A monologue:
“So, did I tell you I had this higher power moment? No? Oh man, I gotta tell you this. So, I’ve been doin’ well, right—I’ve got something like ninety days since I’ve done anything like inner circle, or middle circle behavior. Then I get this thing I gotta do mid-week for my job. I’m going down to this storage place, got my documents in order, gotta secure some space for our lab. It’s a semi-regular part of my job, and I’ve been to this place before, and it’s a fairly easy errand to run, only I need to carry some equipment so I say to this intern in our office, ‘hey you—and I’m pointing to him like this—let’s go, I got a job for you. Anyway, we head down there, get inside this place which is in the middle of this industrial park where there’s hardly anyone around and…behind the counter there is this totally cute girl who walks up to the front desk and…I can just tell—I’m not tryin’ to be a dick—that something’s happening. I mean, she’s smilin’ and being totally helpful right from the get-go, and being talkative, which makes me feel talkative and I can feel right away a surge of confidence. So, we do some business. There are these forms to fill out for the securing of the space we need. Meanwhile, the intern’s just standing there, waiting to be told something but not saying anything. The conversation is totally between me and this girl, right! I can’t remember exactly what we’re talking about—I make some cute remarks about what it’s like to work in storage or something—I mean, whatever, I’m just being funny, or she’s responding like I’m funny, giggling and everything. But she’s not stupid. She’s being sweet and kinda’ funny herself and she’s lookin’ at me like she’s into me. She’s fixing me with these eyes that are just, like, shining into me. Plus, the order starts taking a long time, as in longer than it should do, and eventually one or two other people are coming into the office and she’s gotta attend to them, only when she does she gives me this disappointed look, saying she’ll be right back, like she wants me to stick around. She does this two or three times and I can tell it’s a way to stall, only at some point it becomes awkward because my goddamn intern is still standing around saying nothing and acting like a third wheel. So, eventually we’ve gotta leave because we’ve completed what we need to do and she’s saying things like, ‘well, there you are…’ with a trailing, unsure sound in her voice, like she’s waiting for me to do something to keep this thing going. Actually, one thing I did do while she was helping another customer was grab a business card that might have been hers and I wrote on the back of it my phone number while she was away, thinking I’d come upon some reason to give it to her, only no logical reasons emerged, so…Anyway, we leave the store with me feeling frustrated because that all felt good, ya’ know—I mean, it’s been I don’t know how long since I just let myself flirt like that with someone, and I didn’t wanna’ stop. At the same time I didn’t wanna’ continue this thing because I had this voice in my head which was saying, ‘you know this is only gonna’ end up in a bad place. Nothing good can come of this. I don’t wanna’ keep being that guy’. But minutes later I’m outside my car after we’ve dropped off some equipment and it’s time to go back to the office, and I have an idea. The intern had come in a second car and I tell him that there’s something I forgot but he doesn’t need to stick around so he can just go back without me. Then I can go back inside and say something similar, like, ‘hey, I just forgot this one thing, apologize for inconvenience’—except that was bullshit, of course—and we’d continue the conversation and…I don’t know…I just didn’t want that feeling to end, ya’ know? So, moments later I’m back in the store and feeling like the coast is clear because it’ll just be me and the girl. No one else around. And when I walk back in and she sees me she smiles and she laughs, like she knows what’s happening, only what she says is a joke about the forms being a pain in the ass or something. Then something weird happened. Actually, two weird things happened. First, while I’m filling out some other form that I totally don’t need but whatever, she starts talking about her life and telling me about her problems—something to do with her kid and her mom. That’s all she mentions, so I don’t know if she was married—she didn’t have a ring on. And it was strange, though it soon became this really cool and intimate conversation, even though it wasn’t as much fun as it was earlier. Also, the whole time we’re talking, I’m aware of the card that’s in my pocket that has my number on it and at any moment I could take it out and give it to her, because now she was trusting me with intimate details of her life. But I didn’t. Then this older woman comes in—another customer—who is also talkative, so the girl starts having to deal with her like she did the other previous customers, like she’d get rid of this lady soon enough so we could resume our thing. Only the woman won’t leave. This woman is way chatty and is a regular or something, and starts talking about something in her life that she thinks the girl is interested in or knows something about. And this goes on for like another ten minutes…so long that at some point I can’t keep up the pretense that there’s anything left for me to do. I mean, I’ve totally exhausted whatever pretext I could possibly come up with for sticking around. I know it, and the girl knows it too as she finally comes over, does this inspection-like thing with my form and says—again—‘yeah, so…looks good. So, you’re all set’ in this voice that’s trying not to sound disappointed but wishing she could tell this other lady to get lost. And I smile and shrug—something lame because I didn’t know what else to do. Anyway, I leave, right? And as I’m walking out, part of me is feeling like I did before—frustrated and everything, missing that good feeling and wanting it back—but another part of me is feeling this relief coming on, like this was all predestined, as if that old woman had been an angel that had been sent down to be this nuisance, but a nuisance that would rescue me from a bad decision, plus the feeling of a high that I’d later be disgusted with. It was like someone or thing was looking out for me”
Or her
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 