The needle spun around and around near the middle of the record and he watched it get closer to the edge. No one lived paycheck to paycheck anymore, it was direct deposit to direct deposit. The days of touch and feel your money were gone. These days you didn’t even feel your money go through your hands before it went through your hands, through your bowels like water, and he was shitting out money like a tidal wave. Didn’t even know if Christmas was coming around again. November straight to January would be alright, just fine. Scratching the record, scratching the ground, scratching the bottom of the barrel the bottom of his soul, gum off the bottoms of his shoes no wait the gum was keeping the rain out of his socks. ABC gum, wasn’t that something from when he was a kid? Already been chewed, that’s how he felt, already been chewed up and spit out and swallowed and shit out again, over and over until he was dirt or ash or dust to dust, might as well go to heaven now before he had to pay a subscription to get in.
The song had ended, did he want to play another? Insert quarter to continue. He put a coin in and across the globe it was accepted, and in another country the band began to play. The sound came out over the radio, through the Bluetooth and into his earbuds, shattering his eardrums as he walked down the street to the nearest crosswalk to the oldest grocery on the block, the one with the mega door that led to the crooked aisles with the half-empty shelves with dusty cans of soft meat and wilted lettuce and red avocados that felt like February pumpkins. An acrid wind blew up from the gutter and made him salivate, in hunger or revulsion it didn’t matter because the two weren’t that different now. These days hunger wasn’t a pleasant feeling, everybody knew that, it was a nuisance to be eradicated as quickly as possible, a sign of weakness if it went on too long or if it affected you in a way that others could tell. Weak member of the herd and all.
So the door slicked open and then closed behind him and he was plunged into the close yellow air of old produce and dry grout. The sound of shuffling feet, everyone shuffled in here, it wasn’t a requirement but once you got in there was no need to hurry, shopping became a painful experience that robbed you of your energy so no one moved quickly and if you did someone was liable to try and rob you the minute you left because those who moved quickly might as well be broadcasting that they had money to burn. Hey, look at me, they said, I have enough money to not cry when I shop. Motherfuckers, no one would stop to help you, either, because who has the nerve to look less than miserable in a grocery store, who would be so tone deaf to walk with pep in a place filled with so much suffering. Like whistling in a library.
He shuffled out with his light bag and went home, avoiding the kiss his partner held out to him. He knew they were only trying to give him something good but he didn’t want it so couldn’t accept it. Shoved the half-empty bag at them instead, hoping that that would make up for what he couldn’t take. Didn’t take his ear buds out. Flopped down on the couch futon and flipped his buds to the TV where some cooking show was on because he felt like punishing himself more. Everyone knew their TV-someday would never come and that they were all numbing themselves but still they couldn’t bring themselves to do anything about it because no one trusted anyone anymore so nothing was done about anything, so pass the chips please because we’re out of shotgun shells. The kids will be home soon and we can’t let them see, we can’t let them see until they’re old enough to figure it out for themselves and then we’ll plead ignorance and when they ask why and why not, we’ll pretend to have gall and pretend not to know and pretend to be baffled as to why and why not. Like we didn’t know. Like we had no idea. Like we didn’t feel the vibrations rattling our bodies as we lay down on the train tracks.
What were we supposed to do? Sacrifice ourselves and die not knowing if it was for anything or not? Risk something? Absolutely not. We were at the point of having so little that any risk felt impossible, because our lives were so precarious that losing anything felt like losing everything -- so close to the edge that the smallest risk was equivalent to the biggest risk. Paycheck to paycheck. Hopping from one rock to another, one slip and it was into the water and drown, so we kept on jumping as the water kept rising instead of trying to learn how to swim.