The alarm is a key. Unlocking him every morning he rises to ablutions habitually. I see things around a pillow, table, chair, toilet, grey panes and this is everyday. He doesn’t see that’s living. He washes and eats, dogs a long walk to the factory. There he works alone amongst the numerous silences of machines. Blending into seamless sentences, he finishes and goes home to become a single syllable. An anonymous sound no more than refrigerator humming. He blends into the bland social fabric of anonymity, a no one doing nothing, infinitely. Waiting patiently, I greet him at the cusp of head and bed and begin the unpredictable ritual of being.
By David E. Oprava.
What’s on TV? We could watch murder shows. Tell me how it was done. That way I can know. I’ve been to Los Angeles, actually. About ten years ago. We went on the train. I remember nothing much of interest. I bought a nice shirt. What I’d say: I agree with those people, if they’re still around, who feel that the wash of a show of this kind doesn’t leave you, like, perfectly clean. Hit the arrow, I’d say. More of this: fleet water and flame. And what could be better, more worth your life’s hour, than Lawrence Welk, all these years dead?
“Doesn’t the carnival turn a little more sinister each passing block?” she says huskily, smacking her lips on the p and b. It did seem many revelers had begun chanting praises to the glorious Nada, to a sacred shush between
Sometimes the work is unappreciated, indigested: ‘I can do better than that shit,’ thinks the lightly-bearded bohemian type. ‘It’s so fucking do-mestic!’ ‘Hattie under ash looked like a burnt soldier in the dying fire of the trenches reflected Michael,’ the reader continues. The clink of a wine glass from a new arrival into the room momentarily inhibits the writer’s flow and fleetingly takes the egg-breast woman’s attention away from the reader and down to the shopping bag nestled at her feet: a small bottle of vodka waiting to be opened and emptied.
I was drumming the “William Tell Overture” on my throat with my bony fingers, and that skill made me feel superior. We were having a sleep over, and playing roles that felt real. “The nurse” (my best friend, Julie) was thin waisted and she had tiny broomlike arms. I remember flipping around on the bed and playing the nutty patient in the psychiatric ward. The nurse looked like she was always witnessing a disaster, and was threatening to quit nursing. She would say, “They do not pay nurses enough money!” This role made her feel superior. Since we both felt superior, neither of us had a problem feeling worthless.
He accused her of being a Traveller, although he knew her ancestors arrived not far post Mayflower.
He says he doesn’t like to put labels on people, that the labels tend to stick for life. He’s right. He doesn’t laugh at my jokes. I mention that he doesn’t laugh at my jokes. He manages a chuckle, says he doesn’t usually laugh at work. He asks me to remember three things: the color blue, Idaho, a Chevrolet. It’s not until I get up to go that I notice the poster on the wall, a sort of sixties pop rendering of a white Cadillac. The picture has an odd blue tint. He has me count backwards from one hundred by sevens. I stutter.
My friends and all the neighborhood dads go weirdly and bonerly quiet, checking out mom. She stands under the hum of the mosquito zapper, hidden from view by a Japanese-looking shawl, or cape. Neighborhood moms go back inside for more dip, more pretzels, more wine: they hate my glowing mother, but they only see the body, and the men, their paunchy men, gaping, wishing, sucking in their guts and slapping on cologne.
When I reach the bottom of the exit ramp, I roll down my window because The Guy asks me to. I have no good reason not to. I’m a Nice Guy. The Guy seems like a Nice Guy. Don’t ask me why. He just does. You can always tell when a Guy is a Nice Guy. And Nice Guys need to stick together. Especially in Logan Square. Because there aren’t many Nice Guys like us left in this neighborhood.
Walking, you are gilded, jubilant, but I am without the flirting, gleeful sleekness of similes. Your silence is not like the rude stumbles of wind through fields of lilac. You are quiet, but not like the lush, spiraling backbeat of a lover’s waltz, lovers who spin just to see who’ll let go first before the nightclub erupts into a gunfight. You’re the body which lays next to me, breathing. Sometimes, you smile and shyly turn away into your pillow. 
