PulpLit.net

I Am Someone

I am someone

they search out--I know I am. They need me. They need me to know how horrible their lives are. They want me to hear every excruciating detail about their cars, their jobs, their girlfriends (I told her no marriage--I've been down that road before, but she just won't listen) and how their backs cracked in unexpected places in the car this morning. Their backs always crach in unexpected places. Every morning.

And I used to run from them. But then something happened. I began to really listen to their motivations for living, I put my own wants and needs against theirs and found that their sordid lives, filled with unstable o-rings, benign canker sores on inner thighs and the occasional domestic assault after your cousin finds out you're gonna marry his girlfriend were much more exciting than anything I'd ever experienced.

And so I began to search them out. Maybe you've seen me sitting in the bus station or at the airport. Sometimes I've found myself waiting in long lines at buffets; hoping someone will have a problem with an artificial leg or an eyepatch and they will need me to eat with them, just to have a friend.

And I want to be that friend. The one they call when they have to use up that phone card before New Year's. I'm not doing anything, it can wait. I want to know more about you. What's that growth? Heard from any illegitimate children? Ever got your fingers bitten off by a relative? Ever been out of state?

I tried to be a penpal with a jailbird but all he cared about was what kind of women I'd been with. I told him stories, including a lurid one I'd been told at a drive-thru window. When I asked about the big house he would shrug me off, claiming the fifth. Only once did he tell me a story. It was a dream he'd had the night before...

On the day of his release, the other prisoners wished him well, hollering his name and whistling their salute. Most of them never really got to know him, but that was the way prison was: your actions defined you, and the tougher the better. As he walked down the block for the last time, a lone voice rang out, "Don't go!" He stopped in front of the last cell, and a young prisoner named Tony came forward.

"Will you write?" Tony asked. "No." He started to walk away. "Why not?" he asked. "I want you to write your own story. If I tell them, you might forget to live your own." The jailbird thought these were good words to live by and liked this dream best of all

and sometimes I catch myself dreaming it too.