State's Famed

I look around, and when I know no one is looking, I place a winning scratch ticket on the bookshelf. Whomever's house this is will find it one day and smile.

The windows are never closed but the blind are always open. Cool street air drifts in from the night, bouncing the single flames from dozens of candles off the walls. Vegans shiver in a southern November, but it might as well be a northern September. Each shadow produced by a candle dances with its master; lift your cup and a murmur of the lips makes the darkness mouth silent songs, as I pull up my socks and avoid the view up my neighbor's skirt.

The drunks swallow slowly and suck on their cigarettes as I slowly tell a story in strained monotone, my eyes never leaving the ground. I have to work on eye contact, but it got harder the summer I realized that it is easier to make someone cry than to laugh. But no matter how you slice it, we're all mere jokers in the ring, and what a circus it is that abuses elephants around us. Better yet, what a prank.

Someone throws on music I've never heard of before. Myself, I've cynically been traveling back into time looking for better sounds. I blatantly ignore anything modern or new out of lonesome loathing to my generation--the all inclusive everyone is special generation, a group of fuck ups and ambitious philosophy majors with no practical skills.

If I tear my groin from the bone in a kickball game I'd starve to death at thirdbase like a deer with eroded teeth. But if I happen to mispronounce a French philosopher from the 18th century I catch hell. Everybody wins a trophy in this generation.

I finish speaking and most are too stoned to be paying attention. A few look puzzled and one girl with dyed red hair and a dangerous eyebrow ring asks what I do for a living. I'm an ambitious fuck up with no practical talent so I lie. I tell her I'm a garbage man. Or a disposable lighter repairman.

And in the silence no one laughs. I tilt a half drank beer I didn't pay for to chapped lips, wondering once again who's in charge of refills. My needs for alcohol eclipsed my manners and I strode to the kitchen, leaving the eyebrow ring with the skirt looking for a cigarette. I told her to check the bookcase but she ignored me.

Out the window, on the street, men are returning from closing time. It's been windy for weeks, and it won't be stopping soon. That's not what they're talking about, but it'll be on the minds of the people who hose off their vomit from the sidewalks in the morning.