Altering Orbits

All I really have is a jacket. It’s still a bit long, the symbolism of never measuring up not entirely lost. The irony that IT’S SUCH A NICE JACKET, that, too. Still, I occasionally wear it to work. You know those co-workers you have who walk around like they know what they’re doing, and not just their JOB DESCRIPTION, mind you, I mean really KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING, and occasionally you look at them and think, ‘He’s totally faking it.’

/POINTS BOTH THUMBS AT SELF

This jacket was bought 20 years ago in a department store that no longer exists. Cox’s, I think. In that summer, the best selling item at the hardware store were those lettered signs that read, ‘Private Property.’ Before, we could walk all throughout the Brazos River Valley with no concern. But in that year people became suspicious. Fences went up. Curtains closed. Folks became bound up in their own affairs.

Privacy mirrored the rise of VCR. Everyone wanted some. No one wanted to leave the house. The neighbors threw up a line of box hedges, and suddenly you wanted some, too.

All I wanted was the jacket. I discovered it in a cheap, wardrobe, fake wood paneling. I put it on wearing no shirt, the wool so irritating I swore I didn’t want it, but swearing you don’t want something that you really, truly want won’t fool the object of your desire into becoming less aggravating.

Last week, his granddaughter tried to commit suicide.

They don’t want you to respond to calls involving your relatives, but I wouldn’t have any problem. When I was on the department, I rarely thought about the patient. I had all the routines logged to rote memory, so I could spend my free time focusing on the distracting miscellany of those alien bedrooms. I see a shard of broken glass on the table and I remember some incident where they threw bottles at each other. I see a cigarette still burning in the ashtray, and I remember sticking my nose through the vent window of an old car.

I wondered today if I’ve suddenly become a pessimist. I was trying to think of my happiest memory, and when I found it, I said, to myself, fondly, ‘It can never be that good again.’ Until I then recalled a memory so unpleasant that I shook it from my head and said out loud, ‘Goddammit.’

No. Definitely an optimist.