or
Why has my life started to feel like a cliche teen-coming-of-age-b-movie?
and
Washington's Take on the Movie, "Garden State"
Yesterday started like any other day. I woke up, drank my morning coffee while listening to radio news. I pondered the way in which politics work, the news, the BP oil spill, the EU Economic system, etc, etc. I took my dog for a walk along the sprawling suburban sprawls. However, my day took a drastic turn once I was home and I realized I needed to be fingerprinted for my new job.
The court house in my hometown is located in an area dubbed, "Felony Flats." There are a slew of bail bond joints, cheap apartments for ex-convicts, high homelessness and social unease. I realize there is no where else I can get fingerprinted, suck it up and drive down. First, I get lost. I haven't "lived" here for 4 years and the streets are now unfamiliar and vaguely foreign. I lock my doors, pull over, walk past a man with scabs on his face (a sign of the use of meth) and go to a cop to ask for directions. He points a block away, tells me to park behind the truck.
I'm fine. I park, go through security. I find the small, cream, window-less room. I see signs that read, "Guns: Our Right as Americans", "Support or Troops!", "Bush/Cheney 04" and "Patriot Act: If you have nothing to hide, don't be afraid!" I sit down, pull out a book while I wait, in ideal hopes I will look occupied and people will leave me along. Wrong.
Five minutes pass, and I feel a tap on my shoulder. I look up, only to see a scraggly woman with thinning brown hair looking at me. She hands me a piece of paper torn out of a notebook. On it, written in frantic, fast print is the following, "Pearls, white smaller than a dime, from Bali…Pearls, off-white, cream, small.." this continues to go on for the entire torn page. She tells me her son stole her pearls for drugs and now needs to write a description. She wants me to help her writing the description.
Let's pause: First of all, I don't know why she asked me this. Secondly, the way in which this note was written was strange. There were phrases repeated, nouns displaced and strange, non sequitur verbiage. Something isn't right, in fact, something is very, very, wrong with her at this moment in time. The way this is written reminds me of Freud's coke writings, and keen attention to detail. I knew right away this woman was on drugs, but scanning the note just further proved it.
So, I kindly ask her to follow me. I take her to security.
The rest of my time in the court house was normal, a few weird tweakers, but that just comes with the territory.
Driving home, I see two mormons riding bicycles in full suits. It was 86 degrees.
Here, my day falls back into it's natural rhythm.
Until I go out later than night. This is a classy, classy town, with 1.00 pbr specials and 1.00 grilled cheese. It's a hip bar. There's a lot of plaid. A lot of straight haired, indie-girls, a lot of men in clothes-too-tight for them with Buddy Holly glasses. Everyone looks the same in the "I'm trying to be different mentality." I try to make jokes with two scene kids about how I love Nickelback. They take me seriously. I throw in the sass, extra thick. They're drunk and they actually think I respect Nickleback as a band. They make a joke about the facebook page, "Can this pickle get more fans than Nickleback?" Knowing they are not getting my sarcasm, I just... give up and I convince someone who actually got the sarcasm to play Johnny Cash on the jukebox. Success! I order my gin and go sit down.
I then get into a discussion about vegans. Back-context: While I respect vegans, I think it's an elitist kind of lifestyle. You have the money and the choice to, well, be picky about food. I have nothing against the choice, but personally I do not agree with this. That's all. From my standpoint: I'd rather buy organic food and give the extra money to people who have trouble actually obtaining any food. The man takes this personally and gets really offended. His friend then takes out a pocket knife.
Whoa.
He wants to, quote, "Mark his cup."
At this point, I'm done with my gin. I'm done with the scene 20 somethings, I'm done with listening to music I heard in my junior year of college and I'm done with the weird man pulling out a KNIFE AT A BAR. I put on my bitchy sass, and I tell him to put the knife away, ask him what was wrong with a pen, I tell him it's illegal and I also personally attack his masculinity and the fact that he needs to assert his dominance. He puts the knife away, gets up and finds another seat. I put away my bitchy sass and go dance to Neon Indian with some strange hipster who looks like every other hipster I've ever seen. He is not fun to dance with. I then go outside to call my friends from Bellingham. Once outside, I see a firetruck, three cop cars and a crowd of people outside a building down the street. I hang up and go back inside.
We then leave to go grab something to eat. We walk down the street, around midnight. It's desolate, it's dark and I can only hear the thumpa-thumpa of a bar playing hip-hop for hussies.
Once inside the 24-hour diner, I see three things:
1) A lone cowboy, wearing a cream colored ten gallon hat sipping coffee.
2) Fake breasted drunk woman displaying an inordinate amount of public affection
3) Old people from our High School
3) These two men are wasted. One of them went to jail. I am going to not go into detail here, but it was a serious allegation. I wonder how the legal system let him out. He's not openly vicious, but still, he's an ex-convict, with more than a felony on his record. Yeah.
My friends and I eat our food as fast as possible. We leave. We get harassed by drunk men while we walk down the street. One of them screams, "faggots" at us. Clearly, I am gay. CLEARLY. And, even if I was, why would you yell this to a group of women?
By this point, I'm envisioning my life vaguely resembling the coming-of-age "Garden State" and all of those, cliche motifs. Only in my version, there is no sexy Zach Braff, only strange hipsters, drunk men and a shittier soundtrack.
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