. Should I try to secure a ride home or call AAA first? I saw that Sean had sent me a meme over messenger. Without commenting, I bitched about my car having issues again. I felt bad asking him to drive me home yet again, so I looked on the messenger list, and Steve was recently on. I asked him if he was busy. He said he was picking up Ronnie, a kid who I often close with. I asked if he could drive me home. I didn’t get an answer before I decided to call AAA, and I was on the phone with them with when Steve arrived at Circle K with Gus, Ronnie, and Sean.

After talking with the woman on the other end of the line, she said the tow was on its way — and I was the same tow company that had cone for me a week earlier, when the car took a shit by the exit at work. ETA was circa an hour.

Sean got his girlfriend to come up with the car and Steve took Ronnie and Gus home. As we waited, Sean said how it would be funny if it was the exact same guy that towed by car from before, too.

It fucking was.

And so they drive me home, with Sean offering a few hits from the pot-pen on the way. It was like pouring water on a fire.

Even as we were still waiting for the tow truck to arrive, I realized something: my car had essentially lost power. Unlike that dream I had, there were actual lights on the dash when I turned the key, but just like in the dream, it made no sound when I did it.

Was that dream really a preminatory one? Not an exact flashforward, of course, but a mishmash of happenings-to-be involving my cursed car? Or am I looking too deeply, seeing what isn’t there?

And of all things, why have premonition involving this goddamned car as opposed to something, anything else? Because it serves as an effective metaphor for other things, simply because its an emotionally-impactful circumstance, or because its the point at which every thing in my life goes downhill and embeds itself deeply in a mound of shit, potentially ending with my life in ruins, even my death?

Carl Jung seemed to cradle the idea that if we repress some issue — an internal, psychological issue — and we are adamant in ignoring it, it will manifest as an objective circumstance in a concerted effort to grab our intention and force us to face it once and for all. He also wrote that:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

I’m powerless, I can’t move forward in my life, I’m stuck in reverse…

If this isn’t all superficial bullshit, if the dark of my mind, my unconscious, is truly striving to drive in a message to me, why can’t it just state it blatantly, directly? Why must it be in words I could never hope to misunderstand or, as the case seems to be, in symbols and metaphors I could misinterpret and perhaps only see the significance of in retrospect? And where is the guidance? Not merely what fucked up and endlessly frustrating things are going to happen, but what I might do about it? Not merely signs as to what will go wrong, but what reaction is most appropriate, what the most promising path to follow might be?

I felt so stuck and fucked, and not in the good way.

I called the shop the following day, feeling embarrassed, frustrated, but, most of all, depressed as shit. I called just to ensure they got the note I’d left on the front seat of the car. They had. His wife, who picked up the phone, went and got Lex, and he seemed deeply sympathetic. “One thing after another with this thing, huh?” I couldn’t help but agree. Apparently, it was just something to do with the shifter, some little, cheap piece I can’t remember the name of but looked up online later. He said he thought he had one laying around and could have it done by the end of the day.

I called off that day, a Monday, just as I had the previous Monday, and for the same reason — because my car had to be towed Sunday, albeit a different Sunday, and I was tired of having to ask people for rides. I didn’t tell my parents because they’re worried enough about me and this car lately, have done more than enough for me lately, and now that I had my check deposited I thought I could actually pay for however much this was going to be. I did need a ride to the shop the following day, however, so I called Moe again. He dropped me off the following day, and I just made it up the steps to the shop before the door opened and Lex’s wife was waiting there, keys in hand. He didn’t even charge me. I was incredibly thankful for that.

All was well by Wednesday, which is today at the time of this writing — for the next fourteen minutes, anyway. As I was driving home from work this evening, I suddenly saw something moving in the road up ahead. A raccoon. The biggest, fattest trash panda I’ve ever seen in my fucking life, munching on something — something cast out of a car window by some pathetic litterbug, no doubt. I swerved to the right to miss him, he moved to the right to dodge me, but my car and the obese fuzzball were evidently destined to meet with an impact that made me wince.

The car appears to be fine for once — time tends to fucking tell — but as for roly-poly trash panda, I’m not at all confident. If he isn’t dead, he’s hurting like hell and probably wishes he was.

Yay for more guilt. There’s always room for more guilt. Its like fucking Jello.

At some point, the apparent bad luck, rage, anxiety, guilt, depression — it becomes so absurd that even as my blood boils, I have to just laugh and shake my head. And then go home and channel my boiling blood through my fingers as a means of catharsis.

Until this fucking car is out of my life, I hope this is the last chapter with respect to its constant need of repairs. When this began, I was so happy to have this car. I never thought I’d be so happy to see the end of the road with respect to my relationship with it.

Penny & How We’re Not All the Same Inside.

7/21/20

Being around the right person, getting a hug from the right person, can kind of leave you buzzing, and as I drove down the long, dark stretch of road between work and my apartment I let myself become one with the warm, soothing feeling she left me with.

I missed that woman so damned much.

She had messaged me early on in my shift, asking what I was doing that evening. Unbeknownst to me, she had spent the week in Ohio and had to return home the following day and wanted to see me, which made me both excited and frustrated. I had gotten little sleep before waking up around 6:30 to hitch a ride with the tow guy to the shop to get my car fixed. It was done about an hour before I started work at 3:00, at which time I was already too damned tired, and I had to work till 11:00. Even so, I desperately wanted to see the girl. It must have been a decade.

After some complications, Penny decided to meet me at work after my shift ended. Seeing her after so long was strange — she was as beautiful as ever and now sported a pair of geek glasses, which I found to be a sexy accessory. It was her vibe that perplexed me, though, and it struck me immediately. She seemed to be weighed down by this sadness, this sense of hopelessness, with a splash of anxiety, and perhaps due to all that was far quieter than I had remembered. I was afraid I’d be anxious and she would have to keep jabbing me with questions to keep me out of my shell, to keep the conversation going, but it turns out that the shoe was on the other foot.

She took us to Swensons, which was a restaurant I had never been too, prompting her to ask me if I ever journeyed outside of my bubble. With respect to the corporeal universe, that was a dead certain, “nope.” My anxiety acts like an invisible, electric fence that keeps me bound to my well worn paths. After years of fighting it, I’ve finally come to some degree of acceptance of it and solace in it. By no means does the fact make me proud, but there it is.

Penny? She never had that fear of the road — in fact, she loved to travel.

After moving to New Orleans well over a decade ago, she had become a bartender and loved her job. And though she told me its changed, or at the very least her feelings regarding it, she once loved the area, too. Then she got knocked up by a guy she had dated on and off for eight years and his first reaction was to insist on an abortion. Despite being pro-choice, she didn’t consider that an option in her case, so he instead decided to make a toast to miscarriages in the bar one night.

In short, he’s an epic fuckface.

He’s never met the kid, who I believe is now two years old, and it doesn’t seem she went after him for child support. Her father said that he’d help her, so she moved out of state and into a house with him, and he leant her the money to attend college with a major in cosmopology — strictly because he had something against her bartending. Then her sister moved in with her kid, despite the fact that she said she’d never want to move in as they were house-shopping — so the dining room became her room.

Overall, Penny feels trapped, surrounded by people and clutter, utterly unable to be herself. No realm accessible where she’s really in control. She still drinks and smokes excessively and is presently on both heart medication and medication for anxiety — the last of which struck me as odd, as she never seemed anxious back when I knew her, though I could certainly sense it now. The drugs she partook in back then evidently masked it, and her current circumstances have exacerbated it.

Her father finally let her run away to Ohio for a week, and when circumstances made it so she would have to stay an extra day, she messaged me at work. She’d be driving the nine hours back circa ten the following morning.

After a quick stop at her house to get her blood pressure medication, which she had forgotten to take, she drove me through the area nearby the all-night restaurant I used to work at and the old crew used to hang out in. It was, in fact, where I first met her. The place, I had just learned that day, had closed a year or two ago, and as she drove around it, it made me feel rather depressed. The building looked tattered and torn, like the post-apocalyptic rendition of the place I once knew.

As we went along, she told me of a few new places that had opened and many more that had since closed. Now the whole area revealed itself to have that run-down, abandoned, post-apocalyptic look and feel to it. As we finally came back to the five-way intersection, I stopped doing what I had been doing — asking her questions, trying to keep the conversation going, not saying much about myself or my own thoughts or feelings unless it related to and built off something she had said. Suddenly, I sort of relaxed into a monologue, only half-realizing it. It had been a long day and I was tired as hell, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I told her that while I love my niece and nephew, I’m glad I never had kids. I’m concerned enough about the state of the world now, and I’m leaving no children behind; I’d be an insanely paranoid parent. My hopes for our species is pretty much gone, and it kind of made me happy that I was more than halfway through the natural, average life-cycle. Soon enough, I said, I’d be dead, I could leave my concerns behind, and just kind of leave the rest of the world to do what it pleases. I was still worried about my niece and nephew, I added, but other than that…

And I let myself trail off, as if I were suddenly waking back up, realizing what I was saying, that I was saying it aloud as opposed to merely thinking it to myself — and it was the vibe I suddenly felt from her that pinched me awake. I could feel her eyes on me, feel emotions from her I couldn’t entirely put my finger on, define, translate, articulate to myself.

Once we got back to my car, all the lights in the lot were out. We continued to just sit in her car, talking. She brought up something that I hoped she’d talk about sober and which she had mentioned in our drunken FaceTime conversation about two weeks back. In essence, she had described how she simply didn’t feel connected to her child, and as I gently pushed, she elaborated.

When she was pregnant, parents that she knew kept telling her how she would naturally change, that she would feel connected and attuned to her crotch-goblin, but Penny never really did. Her child is entertaining sometimes, she confessed, and she guesses she loves him, but she just doesn’t feel what those other parents predicted. On some message board for atheist parents, she found she wasn’t alone, either, though it certainly seemed to me as if this newfound company provided little comfort to her.

It reminded me a lot of what comedian and actor Bill Burr had to say about the birth of his first child. I ranted to her a bit on her own behalf, saying how most people failed to understand that not everyone is wired like they are, that everyone’s not the same inside, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

Though I’ve certainly never been in her particular circumstance, I explained, I’m not wired in a fashion even vaguely similar to most people I’ve known, so I feel I know this fact intimately. One simply can’t help how one feels, who one essentially is, though they can do their best to manage who they are, their maternal emotions or lack thereof in this instance, and this was precisely what Penny did, what Penny was doing — taking responsibility for the child the very best that she can regardless as to how she doesn’t feel.

It seemed she was finally becoming fully engaged in our conversation when it was time for us to depart. I asked her if, despite the suggested social distancing, we could hug, and she was all for it.

It felt nice being that close to her again, nice having just been around her again, and I hope she hits me up next time she’s in Ohio.

Car Problems & a Potentially Preminatory Dream.

It was eleven in the eve on Sunday, just last night, when the first shift of my workweek came to a close. As was typical, I was eager to get home, isolate myself from the world, and recharge my social battery. It was to be a night without drinking, especially given I had overdone it on Saturday. I was looking forward to some revitalizing, sober sleep — or more sober, anyway. I’d still be smoking some weed, of course.

I’d parked by the corral that houses the dumpsters, started up my car and began driving towards the exit. I was just passed the third drive-thru window when my tires began squealing, and I feared I had hit something beneath my car. I got out, looked under the car, and saw nothing alarming. I got back in and tried to go forward again with the same result. When I got out the second time, I realized what must be the problem.

It was the driver-side tire. It was pushed up against the fender, and my fear was that it was going to fall off. I walked around the building, tried calling the store and knocked on two doors before someone opened the back door. It was Sean, the closing manager and fellow stoner.

“I hate to ask you this, but you know infinitely far more about cars than I do,” I said. “You mind taking a moment to come look at my piece of shit?”

As he followed me, i,explained what had happened and we approached the car, he mentioned that even at that distance, it didn’t look good. He got underneath it, checked it out, and told me he thought it might be a wheel bearing, and we both decided that I should try backing up. I did and the tire seemed to straighten out, but when I tried to go forward, the same shit happened. I called AAA and he said that him and his girlfriend could drive me home. Then we waited over an hour — just him, Gus, and I — for the tow truck to arrive, watching people come around from drive-thru once they realized we were closed, having to drive around my dead fish of a car to get to the exit.

As we waited, I again wished I had the capability to just walk to work — at the same time saying how I’d never want to live in this cesspool of a town. Still, I constantly have issues with my car, and whenever that happens, I feel fucking powerless. I have to ask people for rides, which makes me feel like shit. Whatever is wrong with the car is typically more expensive than I can handle, so I have to ask my parents for help. And I’m grateful I know so many good people and I know damned well I’m quite lucky to have the parents I have, but I’m still left feeling like I’m taking unfair advantage every time this shit happens and there is little to no way I could repay their generosity in an equally meaningful way.

Its sad. Pathetic. I’m 41 years old and I still can’t stand on my own two feet, at least not without leaning on friends and family in my constant efforts to stabilize myself. The guilt kills me. My lack of independence and personal power make me feel ashamed as fuck. Had I made better choices in the past, I might be in a better job, maybe be in a relationship that would offer what is commonly regarded as a more mature support system befitting someone of my age, but here I am. Here I fucking am.

Upon arriving home, I smoked a little and watched the last two episodes of the second season of Barry, took a sleeping pill, and then got to sleep around 4 in the morning. I awoke abruptly at about 10, an hour and a half before my first alarm was set to go off. I felt wired, but made some coffee anyway, and then gave the shop a call to inform them what happened.

Before I called off work, before the shop called back, and before I made the shameful call to my parents for financial assistance because I didn’t have enough money — despite the fact that the estimate was surprisingly and thankfully under 200 bucks, I might add — I suddenly realized some disturbing correlations between all this and the dream I’d had on August 13th, just four days ago. Last night I had stopped the car right passed the third drive-thru window, just as I had in the dream. The same tire I had issues with in real life, namely the front, driver-side tire, was the very same tire that was apparently stolen in the dream. In real life, I’d obstructed the path of a line of cars in drive thru, just as suggested in the dream. And though in real life my car still had “power,” I myself certainly felt powerless during the true circumstance.

Now, this may all be coincidence. I dream of car issues rather frequently, after all, and it often involves issues with losing power in the car or issues with the tires in particular. Even so, the specific correlations are hard to shake, as is the fact that strange synchronicities have previously occurred with respect to my car issues.

Perhaps time isn’t as unidirectional as we believe it is. Maybe just as the waking experiences a few days before a dream tends to influence its material, the experiences we’ll have a few days after it has a similar infuence, as the unconscious aspects of ourselves perceive no real distinction between past and present and can draw from either pool of data with equal ease.

I don’t even pretend to know anymore.

Pissing Red (8/16/20 Dream).

8/16/20

I went to bed about four in the morning and woke up at seven, managed to get back to sleep, and woke up again at about nine. Given that the alcohol was probably out of my system by then, I hoped I could nod off again and get some actual, revitalizing sleep, but my brain wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

I got up and finally decided to take a piss, but I kept the light off, fearing it might wake me up fully. I was tired, so I sat down, and that’s when I suddenly remembered a fragment of a dream.

The scene was vivid, colorful, and it came to me like an intense flashback — so intense I felt thrown back a little, as if it had literally leaped at me. In the scene, I was standing up, taking a piss in my toilet, though I quickly realized I was pissing red. Not that I’d ever pissed blood before, but it didn’t seem like blood to me — it looked like I was urinating red Kool-Aid. I immediately considered going to the hospital.

And that was it. That was all I recalled.

My dreams are typically vivid, but this was a little over the top. I was fairly certain it had been a dream, but I was still half-asleep, so I did spend a few moments wondering if this had really occurred when I was drunk. I even looked into the toilet bowl I had just pissed in to check the color.

Online sources suggest that dreaming of peeing represents the need to relieve ourselves of emotional pressure, anxiety and tension, likely from an issue that has been bothering us for a long time. There was also a specific interpretation for red urine: losing your drive or passion in life.

There is a definite theme in the dream interpretations as of late, which is about as unusual as the sudden resurgence of my dream recall…

Powerless & Stunted (8/13/20 Dream).

8/13/20:

In the dream I awoke from this morning, I had somehow gotten a new car — new to me, that is. It was this old, long, 70s-style car, and I drove it to work. For some reason, I parked it by the third drive thru window, where we tell people to park if their food is taking extra long to make and we want to keep the line moving. So I got out, did something inside, and when I come back outside, it was dark out. I suddenly noticed that my front driver side tire was entirely gone.

I wondered to myself: Did I drive it here that way? Will I still be able to drive it home on three wheels?

I then realized that cars were lined up behind me in drive thru, but to the side of where the drive through pad is — not directly behind me, that is, but behind me and to the side, presumably because I’m blocking the actual lane. No one was honking and the line didn’t seem to be moving, however. The cars didn’t appear to be on, either, or even occupied. Even so, I felt guilty about the thought of them having to drive around me, so I hopped in my car and turned the key — and nothing happened. Not even a sound resulted. The car wouldn’t start at all.

Cars generally refer to one’s body, sense of self, or sense of motivation (one’s “drive,” if you will). The potential interpretation here is this: I’m powerless (car wouldn’t start) and unable to move forward (stolen tire) in some area of my life, presumably where the issues in the dream took place — namely at my place of employment.

And the drive-thru?

From my Googling, I found the following:

“If you have a dream about a drive thru it means that you are worried about all of the choices that you have to make in life. A drive thru will present you with all kinds of different choices you can pick from and a lot of people spend a lot of time (more time than necessary) hanging out in these areas searching for what food to eat. However because this is dream interpretation these choices are not actually related to food, but what you want to do in life. The more possibilities you have ahead of you, the longer you will spend there in the dream.”

All those cars were behind me, however, and pushed to the side, and all were as seemingly “powerless” and “stunted” with respect to driving as my own car was. If my own car reflected my present circumstances, did the line of others represent my past ones, never fixed but left abandoned by me in the past?

I have been fighting this anger and depression again for the last two weeks, increasingly bored and miserable at work, and I don’t know how to stop it. I keep being reminded how old I am, especially with respect to my surroundings at work. I keep thinking to myself how I wish I would have gotten stuck at another job, something at least vaguely associated with my passions, or at the very least where I made good money and had descent insurance.

My anxiety leaves me too afraid of change, though, and I feel I lack sufficient motivation on top of it. If I can’t change or advance, I’ve been thinking, I wish I could at least find some solace in things as they are.