Don’t Tell A Soul

Homeless lady who smells like dog shit. Her bag has been stolen. Estimated value: $600. The officer explains that the contents need to be itemized; what was inside the bag costing $600? Clothes, blanket… oh, and some airline tickets.

Guy walks up to the counter clutching a blue folder tightly to his chest. He takes a deep breath, and announces, “Twenty to thirty calls a day”.

“To you?”.

“Yes!”.

Eventually the officer is able to extract from him that a woman won’t stop calling, and she fills up his answering machine if he’s not there. Well, what does she say? “She says she wants to talk to me”.

Oh, what was I doing at the police station, you ask? Filing a report because my bike was stolen on Christmas. Happy fucking holidays!

Did you ever drink Alizé? It’s a sweet concoction of cognac and fruitiness. I used to drink it all the time in college. Back when I lived in JP, I’d come home from school, stop at the liquor store on Centre St., and pick up my little bottle. I had three guy roommates at the time, and they all thought it was the most disgusting drink ever. Every guy thinks it’s disgusting. But that was fine, because they never drank my stash.

So I was in Ralphs the other day, and saw a bottle on the shelf. Wow, I haven’t had that in years, I’ll pick it up for Thanksgiving! One sip, and I almost spit it out, it was so syrupy and intense. But I drank the glass anyway (I’m drinking it now!) because it’s funny how even taste can bring you back in time.

Alizé is the cold of Boston. AOL dial-up on my old Gateway computer, and not being able to afford anything at Urban Outfitters. The aforementioned roommates who hated me, and wouldn’t let me turn the heat on. Smoking in the hallway, with my Armenian coffee, hogging the phone, and bitching about them loud enough to hear me. My boyfriend was B., but I was still missing J., and still calling K, and still wondering why D. tried to kill himself by jumping in front of the red line. They all dead-ended, didn’t they?

The past seems to be a subject I am most prolific writing about. Never the present, never the future. The present is never good enough, and the future is always blank. Maybe I idealize the past, but the future is blackness, and it always has been.