Walls Without Excitements

"But I have fun with the fright, work with it. You have to - that's your timing, that beat of excitement. And when I go on stage, it's just like taking a step into heaven. Poof, you know? Poof - and there I am."

- Eddie Bracken

Excitement is a normal human emotion. Why should we be ashamed of it? I ask myself. I am excited. My days are filled with it. My nights are the only break that I can find from it, and now I hate sleep. I crave the excitement, I'm loving it. It reminds me of the old days, when I was playing salesman for my company, millions of years ago. I would be worked up into a frothy mess, drinking coffee until the early morning, reading contracts over and over, checking every word, every letter, every punctuation. I was in heaven.

Excitement in the streets? Not much, other than the fucking cops finding a little too much interest in your sleeping area and you walk in upon them. That's excitement. Or leaving off your valuables (such as toothpaste, antiperspirant, change of drawers) behind a thick bush or behind a piece of statue or stone and hoping that they'll still be there when you return. You spend the entire day in excitement after that, boiling with emotions. Another one??

Hmmmm, that's a good one. Waiting on a food line with Skeks, and having someone bring out a short supply of something good, like cake, or a bag of chips or something. You and the entire line comes alive, hopping excitement all the way down, and vying for position because you know now that this is a zero sum game. Some were going to get the treat, and others won't. Simple math. There is not enough to go around. If you're slick, like many Skeks think that they are, you try to get more than your fair share. You try to get yours and HIS. He'll try to get his and YOURS. Now that shit's exciting.

I'm thinking about excitement as I rise. I'm taking a few days off from the Roach Motel this 4th of July weekend. I'm looking forward to it, excited by it. I am overjoyed that I will not have to see the urchins at the Motel for five days straight. That's a beautiful feeling. It's not that I hate these people...shit, I'M ONE OF THEM! I hate the institution that drives us together like cattle, whips us around into puree, and then pours us out into their little convenient molds. That's the shit that I can't stand. I can't stand being pureed. I'm not used to it. I'm used to food lines and being handed ugly food. You can take the bastid out of the street I guess....

I went through my morning motions, getting breakfast, seeing Paula, slipping out the door, noticing that I haven't seen Snow White in a month of Sundays. I wonder what happened? I'll have to ask. Not that I care much, I'm an inquiring mind. In moments, I'm back at the Roach Motel. Back again, a million years ago, when I had gainful employment, I used to walk to work at night to stay in shape. The fucking length of Manhattan almost...well half the length, and pass the Roach Motel. Walking back up during the day I noticed how the urchins used to stand around the steps and the sidewalk of the building like foam on the shore. I wondered what the fuck it was all about.

Now I'm a bubble of foam on the shore, loitering in front of the building, waiting for the doors to open. This pisses me off and I walk off, going around another block, walking to pump air into my mind from the overcast skies. I go through my morning doing the same thing, reading and writing email. My world is being crowded by the insanity of the insane. This reminds me of life with the Skeks, just with a little more couth and education. Just a smidgen.

"There is no social strata here," the Facilitator says aloud to the class. "You have people who can barely speak English, and or can read or write, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with college graduates. The only thing that you have in common is that you've all fallen on hard times and need the services of HRA."

I'm through this shit in hours, walking over to my Psychologist. We have a long discussion on people, places and things. We don't talk much about LUVOX other than that I'll be talking to my psychiatrist about it tomorrow. We talk about Indonesia and Jamaica and other little shit. That's how these things begin. You start with the small things. I wonder if this is enough time for her to tell the difference between me now and LUVOXed up. We talk about how experimental the drug is. That's me, human guinea pig. Put the helmet over the space monkey's head and blast his dumb ass into orbit. Seeya fucka!

I pick up more head drugs from the neigh- borhood Duane Reade. I step out of the building and pause. What are my chances of running into Igor again about his laptop? I need to head down to his room one evening and surprise him. Maybe tomorrow. Not today, I'm just too tired to concentrate.

I'm home now, standing before the window of my room, stacking bottles of pills before my window. There is nothing but a brick wall outside of the window ahead of me, hard, rough, resolute, with solid angular lines.

Is that my life here, now? A fucking brick wall? Maybe this room is the big stop sign of the rest of my life, a harbinger, a prophetic reminder. This is where it ends, Hobobob. Right here, right now.

Good thing I'm not religious.

Hobobob