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F: My mother always said I was too damn curious. So I just couldn’t help myself when I saw the two kids sneak off into the alley, him dragging her by the arm. They were both young and living the life, nothing urgent about their mannerisms, just running along with smiles on their faces. I checked my watch to see if I had enough time before I had to go and stare at my computer. I hate working the weekends, not that the drudgery of the weekdays is any better, but the extended lunches were a short vacation in and of themselves. Groaning as I pushed myself off the bench, I slapped my hat back on my head and tossed the remainder of my tea into the bin. Gazing up and down the street, I saw nothing else worth occupying my time with, so I sauntered on down to where I had last seen the pair. A quick glance over my shoulder, making sure nobody was spying on me, and I took a quick glance around the corner, down the alley.
Well, they weren’t fucking, let me just make that abundantly clear. And no, there was no ‘making of love’ either. No rape, no beating, nothing scary or of the sorts. They were flopped behind a dumpster on a pile of trash bags, using an old refrigerator box to buffer between them and the rotting condoms and apples stuffed in the black bags. His fingers were intertwined with hers. Their forearms and hands pointed towards the sky like a steeple. He smiled. She smiled. Their sun burnt faces didn’t crease with it, but rather burst at the seams. Between the light of their faces shined the light of the joint they passed back and forth. As their conversation went on, unheard by my ears, that little light danced and flickered, burned slightly brighter then faded away. It was almost as if it were an author’s pencil, punctuating each sentence as it swooped through the air, vividly describing each laugh and bringing to light the theme of their conversation. I looked at my watch again. My how time flies while others are having fun.
I had those damn kids stuck in my head the rest of the day. Designing that better mousetrap wasn’t able to keep their grinning faces from slamming to the front of my mind. Why couldn’t they have been doing something sordid or, on all accounts, truly fucked up? I could have just shook my head in disgust or walked away. Yet here I am with their laughter echoing in my head. Finally, five o’clock came, and I made my way home. I climbed the stairs to my shoddy little apartment, passed the piss stain that had been grounding into the carpet with memorized grace, stopped, and turned on my heels towards my door. But this wasn’t my door. This was Ronnie’s, our local meet-and-greet-have-a-seat hippie. I don’t remember knocking, but that’s unsurprising. That laughter seemed to be hijacking my body. We exchanged pleasantries after I assured him for the umpteenth time that “No, this isn’t the police.” I danced around the topic of what I really wanted a bit. Ronnie’s eyes got a little shifty at this point. At least I think they did, but with his lids half closed and the majority of his eyes being redder than a thousand suns, it gets difficult to tell. After a bit I was relaxing in my living room, $100 poorer, but a bag of grass richer.
An hour later, I finally worked up the nerve to go back over and knock on Ronnie’s door again. He put up less of a fight this time, and cracked the door until the chain pulled tight against the frame.
“Hey man, what’s the problem now?”
“Hey Ronnie, um, well, it’s kinda mechanical.”
“Like, engines and shit? I just do the vegetation shit and stuff, man.”
“No, it’s, well.” I began to rub my eyes, the aggravation at myself beginning to build. “This is, y’know. My first time.”
“Wha? Oh man. Oh man, oh man. I did not know. I always figured you for a straight up kinda guy but I figured you were a kid once.”
“Yeah. A kid. Um, so I’ve got no papers or pipes or anything. What do I do?”
Never let it be said that those who spend their time in a cloud of smoke are not engineer grade material. Within a minute Ronnie had given me detailed instructions on how to make a pipe out of a can. I thanked him and half jogged back to my apartment, ready to find out just where the smiles come from. It burned my throat, made my sinuses cry in agony, punished my lungs, and gave me such a coughing fit that I swore I could hear Ronnie laughing all the way at the other end of the hall. I crawled to the kitchen and got a tall glass of water, hoping something, anything would cool my throat.
Halfway through the glass I noticed that water only pours down and not up. If only water would pour up, there wouldn’t need to be water pumps to get water to the toilets at the top of my office building. I could save the company, like, hundreds if not thousands in utility bills if I could just find some way to implement this. I began to draw out the schematics for the upward pouring system, detailed with exit strategies and the conundrum of getting the water to go back down and not hurl off into space, providing passing aliens with samples of our urine and excrement. After a bit of brainstorming, I noticed that my stomach was trying to chew its way out by way of my navel. The refrigerator was empty, no Pop Tarts in the pantry, whatever was I to do? There was a fabulous Chinese take-out restaurant about three blocks away, I could maybe make it without attracting notice to myself.
That’s when it hit me. I’d attract attention to myself. I’d never make it without stumbling up and falling on some granny and her walker. The police would find me and take me away. The headlines would read “Local Engineer Sentenced to Life for Assault on a Granny”. Then the drug tests. Losing my job. Humiliating my family. The horror! The horror! I curled up beside my television, the paranoia deep in my brain, willing my stomach not to send me to prison.
I awoke the next day covered in herbs and spices. I threw the remainder of the weed into the back of my closet. It’s too scary to deal with that kind of fear, never sure whether or not you’re going to screw up your life or not. I just didn’t feel worth risking it for that bit of childish joy. It’s a sort of abject terror, I suppose. Then a week later, I saw the same two kids, fashionably grungy in their denim jeans with holes torn in the knees and right under the ass. They were still smiling and giggling while everyone else around them moped along with their weekly routines, those little rays of sunshine on an otherwise gloomy Saturday.
I have a new bag of pot now, as well as a full stocked fridge. Sure, the fear sets in now and then, but at least it’s not constant anymore. I think I finally realized that a little bit of happiness is worth all that risk. Everyone needs a little break in their routine. Something to spice it up a little bit, to give them a feeling of happiness that sixty hours a week in a rug lined box, pounding out schematics for another end table just can’t offer. If not, I’ve still got those plans for the upwards pouring water system to make me fucking rich.
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