Set my sights on Monday
Part I
There is a certain kind of
comfort in morning ritual. In waking up slowly and eating quickly. Standing in
the bathroom with wet hair and feet pressed against cold tile listening to the
rasp of a razor across your check. There is a kind of comfort in that. I
suppose mostly I get satisfaction from such things because not much else can be
placed shelves and forgotten about only to be revisited the next morning when
they are needed again. This things are independent, indifferent to what drives
me to daily stand and shift my weight in a graceful sort of dance while I
scrape the blade across my cheek or rake the bristles past my teeth.
The only other place I have
found such brash disconnection from the current, from truths which drive other
things, is between the covers of books that line shelves or serve as coasters
on a desk piled high with them. Open a book anytime and it will unabashedly
tell the same story it has always told. Men, with all our might, will try to
bend the words to mean something which they didn't not mean when they were
written. We will try, but a book can resist simply by refusing to say anything
other than what it always has. There is a kind of comfort in that too.
Regardless of the comfort of
morning ritual it is not easy to drag yourself out of bed on a Monday morning.
Focusing my thoughts away from their wondering is never easy either. My
thoughts seem too...no, no! Focus Henry, focus. Okay. There we are. I stand up
slowly and padded into the shower. I turn the knob all the way to hot and
return to bed for a few more minutes. It is a habit I gained in my college
days, when the water didn't come out hot for many minutes. The water here is
always hot, but the habit is justifiable, I get a bit more sleep. The snooze
alarm sounds, and I return to the bathroom for my shower.
I always take 7-minute showers.
I do not time them. I dated a woman once, that is to say I slept with a woman
once, that said you could set a watch to the time I spent in the bathroom. That
came in handy I suppose. One morning I got up to shower and shave and dress.
When I came out she and all her belongings were gone. A perfect get away,
facilitated by my schedule. Convenient. I am doing it again; having a
conversation with myself. This cannot
be normal. I step into the hot spray.
I do not sing in the shower. I
sing outside of the shower. Almost constantly. The words are not always aloud,
my lack of actual singing ability accounts for that. I am, however, constantly
running the lines from songs through my head, I cannot help it. I truly believe
it is genetic; it is something about my father I always hated. I don't hate it
in myself though, and have no one to hate it for me so the habit persists. It
keeps my mind occupied, and keeps me from talking to myself. The water is
getting too hot now, almost scalding, my feet are turning red in protest. 7
minutes.
I step out of the shower and
towel off. I dress quickly. Pulling up and pulling on clothing efficiently,
with a kind of fanatical precision. This is something I hate about myself. I
try to shift my thoughts away from a self-analysis, away from a discussion of
my reasons for this speed. My parents were beautiful, thin and of the classic
mold that has enticed humanity since the black monolith was opened and apes
turned to men. I was never made of the same stuff. Perhaps now I have grown
into my father's image. The pictures look similar, I am told. But in my youth I
was not. I was slightly over weight, a bit unkempt, and slightly less poised. I
always yearned for the kind of weightlessness and hard lines of John Galt or
the square jaw and glinting eyes of John Wayne. I have been told I am a
handsome man. But I cannot look at myself in the mirror unclothed without
feeling ashamed. I am tall and thin and strong, these things I know. I shave
with my clothing on.
I am walking down the hallway
away from my room, my haven, towards the outside world. I am being melodramatic
again. I suppose that is a side effect of talking to yourself, even if you do
it silently. You have no one to discourage your imagination. In the realm of
reality, the door to room 912C is opening. Mrs. Thomps. I will try to pretend I
don't see her. Perhaps God will smile upon me and she won't notice me passing
her by.
"Good morning, Mr.
Stanforth." My skin crawls. More accurately, my muscles stiffen and my
heartbeat quickens. I do not like being called by that name.
"Mrs. Thomps." I hope,
on the surface, that my reply is not overly curt. Inwardly I just hope she is
done conversing with me. I am not shy exactly. I learned years ago to raise my
eyes from the ground as I walk. But I am still not prone to be neighborly. I
turn the voices to a lower din in my mind. She is talking to me again.
"How are you this
morning?" I see the glint in her eye. Her voice is filled with more than
pleasantness. Her daughter is coming to visit again. Mrs. Thomps has been
trying to get me to meet her daughter for some years. You mean marry. Yes, I
mean marry. Yes, well. I am not quite ready to 'wive an thrive' as it were. And
besides, Miss. Thomps would prefer a man with a bit more bend in him than I
have. I glance again at Mrs. Thomps. She has a puzzled look upon her face. I
have been standing here for too long, I have forgotten to reply.
"I am feeling strangely
fine Mrs. Thomps, my regards to your daughter." She looks at me oddly. I
am used to it. I comfort myself. At least I am not provincial. Is that a song?
Provincial. It seems so. It'll come to me.
There are 116 stairs from my
floor to the street. There is also an elevator. Aloud I say 'Il y a un' but
then cannot remember the French word for elevator. Oh well, I'll have to
continue my musings in English and silently. I never take the elevator. My
father never took the elevator and he always parked his car far back every lot.
My car is in the last row.
I jump down the final few steps.
That little wisp of excitement is what they try to bottle and sell to you on
television. Or at least I like to think so. I walk through the doors leading
too the street. I look left and step into the street. A horn blares. I step
back as a car blows past me from the right. You are an idiot, Henry. I always
forget that part. Look right. A habit not learned young is hard to pick up when
you are grown it seems. Today is surely a day to take the subway to work.
©2003 Copyright held by the author.