Vignette redux.

"Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story."

~ Margaret Thatcher

36. 

And there it was; the biggest fucking rat I have ever seen in my entire life. People will tell you stories about how shitty, dirty and nasty of a place New York City is; they'll tell you about the goddamned rats. But I will tell you this: it's all bullshit until you see it for yourself. Unfortunately, there I was, seeing it for myself. This thing was easily the size of small dog and could probably have fit a basketball in it's mouth. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't afraid of the thing. It seemed more worried about us than anything else, I was just taken aback by it. I had been to NYC before, but wasn't actually in the city at night, so I had missed this truly marvelous mutation of the natural order. As it scurried along, it slowly dawned on me that it was not alone. As I cast my eyes down the trash covered street, my sight starting to adjust from the light of the subway tunnels, I noticed probably thirty more of them. I suppose that when you let trash bags overrun their cans and allow dumpsters to overflow into the street, this is what happens. And he was taking me to a fucking restaurant down here somewhere! What in the fuck was going on?!?

31.

Whenever he sits down to write something, it's like he's part of someone else's really odd story about this guy that thinks he's a writer. Never sure of what to do, he sits blankly in front of the screen, eenie, meenie, minie, moe...trying to think of something, anything to connect himself to the page - the topic at hand. It's as if some really mischievous being is also sitting somewhere, writing out his life in the most irritatingly comic way it can possibly imagine. He pictures this being, doing exactly what he's doing; their fingers both moving in tandem -the keys clicking, cosmically connecting the two unalike, yet completely strung-together beings. This is all in his head, of course. The thought of being a puppet to someone else's will is only slightly less disgusting to him than  someone assuming that he has no idea what's taking place. Then again, those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

33.

It's sad, really.... I've had that Ghostbusters shirt for about six years and there it goes. The worst thing about it, I guess, is the fact that it isn't even like something being missing, or someone being gone, as I've not really lost anything. Not in the literal sense, anyway. No. I have to see it around. It's like living in the same apartment complex as your ex of 6 years and having to hear he fucking her new boyfriend whenever you go down to get the mail in the afternoon. See, the shirt is still in the house, but it is no longer mine. It no longer conforms to my being, or shelters me from the elements. Whereas it once commanded the jealousy of those who did not possess it, it now possesses me. Funny that an article of clothing could bring out such a burning hatred in me. I'd almost rather see it destroyed than on another human being, yet....that is exactly what I have to do. In fact, I suppose that this might even be of my own doing. After all, if I hadn't been so enamored with the goddamned thing in the first place...