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untitled by irwin romain jules arthur



THINGS I WOULD INCLUDE IN THE STORY I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN IF I FELT LIKE WRITING A STORY (WHICH I DON'T), A LIST:

different coloured books, stacked some horizontal, some vertical, at first glance haphazardly on white shelves. but on closer look coloured, thematic, chronological organizational schemes start to appear. on an even closer look the schemes fall apart. on an even closer look coloured, thematic, chronological ... repeat.


i've lost that sense of home again. i had for a while. but it's gone now. everything feels foreign. it's all very Sartre (unfortunately). __i cannot sit through too many more classes. __or dinners. my house irritates me. i'm soo bored driving to and fro i speed just to put myself out of the burden of it.


a shopping trolley. kicking it. over. over. again. and over. and over. always wanted. over. to. again. over. over. again. and. again over. over.


maybe it should be set in summer. i hate summer. too much light. can't see a thing. always squinting, sweat dripping down my temples, drops on the inside of my lenses. my glasses always dirty. bright as all hell. can't bear to be outside, the air soo heavy you need a straw to breathe it in.


bad writers. bad writing. to make up for it they were tighter jeans. if can't act the part might as well look it. sitting in cafes. drinking soy somethings or another. complaining about irreparable environmental damage. __either that or throw together a couple hackneyed similes, slap a rhyme on the end and give it to a girl so she'll feel pretty and let you kiss her later and later into the night till there's simply no alternative left. (if can't act the part might as well abuse it). bad writers. bad writing. mostly by people who have bad haircuts.


distance. can't decide from what though. __from the future maybe. __also from the past. there's nothing further than the past. it's an impossibility away. distance from yourself ; even in the present. that mixed up mumjumbled wha tha feeling like you just woke up can't make a decision about anything so you just sit there staring away hoping it'll all just keep managing itself like it has for ever and ever.
distance. __that much is clear. __the rest...


a hospital. someone probably works there. i'm tempted to say it's a she. but then for fun it'll probably be a he. not a doctor or anything though. maybe in the cafeteria. maybe this guy wheels a portable television around from room to room for patients whose tvs have stopped working. room number. push. leave. collect. room number. again. again. white pants. the funny smell of the place. funny strange looks on people's faces. sick children are too sad to think about. he concentrates on how hard it is to find parking around the hospital. he hates parking. he drives his mother's van. the central locking doesn't work anymore. it smells like suburbia. there's a half-full bottle of water somewhere when he drives he can hear it rolling around. he never bothers to find it and remove it because ... ... because ... ... ... who knows.


nights we can't be alone but can't bear the sight of a person or the noise or movement of them. are thankful just to get home and close the door behind us. __when i was 16 i got my first notebook. it had a blue cover. somewhere inside it i wrote the line: i let my beasts eat me because they say i taste good. i still do. funny what a little flattery will do for ya.


if i wrote a story it would be like Hospice by the Antlers. fuzzy. but with clear melodies. several voices. i've never bothered to listen to the lyrics. i have no idea what they're on about. i just like the fuzziness. the melody. it's what i listen to when i'm sad. it's perfect for that. i feel like i'm being told a story. something about a hospital i assume.


there would be an after-shot. a '20 months after'. everyone would be ok. it's important that the reader is reminded that more or less, people are ok.
but still, sadder or stronger or farther away thanks to the experience. (distance).


no sex. __no love. __i've already made my money off those two. __this would be platonic.
platonic is under-rated. i'm bothered that it's easier to get laid than to make a friend. that makes me feel distant (except i don't know from what <-- but that's the point right?). she works at a carwash. on the weekends. that's where they met. (his mom was coming home for a visit so he had the mama-van washed). she didn't wash it though, she works the till inside. sells gum, old donuts. that kind of thing. __during the week she works as some blahh or another.
they have friends. as in... people that blahblahblah to each other, and drink on weekends and talk about that bitch or television shows or whatever it is friends talk about. but that doesn't fix anyone's loneliness - i'm sure it causes it more often than anything. __fuzzy. fuzzy lives. just kinda rolling along. you wake up knowing you have to get dressed but not sure why, next thing you know you're reading someone's left-over paper with your lunch, except you're not reading you just have your eyes set on it so they don't have to look around, after that you regain consciousness because you need to pee really bad, after you wash your hands you walk back out into the hall, it's almost dark when you find yourself trying to find the keys to your car. __wtf.


sometimes i get panicky about receiving text messages. i get nervous about hearing the noise. i don't know why. it terrifies me. i dread it. i turn my phone on silent and hide it somewhere where i won't hear it and where no one will hear me and know where i am and come find me and force me to talk to them or listen to them or know their name or make decisions or accompany them somewhere or be responsible or save money or get a job or be an 'adult' and get married and have babies and be a good person all those things they thought my parents would have instilled in me.


she gets drunk and cries to some guy she's never met before and tells him she ruined it for everybody. that she wasn't good enough to have been on the team and she knew all along she couldn't keep up but that she couldn't admit that to anybody least of all herself. so she stuck it out and basically ran the rest into the ground. she cries to the first guy but he has a GF so he leaves eventually. she plays the card on a second, who just doesn't really care. a third is found who doesn't care either (only it confirms what everyone around town had been saying anyway) but takes her home anyway. figures it's what she's after anyway. she is. except she's not. but she doesn't know that at the time. or for a few years yet.


i don't know of any story that has a start or an end. they just kinda pick it up somewhere and drop it off somewhere. it's just what they are, how they are. just distance between points.