Hello
Well, that was all I had to say. And I didn't even say that.
I try to limit my excursions to the shopping mall because they make me feel like that retard that I was in high school and I am not that person anymore so I don't like feeling like that. I hate feeling like everyone is the same and I am the only one who sees the idocy of mall culture. I go to the mall and I keep thinking that I am seeing someone I know but it's just because everyone looks the same. The new Portishead album is pretty good. It was playing at the Virgin Megastore when I walked through. Virgin sells overpriced versions of all manner of film, music, interactive software and pop culture trinkets. You have to walk through the Virgin Megastore if you're going to get anywhere in the mall. It cuts right through like this:
http://smallcave.net/images/virgin.gif
As you can see, if you want to get to thety cell phone kiosk from the food court, the most efficient route would be through Virgin. There are members of security staff posted at each entrance along with the along with electronic article surveilance pedestals which will sound an alarm if an acousto-magnetic tag passes through which has not been deactivated at the register. If this should happen, the security staff member, completely free of any legal right to search your person, will sternly ask you to allow them to search your person. If they act tough like a police officer, most people will comply and either absolve themselves or provide the security officer with the requested incriminating evidence, which the company may do with as they please.
This is all a long-winded way to say that I was at Virgin walking around. Because I am a good consumer, I picked up a number of compact discs without which I had decided that I could not live.
Spoon was playing now. I like their new album.
I mean, I LIKE the stuff that they sell at Virgin. It's good stuff, mostly. I would never buy a nintendo controller belt buckle, but I can appreciate the novelty.
It's not that I hate Virgin. But I feel this hate whenever I go there and look at these kids. I hate people who like the same things that I like, but like them more than I do. Does that make sense?
I did see Kendra when I was there. Our paths don't cross that often since we don't work together anymore and we run with different crowds. She haunts some local poolhall and some of the bars in town. These are places where they play Nirvana and Offspring in 2008. She's into cars and motorcycles and I don't know what else. I can be seen at places like the Laemmle in Claremont, where they play movies that are too obscure to show in the AMC but too well-known to make it to the NuArt for douchebags who hate blockbusters.
But there she was, half-way across the store from my position. She didn't notice me or she would have said hi. I was physically trembling. I walked away and just thought about the blood flowing through my heart at quadruple speed and the air rushing in and out of my lungs. Her fading presense. She was cutting through the Virgin store to the food court. I ducked behind a shelf display of Chuck Palahniuk novels so she didn't see me. I felt like a huge, sweaty lump of inadequacy. If I were to show my face to her, she'd initiate a hug and I might tear her to pieces with my undiluted animal WANTING. What did I even smell like? It was a hundred degrees outside and I had been drenched in my own juices just moments before entering the air conditioned shopping environment. There was not a molecule of myself at that moment that I did not hate.
And then she just walked away and out the other end of the store because she was just living her life and had places to be. I made some half-hearted attempt to catch up to her but I still didn't want to. Every step she took in the other direction was directly on top of my stomache. There was nothing I wanted less than the three CDs in my hand. As she exited through the electronic article surveilance pedestal, two teenaged boys walked in. One of them stopped dead in his tracks to watch her walk away. Only a teenager would be so blatant, but I sympathized and hated him at the same time.
The thought just pops into my head sometimes. I don't like it, but I can't deny it. Why would I?
"What if I followed her?"
And I know the answer to that question, of course. I'd go to jail, that's what. I have this analylitical mind, though. There's something about me that won't let me shut it off. I know all of these things about her, so when I come up with something that I don't know, the first thing that springs in my mind is how easy it would be to find out.
Why? I don't know.
I'm used to being obsessed with less important things. Books, anime, video games. A video game presents you with a problem and proides you with a skill set that makes the objective obtainable. If you're a plumber who is constantly in danger of being murdered by these squat little bipedal monsters who go squish when jumped upon, you begin the game with the ability to jump and squish things. If this is the only problem you have in your video game life, this is the only skill you get. You are given the ability to accomplish the tasks given to you and little else. This is called play balancing. Life doesn't have this.
So, sometimes you fall in love and all you know how to do is solve LucasArts adventure games from the 90's. One piece of information leads to another. That's all it is. I saw her randomly at a supermarket depositing a paycheck, and I hated myself because the first thing that popped into my sick head wasn't "hey, maybe I should go say hi." If I thought that, I would be a normal, functioning member of society. But that would require play balance. The first thing in my head was:
So this is where she banks. Makes sense, because it's near where she said she lives. I know it's between Canyon and Via Rosa, but I'm not sure where. I would know her car if I saw it, but I can't be sure she'd be home when I rolled down there. She works in the day and goes out at night. She'd probably be home around four in the morning. If I were to--
This is usually where I get disgusted with myself and lock myself in my room for two days. Depression is real and it affects millions of Americans who have enough money to survive. Fear affects everyone else. Feeling
She's not perfect. I mean, she is way too good for me, but if you saw her on the street, you might not see in her what I see. She's not hideous by any stretch, I mean. She's got a rockin' body, and she dresses well. But she's got kind of a "mom" face. Maybe it's the glasses, I don't know. I'm not one of those guys who stalks and rapes women who look like his mom, okay. She doesn't look anything like MY mom. She just has this kind of featureless face and thin lips. When she looks at me, I feel like she can see inside my soul. When she talks to me, she remembers things that I said the last time we talked. I'm not used to that. People usually forget about me.
I think that's the problem. You shouldn't be nice to weird people because they take it the wrong way. If you get nothing else out of this I want you to get that. The next time you see some weird looking guy, kick him in the nuts and run away. I don't know, don't do that. Be nice, but not too nice. Don't make him feel special. Don't pretend to be interested in his life. Be courteous, but not too much. It's better for him and for you because the next thing you know he's timing his supermarket trips so that he goes to the same store at the same time every week because he's trying to decipher a pattern out of your banking habits.
I drive by the part of your neighborhood where I think her house is every day on my way to work. I don't think about it all the time, but something in that neighborhood yanks at my attention. I would love to just take a stroll down there one day, but I know why I won't. There would be clues. Something. Anything. It would be there. And it would just lead to the next thing. The next level. And I don't know where it would end. Would I be satisfied to stand in the bushes across the street and watch her stumble in the house drunk at three in the morning? Would that make me feel better so I could just move on with my smurfing life?
All I want is to remove this part of my brain with an ice cream scoop.
So, I just drive by. I just make it another day, and another. I try not to gather any more clues. I've stopped trying to work each lead that falls into my lap. I don't know what I'm going to do or why I'm going to do it.
There's a concept in game design called emergent gameplay. It's when the player plays the game in a way that the original game developer did not originally intend or forsee. Play balancing is thrown out the window if the player is no longer even trying to complete the objectives in the game. In Grand Theft Auto, you can skip the missions entirely and just steal cars and see how many you can stack up and walk on top of. What game are you playing if you're not completing objectives?
"Life is full of misery, lonliness and suffering - and it's all over much too soon." --Woody Allen
