Category Archives: Non-fiction

Non-fiction

What Hell is Like

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I’m not talking about the town in Michigan, although I’m sure it’s hell too. But people travel there where they collect souvenirs with the city’s name on it. And there are bars with the name as well.

I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the actual hell, where wicked souls burn for eternity. That certainly sounds like hell to me. Just burning my finger on the stove is hell enough. I don’t need to feel it forever. Some people are living in hell already, and they’re not even dead. Maybe their jobs are hell, or their relationships are hell, or maybe living with themselves is hell. Whatever it is, they liken it to the actual physical place, which arguably exists.

Some don’t believe there is a hell, that it’s only a concept. And people assume hell is somewhere deep inside the earth. If you dig and keep digging, maybe you can reach there, but you would soon suffocate. And then where would you go? Maybe hell, depending on your soul. Then you won’t have to dig any longer.

No one has found heaven yet, and astronauts have explored many depths of space. Heaven must be hidden until death arrives. And then the person’s soul is lifted somewhere to the clouds, where God and the angels perch, and you live in eternal peace.

But back to hell… The devil sits on his throne, red all over, holding a pitchfork with a pair of horns on his head. He decides which pain you shall suffer forever. What other choice would your evil soul have except to burn for eternity? Or Dante was right with his rings of hell. There are levels depending on how evil you really are.

I read Dante’s Inferno when I was a high school senior. My English teacher made us read it for some reason. Then afterward she made us write a short story of our own infernos. I created one where the evil souls ride an elevator to their specific floors. I handed it in and waited for the grade. The English teacher hated me because she always thought I was making fun of her with my friend in the back row of the classroom, which wasn’t true. Hate is a strong word. How about dislike? She disliked me. And it hurt to have a teacher dislike me. But what choice did I have?

I remember a time when drama students entered our classroom and performed a teaser for their upcoming performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which was coincidentally based on the story of Joseph in the Bible. She caught me laughing with my friend as the drama kids were signing in front of the class like total goofballs. How wasn’t I supposed to laugh? She scolded me for all the students to see after the drama kids left the classroom.

“How could you laugh at them after all the hard work they’ve done?”

I had to tell her, “Because they were dancing funny and making faces.”

It was an intense moment. I thought she was going to punish me but she never did. I never had to serve detention, which would’ve been embarrassing.

Anyway, she gave me an A for my short story about my own inferno, with a note that said it was imaginative. At least the teacher didn’t grade it with her feelings about me. But yeah, that was how my seventeen year old self viewed hell. Now I see it as any form of suffering that a human must endure.

Non-fiction

In Waves

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I showed up yesterday morning to the coffee shop before the sun rose and found that they’d taken away the tables to my surprise. They’d replaced them with a long bench and six small tables along the bench, chairs on the other side, and two large round tables with six chairs total. There was nowhere else to sit in there. They’d designed the shop to where my neighbors were practically sitting on my lap. I’ve lost my privacy in here.

It never fails that the older I get, the more is taken away from me. How much will I have in ten years? I imagine not much. I should be thankful for what I have right now. I used to write a list of gratitude. I’m grateful for this laptop, for this shirt, for these shorts, for my deck shoes, for my apartment… I’m thankful for everything I have because I don’t know what will be gone tomorrow, except my clothes of course. I know I’ll probably keep those. But as for everything else…

I’m also thankful for my hands. I can’t type without them. My left hand went numb yesterday. I was typing when I suddenly lost feeling. I panicked when I lifted my arm. My left hand bent and spasmed. I paced my apartment and wriggled my left arm, but all I felt were pins and needles. I thought about driving to emergency in the middle of my work shift, but I couldn’t drive there with one arm. I worried about a stroke or a heart attack. I heard that’s a symptom. The feeling gradually came back, but my left hand didn’t feel the same for the rest of the night.

Now I type with one hand that’s colder than the other. I also thought of carpal tunnel syndrome. One symptom is numbness and tingling. That which I’m experiencing. How scary, having no control. Is there a pill I can swallow for carpal tunnel? Who knows?

There’s also a mysterious rash on my left arm. I’ve been going through high stress, so I blame that. Otherwise, I’m clueless as to what’s happening.

Not to mention, my imagination has run away like a squirrel. I used to have one when I was younger, when there was less stress. But it’s an evasive animal. All I can hope for is a return like the sensation in my hand.

Non-fiction

Humpty Dumpty

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I’ve learned to criticize myself so easily. It has become second nature. I call myself an incompetent idiot for every mistake I’ve made, thinking somehow that will improve me when it won’t. I can’t think of a single time when being so hard on myself ever helped. Why criticize myself when other people can do it for me? Maybe that’s where those beliefs come from: from listening to other people and believing them when all I need to do is not believe them. What they’re saying is a fallacy.

To tell the truth, it has been a long time since someone has called me an idiot. In fact, I can’t remember, but it has been implied. Nevertheless, I still can’t picture who made me think they thought I was an idiot. I make a lot of mistakes at my job, and every time the voice in my head calls me stupid, I believe it, and I deserve to be punished for messing up. But I didn’t intend to make the mistake. It just happened. I’m at fault, but I also blame the company for not training me well enough.

I read through a worksheet last night when I couldn’t sleep about self-criticism versus self-compassion. I’m supposed to spend one day completely criticizing myself in the worst way and seeing if it helps, and spend the next day completely opposite and treating myself to self-compassion, which I don’t know how to do. What do I say to myself to have compassion? The worksheet asked me if I would talk to a friend or a child the way I talk to myself. The easy answer is no. I would never punish them the way I punish myself because I can be pretty brutal. I’m not my own friend. That’s apparent. So to have compassion for myself, I have to stay reminded that I would never talk the same way to someone else when they make a mistake. I would never call a child, a friend, or a relative an idiot. I’m practicing self-compassion right now, and I feel a little lighter. But self-compassion is delicate. It could break from the slightest pressure. Tomorrow I shall criticize myself to death to see how I feel. The worksheet said it could take a while before I notice any significant changes.

Non-fiction

Climbing Up a Broken Ladder

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I’ve been in this coffee shop since five a.m. The old man yawned behind me. People do that thing after they yawn, where they almost sing at the end. I never understood that. I’m not a loud yawner. I do it silently, trying not to bring attention to myself. In fact I try to hide my yawns, or else someone might say, “Am I keeping you up?” I hate it when they say that. Just let me yawn. I’m either tired or it’s a reflex when I’m wide awake. But I’m exhausted after waking up at two in the morning.

YouTube videos keep me company through insomnia. I’m addicted to one YouTuber who posts a video just about every single day, much like I blog every single day. He always produces content about music, and I love music, commercial music that is, or I used to. He has opinions on everything, some of which I don’t agree with. We have very different tastes in music.

He’s heavily into pop punk, which I think is awful. And he said Nelly is a good rapper. I’m not sure if he’s trolling me. He could be, but it’s hard to tell. I must accept that some people enjoy music that I think is garbage, and vice versa.

Nevertheless, his videos are still enjoyable. He likes to rank musicians on a tier. He said that Blink 182 is one of the best bands of all time, and I must strongly disagree. I mean are there people out there besides him who honestly think so? He also said that Metallica is okay, or in his words “mid”, a word I think the Gen-Z’ers like to use, meaning they’re in the middle. It doesn’t make sense because the YouTuber is a Gen-X’er like me. We should have a somewhat similar taste in music. But he said the best music came from the 2000s, which isn’t even close to true. Nineties music is far superior, and I’m supposed to believe so because of the generation I came from. Shouldn’t he agree?

Nothing against millennials, but their music doesn’t hold up against Gen-X music. Of course they would agree to disagree. They may believe what they will. And then the music from the 2010s was even worse. I won’t comment on today’s music. He was right when he said it’s not about how catchy the songs are now but rather what the mood is, like music you would play in the background while you’re doing homework, not exactly interactive. Today’s music listeners are fine with that. I don’t quite understand it. If you need background noise, just turn on the vacuum, not Spotify.

It’s all the same from what I’ve heard. I couldn’t tell you one Taylor Swift song. I know what she looks like, but that’s about it. He played a clip of a Swift video, so I have a general idea, and it wasn’t good or bad. If I were taking an Uber ride and was sitting in the backseat, and the driver was playing one of her songs, I wouldn’t be able to say, “Hey, that’s Taylor Swift.” It could be anyone with the way music is produced now. It’s overly produced if you ask me. There’s no dirt, all sparkle. Even metal music, with its loud riffs and punishing drums, glistens through the speakers. I don’t think I agree with that. There has to be some imperfection for me to want to give it a second listen.

Either way I’m addicted to that guy’s channel, and I’ll watch another video of his tonight. That’s my current viewing pleasure. I’m subscribed to YouTube TV, but I don’t watch anything except American football when it’s in season. Other than that, I don’t care about anything else. It’s not my intention. Nor do I subscribe to any streaming services. I can’t keep up at this point, having fallen too far behind. I used to subscribe to Netflix way back before all those shows populated, way back in the beginning when they would mail me DVDs. But I quit one year and never subscribed again. There’s just too much to follow. I miss the days when there were only a dozen shows. Now every network has a streaming service with original programming. It’s an overload. And I would watch the worst shows on TV, never the best ones, shows that never came close to an Emmy. I never said I had good taste.

Non-fiction

Approaching Gloom

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I stare at the white walls and think about the film The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman.

You can’t live without a paintbrush.

All I do is walk around, falling deeper into shaving cream.

The milkshakes have all melted into Apple Jacks.

Life seems so incomplete.

I want to blow the candles off a birthday cake for no reason.

A couple climbs into a black SUV, wearing face masks in ninety-degree weather on a Sunday morning. Nobody says anything.

A kid walks in with a black t-shirt on and earbuds in his ears, and walks back outside just for the hell of it.

There’s a canker sore on my lip that I keep biting. It won’t go away.

I once saw a lady with pink hair and the eyes of a fish.

There’s no one to disagree with.

I’m sick and tired of seeing people waddle like Charlie Chaplin to a Target.

A security guard steps in with a green shirt.

Is it too hard to beg for an ice cream cone?

I can’t lift a finger these days. What does lifting a finger even mean?

We live in a world where chocolate-covered raisins are more popular than chocolate-covered peanuts.

She held the phone to her ear as she opened the door.

“Hey, man. Can you tell me what the time is in Zimbabwe?”

I parked my car here and left the car in drive.

The jeep rolls along with a dog poking its head out the back window.

I wish I had wings on my arms.

The STOP sign says hello, and I don’t say hello back.

The gray clouds greet the mountains, and all I can think about is Pizza Hut.

I’m all alone in here except for the staff, and they ignore me completely.

Yesterday I never had a bowel movement.

Chinese food makes me itch.

If a cow jumps over the moon, why can’t I write something as ridiculous as that?

I see a man wearing fluorescent green gloves just in case he has to walk at night.

I see people waiting for their emptiness before they leave.

There’s nothing left to do in this small town.

Tomorrow I’ll try to piggyback someone, but I don’t hope for much.

My car is parked in the shade.

I once wrestled someone and grabbed a beer with him afterward.

I haven’t got much time left.

My arms are cold; my legs are restless.

I miss the day when I dissected frogs–much simpler times.

My ego is held by drawstrings.

Who the hell drinks ginger ale?

It’s been a long time since a salesman has knocked on my door.

My next birthday present will be a chainsaw.

I eagerly anticipate a clown to trip on the sidewalk.

It isn’t quite yet time to panic.

I once asked a man for fifteen cents. He looked at me with contempt in his eyes before he walked away. He was a shutterbug.

Hospitals need dance music.

I’m seeing the ugliest green BMW I’ve ever witnessed in my life.

There’s an exit sign on both doors.

A friend of mine once told me she ate steak by the pool.

A man climbs out of a vehicle with his glasses in his teeth.

They don’t like being called redheads. That’s how it is these days.

I like to wake up in the morning with a hunger for bagels and lox.

Blame it on sweaty handshakes.

Non-fiction

Independence

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I’m struggling these days. It reminds me of the winter 2023, when I was getting ready to leave my apartment in Culver City. I was worried sick that I would be evicted from my apartment because of the mold in my bathroom that I never reported. So I would start future-tripping over the worst-case scenarios: I was going to be evicted, and the owner of the building would take me to court, and I would end up on the street, homeless, starve to death and die. These movies really play in my head. I’m not making this up. I told the manager about the mold, and he made me take pictures, and he said the maintenance man would come and take care of the problem. But he never did. It made me wonder. This was around the time when I hired Orkin to exterminate the bed bugs in my apartment.

It was a rough winter, and when the new year came along I carried the same anxiety as I do at the start of every year. What two disasters will strike? There are at least two, and they happen whenever before a dormancy period where I’m like a deer in the forest that hears a sound and gets alarmed even when there isn’t any danger. I’m hypervigilant, waiting for the next calamity because I go through them most weeks, like I can’t sit still and relax. I have to be on the lookout for any starving bears.

Well, I moved out of that Culver City apartment and never got evicted. The owner never took me to court either. I’d lived there for over three years and never got in trouble for anything.

Now life is better in Palm Springs, but my job has put me in severe anxiety. They keep inundating me with work and more work until I’m drowning and can’t breathe. They expect me to meet a quota which is too demanding and impossible to catch. I’m already way behind. I have to work cases and finish them within ninety-six hours, and I already have had cases open for over a week that I either can’t get to or can’t close because my clients keep having issues to solve, and so the cases remain open. That’s just one aspect of the job. Other duties include working from two spreadsheets with long lists of assignments that I can barely get to because I spend so many hours on the cases. And that doesn’t even count the emails I have to answer. These owners send them every day, and the emails keep growing and growing. It’s driving me insane. I need an assistant.

I went through full-blown panic on Tuseday because I believed I was dealing with a fraudster who’d stolen someone’s EIN for their business and changed the address. The person had fooled me into changing the corporate entity address that wasn’t on their SS4. I hated myself. I thought how stupid of me as I was taking a walk. I thought for sure I would get fired and get in legal trouble for being such a dumbass. I called the owner’s phone number on Wednesday, and it was the same shady person, although he didn’t sound as shady. But I still wonder if he’s a fraudster because he hasn’t signed the contract. The week only got more complicated from there.

Now I rest on Saturday, knowing what kind of maelstrom I’m gonna face on Monday: a long list of emails and cases I still haven’t solved, not to mention the spreadsheets. It’s all insanity, but I guess that’s what makes it a real job. It’s shitty, but I don’t know how shitty it can get. What if the next job is even worse than this? What if I actually have it good, but I can’t withstand the pressure as it is? I like my schedule and the company benefits. But at what price? How good are the perks when the job itself is making me want to quit? I go through bouts of a “fuck it, fire me” approach. That’s when I get fed up when I have to tackle five things at once without any skill in time management.

I watch videos where the guru says that multitasking is really bad. Tell that to the higher-ups who keep inundating me with work after work. For chrissakes, hire more people. I heard from a neighbor that that’s what companies are doing. They’re just overloading the employees they have with more work. I know I’m not alone, but I don’t want it period. I think about quitting and just roaming like a nomad living off the land, not having to work for anyone. But again, that’s me future-tripping. I know that’s not going to happen to me yet.

Non-fiction

The Beaten Path

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This woman bothers me in the coffee shop. An old man left the table in front of me, and the woman moved there with her purse and drink. But before she sat, she pulled out a wet rag and wiped the table and every chair. I don’t know why that happened to be annoying, but it was. She also brought her own metal spoon and was gonna eat an assorted snack of apple slices, cheese, and crackers.

The old lady with the corgi walked in, and the dog started howling like he always does. The lady who’d wiped down the table stood and watched the old lady sit at the next table. Somehow she had a problem with it. I don’t know what at all. Maybe she didn’t want a dog in the store? She went to a barista at the counter, and it seemed as if she was complaining by the look of the barista, but I couldn’t tell what she said because I was wearing headphones and couldn’t hear anything that was going on in here.

The coffee shop smells of nasty disinfectant. I usually don’t mind the scent, but I can’t even describe something so nauseating. The woman at the table ended up being so fed up that she grabbed her purse, coffee, and a metal spoon with her snack and sat at a table outside on the patio. Good. I didn’t want to see her anymore.

There’s no room left for odd people. I’m one of them. I have my quirks. Lately I’ve been done with this. As soon as I got here at half past five in the morning, they were already mopping the floor. One of the baristas was wiping the windows where I was going to sit, and I waited for her to finish. Now that she’s gone, I can sit here in peace, in a way, but it’s not calm altogether.

I don’t know what to write. It has been that way this whole week. I’m struggling. My head is too wrapped up in work. That’s bad. I wish I could control it, but my job has been so stressful that it has taken over my life to where it’s all I can think about. Man, it’s never been this severe, even on a Friday.

The fall is almost here. Just another month or so before it cools down, and I’ll get to walk outside without feeling like I’ll catch on fire. I’m slogging through everything. Even brushing my teeth feels like an uphill climb. I wish I could go back to an easier time.

Now the old men at a long table have taken over the store. They’ve stolen most of the chairs. One of the tables is missing all of them. What if someone wants to sit there? Oh well. The people in this store are getting on my nerves. Other than that it’s business as usual. I can’t focus on anything. Isn’t life stressful? Every little thing gets in my way.

The lady outside has left. Where would she go? Where does she live? I wonder about that.

Some other man took the other chair from my table. Now there’s nowhere for anyone else to sit. There’s a chair shortage in here. Each table has two chairs, and they’ve taken them all. I have a problem with people stealing chairs from my table. It gives me a chill for some reason. I can’t explain why.

I took a break and walked outside. The woman on the patio had moved to another table. She just sat there and stared off, like I did. She wears a white fedora and a black short-sleeved top, a yellow skirt, and black sandals. She looks like a Susan or a Martha.

I’m still wearing my headphones and listening to folk rap. Most people don’t know about it. It’s old music, which most people would think is crap, but that’s okay. I don’t like most pop music. This folk rap is like Tom Waits if he chose to write rap songs. The artist is from Nova Scotia. He calls himself Buck 65. I used to listen to him a lot when I was in my twenties. Now I have revisited his music, and it’s better than I thought. I didn’t think it would age well, but it sits quite comfortably. I remember how witty he was. My taste in music is so strange, but there’s nothing wrong with strange music. It’s better than the ordinary. Who wants to listen to ordinary music? That makes for ordinary people. And who wants that?

Non-fiction

Stuck Outside

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I have a lot of keys on my keychain. More than half of them I don’t know what to do with. Where did they come from? How did I ever receive them? All I know is I’m afraid to throw them away. What if they belong to something important? These keys I’ve kept for years. And yet, where did they come from? The only relevant ones, as far as I know, are for my car, which is my fob, my apartment, the gate to my apartment building, and my mail key. As for everything else, your guess is as good as mine. My worst fear is if I lose them. That could be as bad as losing my wallet. Maybe not as bad, but as close to it. I just want to unwind and not have to worry about them. I bought a thing, which I don’t know what to call it, that fastens to my belt loop for my keys so I won’t have to risk them falling out of my pocket. Why can’t I think of the word? I bought it on Amazon. I must’ve known the word back then. So what happened? Why did the word fall out of my brain? I guess I could call it my key fastener. The keys swing and jangle when I walk. I look like a janitor and have about as many keys as one. But at least a janitor knows what to do with them all. As for me, I’m at a loss.

I’m stuck outside. They kicked me out of the coffee shop because of a water issue. It’s already over eighty degrees, and the sun is barely even out yet. It’ll probably turn ninety in about a half hour, and I’ll be sweating in this chair. But that’s okay. It only adds to a long week.

Which leads me to birdwatching. One of them is hopping around on chairs and tables. I can’t tell what type of bird it is. I’m bad at that sort of thing. My mother is great at it. She can tell me what type of bird, what type of flower, what type of tree. I wish I could wear glasses that tell me because I have difficulty naming things. The answers would appear on my lenses like the words on the eyes of the Terminator (if you’ve seen that film).

Anyway, it’s funny watching people try to go inside the coffee shop after they’ve posted a note on the door that says they’re closed for repairs. People pull and pull the door as if it will magically come unlocked if they pull hard enough. They need the coffee so bad that their minds deny it’s true. And so they stand in disbelief and peek through the glass at the baristas inside as if that would make any sort of difference. But it’s the reality. We’re stuck out here in this heat. It feels humid, a rare thing in the desert. It’s usually just plain old heat. It’s supposed to be double-digits next week. That would be paradise, but still hot to most people. All I can do is complain about how hot it is and if my laptop can withstand the heat on this table.

The same old regulars sit outside with me. I don’t know any of them except one, an old man who introduced himself once. And I remember his name too. Every other face is familiar, but I know nothing about them. I’m staring at plants, just killing time this morning, and I’ll keep killing time this afternoon until night comes.

The baristas have brought a stand outside on the patio with a big green coffee dispenser, styrofoam cups, a jug of half-and-half on one table and pastries on another table. They’re giving everything away for free. I guess it’s an apology for making us sit outside. They’ve turned the misters on, which feels good but not great. It’s still hot out here. I don’t want to go home either because I’ll be home all day. I figure I could walk around until it’s time, but I still have two-and-a-half hours to kill. Oh, what a day so far.

Non-fiction

A Morning Person

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I’ve never been a morning person. At least that’s what I think. Sometimes the mornings are so lovely, but hardly do they show. It’s usually labor, getting out of bed and trying to find the shower. I take my daily meds and hope today is better than yesterday without much sleep at all. Insomnia loves to be my friend.

He was my friend last night. I woke up at half past midnight with a brutal headache that surged from the nape of my neck to the width of my forehead, most likely from the heat. I stumbled into the kitchen half awake and took four Ibuprofen, but they didn’t help much. I was stuck in bed with my thoughts and a case of tinnitus, so I got out of bed again around two in the morning and played a video game while watching YouTube on my MacBook Pro.

I’ve been stuck on a personality on there who talks about nothing but music and culture. I watched a video of his in which he explained and commented on hipster culture. Not until then did I realize that I might’ve been a hipster in my earlier years when I was in my twenties. It’s difficult to tell. I never wore an ironic mustache except for one week, and people complimented me on it. But after one time in the mirror I decided, “Nah, it ain’t gonna work.” So I shaved it off. I also wore ironic clothing like shirts that didn’t fit me with ironic phrases on them. One was coffee brown and too small for me, with a rodent on the front. It said, “I’m not a gopher, I’m an otter.” People loved the shirt, and so did I. That was about as hipster as I got, looks-wise. I’m not sure what happened to that shirt. I probably threw it away after realizing I was being a hipster, wearing corduroy pants and sneakers. My hair was emo and floppy to an extent. I had a little stubble on my face. And I listened only to indie rock bands and indie hip-hop because I detested anything mainstream. That included movies. So I watched only independent films and avoided the major studio motion pictures for the most part. I remember still watching the Batman films, but that was about it.

He made a valid point in his video that yesterday’s hipsters are today’s wokesters, meaning the hipsters of the 2000s–with their curly mustaches, their cans of PBR in the pseudo dive bars, and their expensive coffee houses in what used to be poor neighborhoods like Williamsburg in Brooklyn–have transformed into the same losers, except now they cancel people on Twitter (or X). Those people are of course more revolting. They’re today’s hipsters. I can’t say I’m one of them. There’s nothing more lame than hanging out on social media all day and attacking people’s character. It doesn’t sit right with me, but it feels good to be sanctimonious all the time, doesn’t it? People could make a career out of ruining others if they wanted to, and if they were so lucky.

But let’s call it for what it is: hipsters are young people who grew up in affluence but pretend to be poor to be part of a cause. They want to be different from who they really are. It took me years to become myself. I guess I really hated who I was. Now I’m indifferent. I hate myself for other reasons than my persona. I wear whatever now, mostly plain shirts and shorts with mocassins. I was never able to grow a man-bun because I’d lost too much hair by the time they were in fashion. But I did envy those hipsters with the man-buns. They obviously had something I didn’t to go with their scraggly beards. I can grow a beard easily in just four days, but there’s too much gray for me to be an appealing hipster.

And I hardly go to shows, which the YouTube personality explained hipsters loved to do. In fact the last concert I went to was a little under ten years ago at the Wiltern to see Faith No More. I invited an ex-girlfriend who stood me up. So I was there all alone. I guess that’s a hipster move too: being alone at a concert. And Faith No More was sort of hipsterish. They were an old band with a cult following. And I remember seeing a fair amount of man-buns and bangs on women because that was a popular look among hipster women. I dated a few with those bangs. I didn’t realize until the video last night that most of the women I dated were actually hipsters. The bangs told it all.

Is being a hipster the worst thing? Of course not. Except if you’re a wokester who ruins people’s lives on social media. I was a pacifist hipster if I was a hipster at all. I just left people alone so they would leave me alone. It didn’t always work. Some people would harass me no matter what I tried to say to them.

I used to hang out in trendy bars in Hollywood: places like the Powerhouse, which acutally is a real dive bar across from the Hollywood/Highland shopping mall. It smelled like week-old beer, and they served overpriced PBR in a can. I drank it, but the trust fund hipsters took advantage of its divey ambiance. I used to play cricket in there, and I took a lot of dates there when I was in my twenties. That was just one hipster bar out of hundreds in Hollywood and Silverlake, and I went to so many that I lost count. I can’t even think of another hipster bar I used to frequent.

There was a hipster coffee shop called the Bourgeois Pig, which served coffee even more expensive than Starbucks. Inside it was dimly lit, with bookshelves and a billiards table. I would sit in there and write like other hipster douche bags. One of them even brought a typewriter to go with his mustache. I’m surprised they’d let him in there but also I wasn’t. And I was surprised he didn’t light up a pipe in there, but they didn’t allow smoking anyway. In fact you couldn’t smoke anywhere near the entrance, not a very hipster rule. You would think they would’ve allowed smoking in that establishment like they did in the forties when the first hipster appeared (or so the video claimed).

So do I miss years as a hipster? Why not? They were simpler times in a way. I miss going to those bars and coffee shops. But if I go there now, it just wouldn’t be the same.

Non-fiction

Cereal Addict

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I went to clean my apartment yesterday and found there wasn’t much to do. Mostly everything looked clean already except for some stains on the floor. Other than that, there wasn’t much to do but vacuum and mop. I hate cleaning, but that’s normal.

The weather was too hot for any work around the home, a hundred and eleven degrees in the afternoon. My air-conditioner, which was brand new, was running all day and every day. I never turned the thing off, so my Edison bill for the past two months came to almost five hundred dollars. My parents received a bill for a little less than that, and they live in a big house–big for me at least, maybe small to some. I nearly fell down when I saw the price of the bill. The heat is supposed to drop to double digits next week, like ninety-nine degrees. Sounds like paradise. I can’t wait. I might actually wear pants, but I can’t guarantee I will. Just as long as the night is cooler, I won’t have to walk around sweating before the sun comes out and I’m drenched.

I walked back from the coffee shop yesterday with my backpack on, and my back had soaked my shirt. I’d walked for only twenty minutes, about a mile from the coffee shop. I walk everywhere to get exercise and drive only when I need to, one or two days out of the week. I got in my car on Saturday and discovered that I’d left my light on, the little light right above my head near the windshield, and I worried about the battery being drained. I imagine not too much because of how small the light was. But for a whole week? That’s not good.

I wonder what today will bring. My gut tells me a long one. I sure hope not. I have to go grocery shopping tonight after work, something I’m not looking forward to. I’ve grown to hate the grocery store. Shopping there takes me about a half hour or more out of my day. The heat is too unbearable for me to walk back with all of those groceries. I bring my own bag to the store, one from Urban Outfitters, the size of a trash bag that can hold three weeks of groceries. I look like Santa Claus with a bunch of gifts after I leave the store. But because I live alone, I don’t have to carry too much, just a week’s worth of stuff that I’ll need. And then about eight days later, I’ll have to go back.

I also have to cook tonight, which I’m not looking forward to either. I cook about once or twice a week, and then I reheat the leftovers. Cooking isn’t my strong suit. I don’t know how to cook much. I used to try to with a meal program where the company delivered the food and sent me the recipes. And they were strange things like crab cake sandwiches. I had to be careful or else I would’ve ruined the whole meal. I cooked fish tacos and something with tarragon, maybe turkey but I’m not positive. The service was called Blue Apron, and I had them delivered for about six months before cooking burned me out and I went back to the microwave. Besides, I spent about fifty dollars a week on three meals. That was over fifteen dollars per meal if my math is correct. Couldn’t keep up anymore. Now I spend about eighty dollars a week on groceries. Some people spend over two hundred, but they have families to feed. I like to be simple. I stand behind people who fill their shopping carts with a lot of junk. I’m talking cereals and several boxes of canned sodas, cans of food, stuff I wouldn’t consume.

I haven’t eaten cereal in over two decades, but I used to be a cereal addict when I was a boy. The best was Fruity Pebbles, and the worst was Frosted Flakes. The milk would make the flakes too soggy. At least with Fruity Pebbles the milk would taste sweet after the pebbles were gone. The same with the chocolate pebbles. The milk would turn it into chocolate milk. But the time came when I realized how bad for me the cereals were, and I would overeat them, sometimes helping myself to a second bowl before I realized the box was empty, and I would have to beg Mom to buy some more, and she wouldn’t. Then I would get angry and slam my bedroom door and throw a fit. I wouldn’t talk to her until she bought me more. I could’ve lived off cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I chose.

Anyway, those simple days are gone. I eat eggs for breakfast. Now I skip lunch and eat dinner and dessert. Lunch isn’t necessary for me. It used to be in high school. I had the unhealthiest diet: cereal in the morning (usually the sugary kind), Frito boats for lunch–which was made of Fritos, chili, and cheese–before I had a driver’s license, so my friends and I would eat at different fast food joints like Taco Bell, Jack-In-The-Box, Wendy’s, and Carl’s Jr., and then whatever my mom made at night which was healthy, which I didn’t like, and she would feed me small portions. But two out of three meals weren’t bad.