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Out of context: Reply #270
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- Gorbie0
Last week I took a rare lunch break to take an even more rare stroll through the city. It almost felt like I was a visitor - a tourist even. The sun was shining people were out and about doing all their regular people stuff that regular people do. You know. I couldn't shake the guilty feeling though. Like a strange subconcious lingering feeling that it wasn't the weekend yet, and I hadn't yet earned the right to bask in the sun. I watched as people fed their checks into the ATM machines, and I felt that I too would join in this ritual. Maybe that would make me feel like I had completed a task, and fulfilled some sort of an objective. My check was fed to the machine, and it in turn regurgitated a green slip that had no purpose yet assigned to it. But all this feeding of machines made me hungry aswell, so I crossed the street to a small shop selling pizza by the slice. I found a slice that fit my mood - it too had been basking in it's own type of sun, the artificial type that keeps them warm and happy. I handed the fella the cripsy note and took my pizza outside to the side walk where I could watch more people and observe their behavior - you know - so I can gauge my own personality.
Halfway into the greasy slice I saw a large man walk behind me as he horfed something out of the back of his throught. I made the fatal mistake of turning my head to view this sound (as people do for some reason). I caught the eyes of a large wrestler-sized bum dressed in dirt black jeans and a black shirt. He stopped his walk immediately and turned towards me walking slowly. He had shit in his beard, and he messed with his chin length curly hair as his face tweaked around trying to either formulate a thought or remove more flegm and mucus from his sinuses. I was still staring mid-bite as he leaned right in close to my face. He asked me,
"you got any food for me?"
I replied simply, "no. sorry."
Apparently the combination of the letters n & o caused a chemical to spurt from his brain, inducing a horrible violent reaction. He spat and swore his finger 5 centimeters from my eye at all time. He told me of the sacrifices he made in Vietnam, of the dues he paid so I could enjoy the pizza crust I held limp in my stiff, pale hand, and of the rights denied to him by a seemingly invisible, omnipresent force keeping his face in the gutter and mine in a pillow of ignorance.
All his points were, however, totally lost as I was made aware that he had started his rant with a mouth full of food - which was now partly on my face - but mostly spattered accross his lips, teeth and beard. I stared blankly at his eyes, both of us were now silent and people had stopped to see the outcome. I handed him my pizza crust slowly and thought of what sort of food he had had before. Had he performed this monologue of anger and paranoia for another lucky person just around the corner?
He have me a short grunted "thanks", threw the plate in the gutter and stormed off in a heavy stomping manner. I took a sip off my soda and looked back up and he was gone, and the people were once again moving about. I headed back towards the office.
I did like that pizza very much.