Everyday Stranger

Last night I worked a

Last night I worked a bit later than usual, so I had the office to myself for a long while. I was able to finish up some last minute things I had to do, but started to flag and fail to be productive, so I packed up for the day. I felt myself sliding back into the mucky emotional cesspool, and I struggled to fight it off.

When I drove out of the parking garage, the sky already Elvis Presley velvet and the radio playing softly in my car, I noticed that Fall really had arrived. The tops of the trees as I sped towards home were yellow and red, and bowing under the cool northern wind. I felt the familiar chill in my toes, a sign that the heater needed to be kicked on in the car, to then play heater tag, turning it off and on as I got too hot and too cold.

As I drove down the motorway, hurtling my yellow Beetle at top speeds, I started to think about my life. The things that I had experienced so far, and how hard this week had been, and all of the upcoming trials that I would be facing, little obstacle courses set in my future. The thought of them just made my shoulders feel weak in non-acceptance.

As I pulled off the motorway and waited at a stoplight, Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" came on. I turned the radio up slightly to the crackling sound of the intro steel guitar. I imagined being held by someone and having my face kissed as we swayed our hips to the music, the room darkened and his lips leaving warm trails on me. I felt so tired.

Then I looked out the window at the car beside me. In it was a woman, and she was silently crying. Tears made tracks down her face, and she errantly wiped them off and then brushed her hand across her coat lapels, spreading the tears.

World was on fire, and no one could save me but you... came the luscious sounds, on the radio.

I thought about her, and watched her in voyeuristic animation. This woman, is she going home to someone? Does she throw her keys on a table and start to think about dinner options? Or occasionally, as she lifts her hand to alight her keys into the air, does she stop and look at the blue veins that thread through her wrist and wonder if she's ever noticed them before? Does she maybe look at the scarred surface of the table and think "This is not my home. I don't care about any of this."

Strange word desire, and what it makes foolish people do...

A few brittle leaves landed on my car windshield as I continued to think about her. Did she fall in love with a man who seemed to be everything that she needed and wanted, who says the right things at the right times? Is she a lure in the game of heart-baiting, in that maze in which we run, not unlike rats, to the center, where not only is the cheese the meaning of life, but also someone to grow old and die with in a place that we love?

I never dreamed that I'd need somebody like you...

Did she find out she lost her job today, the one source of identity that drives her in the mornings and weighs on her mind on Sunday evenings, when she should be attending to things like ironing and children's homework? Did she just have a bad day, the kind of day where she just thinks: Fuck it. I can't do this work anymore. I don't care. All I want is to get away. But inevitably, the next morning, she will rise out of bed, take her shower, massaging a soapy sponge across her breasts and torso like a whiteboard eraser, and fantasize about how her day is going to go?

And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you.

And then she looked up at me, and I figured: it's her heart. Her heart is broken over someone. And she didn't look embarrassed at being caught crying, and she shouldn't have done either, since I was crying too. I had been since I pulled out of the parking garage. Strangely enough, I didn't feel embarrassed either. We just looked at each other, both of us locked in the environment of our cars, trapped by the weight of our own hearts, only able to spill out emotion in the privacy of ourselves.

The light changed. I turned left, she went straight. I didn't turn to watch the silver Volvo speed away, I only took comfort that tonight I was not alone, that two women a world apart that never met and never will can share something so personal that they can't even share it outside of their cars.

That misery does love company, even when you never get a chance to talk about it.

And by the time I got home, my plastic smile was in place.

What a wicked thing to say, you never felt this way
What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you.

-H.

Posted by Everydaystranger at September 26, 2003 08:25 AM | TrackBack