hipster, you open yr fuckin’ coffee shop
at 6 am. The krauts need their coffee
& they’re on site by seven, bones aching
in the cold or wilting in the heat that is
already saturating the day even by then.
You open at seven, that’s too goddamn late.
I walk into somebody’s beardy bar for lunch
and a fuckin’ fried bologna cost eight bucks,
are you fucking kidding me? I go to the Subway
over by the Krogers for some of that shit on
plastic coated bread, at least it’s better than
the saran wrap shit they got inside the Kroger,
turkey with fuckin’ sprouts on it, whose goddamn
idea was that? Graham next door finally
had to move out a month ago, couldn’t really
make it on his own anymore, the folk at
St. Elizabeth found him a place, and I guess
it’s paid for, I don’t know how, don’t want
to think about it. How you gonna pay somebody
to wipe yr ass when you have to panhandle
yr kin just to make rent? I don’t know how
that works. I don’t know how any of this works
anymore. It’s not like anybody gives a fuck,
no matter what they say, and believe me,
they talk plenty. Nobody gives a single fuck.
Nobody who could make a difference, anyway.
I hear the prices goin’ up in this neighborhood,
but I don’t know the people sellin’, and I don’t
know the people buyin’. Nice enough, I suppose.
Graham’s house ain’t got no new renters yet.
There ain’t no sign up out front. I see people
in and out, I suppose they’re working on the place,
I see some new paint going up through naked
windows, I see a Lowes truck out front with new
stainless steel appliances. Maybe they’re fancying
it up to get a higher class of people, a class of
people who want a condo up the street at the
converted mill, but have to settle with a shotgun
down the street and live in what I suppose they
think is old world glamor until they cash in the
stock portfolio somebody left to them in a will,
then they could move on, and they don’t even
have to sell the shotgun, they just turn it into
one of those temporary rental places, hang some
fancy art on the wall, keep flowers in the fancy
vases, and they charge people ninety dollars a night
to stay there when they come down to do whatever
the fuck it is they do when they come down here, of
course everyone knows about the derby, but that’s
like one week in May, what else do they do? Do they take
the bourbon tours, do they tour the interminable glut
of overpriced beer and hamburgers that fill Goss and
Burnett and Breckenridge like the weedy lawns that took
over this place in the 80s? I don’t fuckin’ know. I do know
that some kids bought Harriet’s place across the street
a couple years ago, and Harriet moved out with nary a
word, not that she had much to say anyway, but now she’s
gone, and I didn’t know ‘til after she left. Then they
painted the place, the Lowes truck came and went,
and after that, there was different people in all the time.
Sometimes it was kids, and they drank too much, and
got too loud, but that’s okay, that’s what kids do, they
drink too much and get too loud, and old people like me
yell at them and tell them to shut the fuck up or we call
the cops, and then they apologize and get quiet for a
little bit, but then get loud again, because they’re drinking
and that’s what kids do when they drink. Other times it
was quiet folk, not kids, that drove four year old Toyotas
and carried maps. Or brochures that looked like maps.
I think Graham’s old place is gonna be like that. They
call them bed and breakfast, I think, but then I thought
that shit was all in Vermont, and had gingham curtains.
The folk that landlorded Graham’s place, they about the
same age as the kids that bought my house last year. Old
Carol was a bitch, and getting her to fix something simple
as a water heater took a resolution from the governor, but
things was always the same. These kids are nice, too nice,
maybe, asking me if I need an extension if I’m a week late,
or asking me if I would like to paint for some cash off the top
of my monthly. I take it, of course, and the house is in better
shape than it ever was. Can’t say the same about myself,
sad to say. I’m 65, and the owner kids are asking me when
I’m going to retire, what my plans are, like they want to
see me basking in the sun, or some such shit. I always
tell them the same thing, that I’m gonna work ‘til I fuckin’ die,
and they fake like they admire it, but I correct ‘em. I tell them
I would quit tomorrow, but I ain’t got a fuckin’ choice. Time was,
a man could move on to the later part of his life when he had the
notion, I suppose, but that time is gone. Graham didn’t stop
until one day, when he couldn’t get out of fucking bed.
Couldn’t even guide his feet to the floor. Now he’s god
knows where, and I can only hope he’s too far gone to worry
about who’s paying for those girls who fluff his pillows and
roll him over so he don’t get bed sores. But anyway, last
week they whitewashed the siding, even though it really
didn’t need it. I think they got plans. I doubt those plans
include me any further than politeness dictates.
If I had to find a new place tomorrow, I don’t know where
I’d go. Not here, anymore, most likely. Not the place
I grew up. Nobody rents here anymore. They turn their
places into little motels.
I used to drink Falls City all the time. I tasted it, it tasted
different. “This is good” I tell the beardo behind the bar,
“not like the piss water I grew up on”. New stuff, he says,
the brewery has been revived, local this, local that, blah
blah blah. But it was good beer. Then I get the tab, it’s six
fucking dollars for one beer, and I’m like “for six dollars,
this should be some fucking Don Perignon champagne”.
He gives me a Pabst for three dollars, and the first thing
I’m like this isn’t tasting like it used to either, this tastes
like piss, but it’s a different kind of piss than it used to be.
And three dollars, so okay. I look at the menu, the only thing
I even recognize, besides the fifteen dollar burger, is humus.
I left and got some turkey breast at Subway.
It’s midnight. I don’t want to go to bed, I want another beer.
My legs hurt, my shoulder hurts, my feet hurt, my back hurts,
I can’t sleep for the pain. I don’t want to get up in the morning.
But if I don’t, then they’ll have to find another place for me to
retire to, and I’m not far enough gone to rest in ignorant peace yet.
They planted trees on Goss in front of the Kroger. Time was,
there was plenty of green life in that median, what with the
grass and weeds poking up through the busted concrete. Now,
the concrete is gone, there’s a planter there. What the hell,
the world turns in circles, history repeats itself, someday
the weeds will take over the median again, and no one will care.
Only thing for sure is that I will be long gone by then.
In the meantime, dear sir or madam, is it too much to ask
you to open your goddamn coffee house at six instead of seven?
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