Hell and wednesday

Coco Chanel thinks it's terribly funny that she put self-tanning creme on my face while I was napping. The brown blotches on my nose and cheek are such an amusement. And here I thought Harry Connick was smiling and laughing at me because he thought I was charming. It's enough to make a girl want to go shove her face deep into the hazelnut whipped creme that the french matron hosting this fete is bragging about. As she places it on the table and I hover over the bowl, spoon in hand, intent on taking it all for myself. Carl Kassel crashes the party, promising word of an upset in the primary elections... "after this news".

Who invited him? Oh yeah, the clock radio,that's who. Waking up to NPR has mixed some odd bedfellows into my morning dreams. Carl I'm more used to seeing. He's become my canary in the coal mine. When he shows up in the dream with his bland cheeriness then I know it's probably time I found my body and woke it up.

Ugh the waking world. The apartment littered with days of mail that i dropped carelessly after opening, clothes not properly retired into the closet and two days of dirty dishes. In front of the closet I hang up yesterday's blue shirt and pull out today's clothes. Cargo pants, black again, also with pockets and zippers all over them. Pullover shirt, this one purple.

For shits I take the train instead of the bus. An old man gets on and sits next to me. His coat is big and bulky and a bit dingy. His face is hidden with a big hat and his possessions are all in a plastic bag. The smell of coffee and Ben Gay wafts toward me. It doesn't look like he's homeless, but it also doesn't look like life on a fixed income is treating him well at all. An alley full of dumpsters might just be his shopping mall.

Shopping mall. Living in Somerville I used to joke that a street on garbage night was like a chinese shopping mall. All night they would go up and down the street with shopping carts and pick through the garbage. "Chinese shopping mall..." I'm such a racist bitch sometimes. When I was moving and filling that curb with 8 years of undesirables I sure didn't mind how they would clear things so I could put out more. I was up all night that night putting out more and more garbage, amazed at what was picked through, collected as treasure or left behind.

An asian woman steps in front of me and starts walking slow. I get instantly impatient and push her out of my way. "What the HELL was that for?" I ask myself. What was I so afraid of not getting in those few extra seconds it cost me to slow my pace and walk behind her? It's not about this woman or her pace. Fact is, I've always been jealous of asian women. Stupid. Racist and stupid.

I'm heading into the break room for a beverage when I collide in the doorway with Mr. Coffee with cream from yesterday. I'm coming in to grab water. He's holding a Mt. Dew in his hands. He's still in crisp pants and an arrow collar shirt. I'm still in pants covered with zippers and pockets and a pullover. We're both wearing black pants again... and today he, too, is wearing a purple shirt. We could be on some weird color wavelength together. Or there could be a cycle of colors that people start to go through together when they work in the same space. I have no doubt that a survey of cubicles would reveal a surplus of purple shirts and black pants. I go back to my desk and instantly shop online for garments in green and robin's-egg blue.