Recognition Takes It's Toll

I float out of dreams, like a surfer cresting a wave.

I roll over in the bed, the sheets moving with a sigh around me, and then the voices. High pitched female voices, squawking like crows outside my door. I frown. They must have been standing right in front of my door, shouting like they were across the fucking hall from each other. Each trying to shout louder than the other, to drown the other out. Squawk, squawk, fucking squawk! I roll over, ready to cry, when a sorrowing, poor, annoying voice rises in the air outside the window.

This mother- fucker couldn't hold a note if you tied it around his neck. His voice sails up over the drone of the damn crows, holding a high sickly note, like a stumbling drunk. I want to cry more. I roll away from the window and go fetal. Oh this old man's voice is strikingly horrible. He takes songs that I loved from the Seventies and grinds them into the ground, singing like a drunk, out of the window. He is my next door neighbor, the stoned old man that I've seen slumped out in the hallway in front of his door or outside in front of the liquor store, unconscious.

This mother- fucker, is now making my life miserable by bellowing outside his window for the world to enjoy his musical singing talent. What I would give for a 357 Magnum pistol. I would snatch open my door and pump several rounds into 'Bat Faced Bitch', spraying her blood like an aerosol discharge against the hallway walls. Paula, who would probably be in her doorway, standing like a walking Buddha, I would just clock in the face with the entire weight of the pistol. The old man next door? Blow open his door lock, kick in the door and when he turned from the window, stopping the singing, I would level the gun at him and beg him to please sing another refrain, and when he inhaled, opening his mouth to sing, I would shout; "I HATE THAT SHIT!" and blow his head off.

I make coffee and watch the news about the expanding oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. It's like the fucking black tar of my heart. I feel myself slipping into a lonely darkness that wants to engulf me. I am sitting alone most of the time in my room, thinking to myself, what does my future hold? I have no clue. I'm a bump on a log, afraid to step out of my home, afraid to interface with people. Just staying indoors, safe and secure from the world outside. The chattering bitches in front of my door, the singing madmen outside my window. The frigid cold of my room, brought on because my damn computer fan has failed. If I don't keep it very cold in my room, It'll crash from overheating.

Fuck, I have to do my walk or I'll just stay in here! I'll go mad! I get dressed, don my MP3 player and snatch open my door. The bitches outside, Bat Faced Bitch being one of them, look at me as if I am standing in front of THEIR door. I step into them, forcing them to get out of my way as I turn to lock my door. Paula is in her doorway as usual, and sings "Hey Hobobob, how are you doing?" Fine Paula. Bat Faced Bitch has her laser eyes focused on me. I want to take two fingers and poke them out just to teach her manners. "Haven't seen you in awhile," Paula coos. You know me Paula, trying to keep a low profile. I doff my cap at her and march off down the hallway.

I stand in front of the elevator waiting. The transport rings a bell as it passes floors to let you know that it's working. It is not ringing bells. I stand and wait, and wait. I am not walking down the stairs and then walk over a hundred blocks just to struggle back upstairs if the elevator is out of commission. Glancing down the hall, Paula, another woman and Bat Face is still congregated at my door. Oh no, I'm not going that way without a baseball bat. I hear the pleasant ping of the bell...the elevator is in motion.

Then it stops. I wait again as it starts and stops again. And again, and then it opens on my floor. Standing inside are Skeksies. Two men that look as if they dressed in the dark with hooks for hands. Their clothing disheveled, their heads uncombed. They stare at me as if there is nothing going on behind their eyes. Probably when we get to the lobby floor, two men will walk in and pick them up like frozen manikins and carry them out into the world. I turn my back to them, facing the door, making certain that they can't wave their hands in my face to catch my attention, and take off when the door opens.

Or try. Like in the subways, these fucking dopes stand in front of the elevator doors, looking at you en-mass as if you can jump clear over them to exit the elevator. I plow into them with my shoulders, knocking them aside, saying excuse me over and over again. They turn to me, disgusted, but what are they going to do? Hate me for having mass and inertia? I have to get by, and you are in the way. What logically happens next your fuckheads.

I make it to the sidewalk. It is cool, breezy and shady. The sun had not yet risen to the noon position overhead, therefore casting shadows of the buildings of the block clear across the street. I march downtown, eyes open, scanning every face and every one. The women mostly. There are just so damn many of them. I feel that man is virtually outnumbered by them. How did evolution manage that shit? I guess if there was too few women, there would be wars. With a glut, every man can get laid if he wanted to. I scratch the heavy beard on my chin. I look at my swollen body in the window reflections, my wild hair peeking from under my cap.

I look criminal. I should be in a fucking mug shot. Wanted, Dead or Dead. The use of illegal, abusive, murderous force in the apprehension of Hobobob is encouraged. It's obvious to me that I have mostly withdrawn from womankind. I lack interest, as if I was still on LUVOX. It is as if my libido has never returned to be after the influence of the chemical. But I still get erections, I just lack the desire to use them. Maybe it's age. I'm nearing Fifty. I saw an ex-model on a commercial recently. One that was rather hot when she was in her Twenties. Angie Everhart, doing a fat commercial for some weight loss plan. She was curvy, more curvy than I remembered her years ago but still a turn on. I happen to like curvy women anyway.

When I see a thin woman, I think of a bicycle. And honestly, if you've ever fucked one, you live to regret it. Her hip bones are like cleavers which pound your pelvis with every thrust. You tend to roll them over and screw them from behind, their asses better cushions. Oh, okay, moving on...Angie Everhart, a solid beauty, still, and she says into the camera after prancing and sticking out her hip, "Pretty good for Forty, huh?" Forty? Forty? Angie is Forty? Eight years my junior? Get the fuck out of here! How old was she when she played a vampire in 'Tales of the Crypt presents, "Bordello of Blood" in 1996? Twelve? Shit. Damn do I feel old. Old and criminal looking. Oh, and don't forget out of shape.

I continue to walk in the growing heat, the sun rising higher, the mothers with their baby carriages zooming in closer and closer, threatening to run me off the sidewalks. And then, something surprising strikes me about Angie Everhart...she is a red head. A red head. Something that I have avoided all of my life, but somehow I was drawn to her, but never even noticed her striking red hair. How is THAT possible? Did I just blank it out and make her a brunette since I was married to a brunette at the time? Probably, and most likely.

I finish my walk roughly two hours later and wait for the elevator. It's on the top floor, just sitting there. I stand along with another woman and we stare at the floor indicator above the elevator door. It read nine still, with both the up and down arrows dark. That means that the elevator is just sitting there. Broken? My arms and legs were in too much pain to consider the thought of walking up sixteen flights of stairs - two for every floor. This is not really pleasing to me. Ping! I look up, the elevator descends to the eighth floor and stops. We wait, then ping! It descends to the seventh floor and stops.

This is what I call the 'Skeksie Ride'. Every time these brain-dead motherfuckers ride the elevator, they have to stop on every fucking floor. All the time. I know for certain when the elevator reaches the lobby floor and the door opens it will be packed with these retards, standing there looking back at you as if this was the floor to Hell. Wow! Completely surprised that they were at the lobby. I shake my head. Ping! Sixth Floor. I look at the woman with me. She looks as if she was in Tales of the Crypt. Maybe a fucking meth addict. Skinny, face drawn, eyes bulging. All she needed to be was covered in blood with torn and tattered clothing and you would mistaken her for a zombie!

Ping. Fifth Floor. What was wrong with this building? There is nothing hot in this building. This includes the men and me also. All of us in this building are ugly motherfuckers. Maybe that's why I'm completely tired of even the thought of sex, because I see so many....Ping, Four. I see so many corrupt women that I can't imagine sex any longer. Like Bat Faced Bitch, who has been in the hallways of my floor so much, she believes it's an extension of her room. You know, living room, hallway, bathroom. All her's. Ping, Three. When I walk through it, she gives me the Evil Eye. One time she actually stood near the bathroom door, watching me disdainfully as I left my room and went to the bathroom. Just before closing the door to the bathroom I farted loudly.

Ping, Two. I make ready for the elevator doors to open, stepping to the side. The zombie with me doing the same and presently the doors slide open, revealing a packed elevator filled with Skeksies. They looked as if they were dragged along a highway to the lobby floor. As usual, they stand stunned, staring out from the elevator for a moment, then waddle out like reluctant penguins, as if to leave the elevator means death. I move my weight from one leg to the other in anticipation, watching as the elevator door begins to close and the last Skek is in my way of it. It barely closes but I reach around the last waddling fool to press the call button, causing the door to slide open once more.

I get home and cook fish. Fish that had an expiration date of three days ago. Well, it's not really an expiration date, it just says: "Sell by this date". It doesn't say, 'Will kill you by this date." So I cook it and eat it. Catfish and Tilapia fish, light salad, fresh cauliflower and pasta. YUM! I sit and watch Internet television as I devour my meal, then stash dishes in the sink. I drink water because I seldom drink soda, and pop my pills for the day. My two water pills keep my running to the bathroom every ten minutes which is getting kind of old. So I hold in the next run, trying to double up. Shortly after that, I get hit in the stomach with a stab of pain. Real pain!

I grab the toilet tissue and stumble into the bathroom to take a terrific shit. I tell you, more shit than I ate that day. Plenty more. Even when done, my asshole throbbed in pain. I limped back to my room and laid across my bed, waiting for the ache to subside. What could this be from? The fucking fish? No, it can't be. Then my back ached along with my stomach. I sat up and when my full ass hit the bed my very balls started to throb like twin clappers in a bell. Damn. I had never shitted so hard that I was in this much pain. I went to my medicine cabinet and took two pain killers. Then I made it back to bed, crawled into it and threw the covers over my head.

I turned off the blasting air- conditioner. Closed my eyes, and drifted. Before folding into a restful sleep I hear Paula talking to the Bat Faced Bitch on the other side of my door. Wouldn't it be funny if I died to her voice? Would Satan in Fiery Hell, which is where I would obviously go, sound like her? With her silly, loud, high pitched voice?

Something to think about.

Hobobob