Vent (1994)

Dug this up from the vault so to speak. It's from a short story project in college. There's the complete handwritten version existing somewhere in a notebook which was in a bag stolen from me back then.


It was 6:00 when the alarm went off yet I'd been awake in bed for the last hour and a half; the whole summer playing out rhythmically, like the way a child goes to and fro on an oversized swing beneath an oak tree. Playing out that is up until about 5:58 when the visual switched instantaneously on the back swing (quite literally) into a steaming locomotive. You know how they say your whole goddamn life flashes before your very eyes when you're on your deathbed...it was exactly like that.

I hit the snooze button as if the alarm were a time bomb. I never have continued to sleep the nine minutes of snooze time. It's only nine very abstract minutes and there isn't a whole hell of a lot you can gain from nine minutes. It's weird too, because I hit the snooze button instead of just turning off the damn thing. It's just easier because the snooze bar is big and right on the top. Whereas the inconveniently displaced off switch is somewhere where it ought not be. I can wake in like a nano-second to hit that thing. Seriously, if that were an Olympic event, I don't think there'd be one single soul who could rise to the occasion to cut the life out of that pain in the ass clock. Its constant mechanical heartbeat. I can sleep through just about anything really. In fact I have this friend, and back when we were kids I stayed the night over at his house. We had this big movie night planned and all this stuff and for some reason I crashed out at like 9:00 or some damn grandparent hour and ya know what the bored bastard did? He starts flicking pennies and other loose change at my head! That's just it though... I slept right through it. But ya set a goddamn alarm clock next to my head, even if it's somebody else's, and nine times out of ten my whole arm and hand will involuntarily hit that snooze button before the damn thing gets to the second buzz. I never set it to wake to the radio though. There are too many variables that can get in the way, you'd continue drifting in a lucid state of consciousness and unconsciousness at the same time... or you'd never wake and practically sleep yourself dead or something. Besides, I hate the radio. I've always thought the radio was the equivalent of going into one of those uppity coffee houses and asking for a medium Sumatra but they give you a large mocha.
I don't really know why I ever set the alarm for six o'clock. I'd showered the night before and meticulously laid out my day's attire. A jet black pair of steel toed gripfasts, standard white crew socks, a black pair of vintage jaymar slacks that some would say are an inch too short, and the icing on the cake...an avocado single breast towncraft short sleeved shirt. Quite a steal at six bucks. Unquestionably the best second hand purchase this side of the Mississippi. Or damn near on the Mississippi, in the land of 10,000 (milfoil infested) lakes and one rank underground sewer system. I wore the shirt untucked cuz it looked best that way.

Fully dressed, I still had a good forty five minutes before I had to catch the bus. I walked up about 10 steps to the kitchen for some breakfast, and eyeing a cereal selection that would put the local corner store to shame, I effortlessly selected Cinnamon Life. I mean, how more appropriate is that? The way I see it, food is fuel, essential for life, and cereal is pure genius, total simplicity in one's effort to cure hunger. A simple meal, a simple life...Cinnamon Life. That's a marketing strategy worth a fucking fortune. Better than Mikey liking it. I mean let's face it , Mikey can like feasting on spoonfuls of Elmer's glue but that doesn't mean the cupboards of four out of five homes on my block are going to be stocked with 5 gallon buckets of the shit. Then again, the general public in this day and age is easily deceived and manipulated. They buy up whatever's new just so they can flaunt it in the faces of those on the block.
Still hungry, I poured another bowl of cereal, which was not quite as good as the first. It's a different bowl entirely. The first is always sweeter and better textured. I guess that's true on a lot of things. You shouldn't overdue too much of a good thing, except when it comes to food. You never know where the next meal's coming from. Just don't overdue it and then sit around on your ass. There is an obesity epidemic after all. As I was at the midpoint of my second bowl of cereal, I flipped on the television only to mute it quickly (another Olympic reaction). It was as if the TV had been up full volume the night before, as it probably was (I'm supposedly deaf). Or maybe it only seemed that it was loud because so many hours had passed since the last time had watched it. Like when you're in your car and you're stuck in traffic or something. You've got the car radio up pretty loud but the longer you sit in traffic the less loud it seems. Then when you return home, go to bed, and get back in your car the following morning, you'd wonder why the hell the radio was so goddamn loud.

Anyway...I was a watching Mr. Magoo and he was good for a chuckle or two. He's blind ya know, and in the scene he's in this bank that's being held up by two robbers. I'm guessing he wandered in there by mistake, as he was looking for his dog, because he reaches out his hand and touches one of the robber's gun. He thinks the gun is the dog's bony hip, and so he keeps saying "we better get you home, so we can feed you and fatten you up." I tell ya though, ya sorta have to wonder how a guy can go through life thinking something's one way and it's really not. It's easier to do than one might imagine. I'll honestly bet it happens to everyone, and they're not even actually blind.

So after breakfast, I had to go back downstairs to wake up my younger brother and sister. They both go to a different school than me. This is my second year of high school so I'm a little wiser and no longer a freshmen. I think you probably still get picked on by the juniors and seniors but not nearly as much. It's all so goddamn trivial anyway. I mean how absolutely pathetic do you have to be to waste your time bullying underclassmen? I don't care though, I've got steel toed shoes. I swear, they should just give me my goddamn diploma just for knowing how sorry the juniors and seniors are. Hell, I could be the poster child for greatest valedictorian...a real over-achiever. I guess maybe if I knew the right person. I sometimes here people saying that it's all about who ya know. Funny... I 'm supposedly deaf but I frequently hear things like that. I never really have to wake up my brother and sister. They're always up way before me. If they weren't to young to get a paper route they'd be well to do. As I expected, they were up so I just went downstairs to grab my book bag and told them to get ready anyway, then I went back upstairs as my mom was just getting up. It takes her a day and a half to wake up in the morning so I didn't even bother, I just left.

It was pretty damn cold out when I stepped out onto the driveway and for a second I debated going back in to grab my coat but I didn't want to get caught up in all that and besides, you can't make a good exit twice on the same occasion. Besides it'd be a lot warmer when school let out if it didn't rain or snow. That's the thing with the weather here, we really do get the shit of it. I honestly remember this one day it being sunny and about seventy degrees one minute, then it rained and after it finished pissing all over a perfectly good day, it hailed. Then if that wasn't enough to throw a monkey wrench in someone's plans, it snowed. It didn't look like snow today or even rain for that matter but who'd know. Someone will always say "It's not supposed to" or "The weather's supposed to be nice this weekend". I'm still waiting for someone to explain
just what the hell that means. The weather does what it wants when it wants, The other thing I can't get over is the inability to give a decent prediction despite the fact that they've got millions and millions of dollars worth of expensive equipment.