Midlife (A Blog Post in the Style of Charlie Huston)

Figure the day's gonna stretch on like tubing round a junkie's arm. Figure, forever and a month, until the weekend gets here. Figure when it does there'll be kiddies and chicken fingers dipped in ketchup and macaroni and cheese and shit, over-bright colors and over-loud voices and over-chlorinated swimming pools ringed with soccer moms, like superannuated Nausicaan maids, grown up and impregnated with silicone.

For now, they got me doing their crappy work, their little dancing pictures, and I'll do them even though I know I'm better than that, I could be doing more, like creating things, indelible and permanent as anything is in this life where the days stretch away in an innumerable line, and each day is another fucking little dancing picture.

Yeah. Right.

I smack the pack of Lucky Strikes on the inside of my arm, tamping down the tobacco, rip off the wrapper, twist the extra paper into a little teepee and torch the end with my Zippo, the one with the naked lady, tits embossed, reclining on the side. Draw that shit deep in my lungs, down to my feet, and then blow it into the office.

It's the first smoke in seven years and when it hits the blood, it's like heroin and I'm woozy.

-You can't smoke in here.

Peeking round the corner.

-Cigarette's working just fine. See?

-No, you're not allowed. The whole building.

-Who says?

-It's against the law. State legislature.

-Then get them to tell me to my face. I'll wait.

I blow smoke right at him and turn back to the screen. Little people and pictures hopping around, excited as shit, to be selling vacation packages and bottled water and potato chips.

Figure here comes eight hours I'll never get back. Figure the Fire Marshall and five-O are on their way, already, cuffs out.

Figure I don't give a fuck.