Alphascendant
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Five years ago, Scottsboro, Nebraska, the type of sunset that inspired the Japanese flag. Sunsets are not quite as magical as rainbows though. This year, after eight years of consecutive visits, there was no rainbow in Durango, Colorado. There was a rainbow in northern Colorado. There it was. Sprawling across the pavement in the middle of the road to photograph the wild turkey with eight poults with that rainbow as a backdrop was a good idea. All ideas are good, the reactions and results of those ideas are not always so good. Back to the sunset.
Tonight, Omaha, Nebraska, a beautiful sunset, Scottsboro is a couple days away, will that once magical sunset repeat itself? As the orange red rays penetrated through the windshield, L-A-U-N-D-R was typed into the GPS. "The Cleanest Laundry in Town" 2.9 miles. The directions led me to a seedy part of town. The seediest? How seedy can Omaha be? Driving through the projects made me wonder, "How can people, why do people, how do these people end up here?" The trash on the lawns and in the streets answered those questions. Condemn me if you want, some people are just plain fucking trash. If it walks like trash, talks like trash, and lives in trash, then it's trash. Luckilly we all die, the remnants of our bodies all with the opportunity to decompose equally together, just like trash. Our spirits? Those do not decompse so easily.
"The Cleanest Laundry in Town" looked like a liquor store, it even had a big sign that said "LIQUOR STORE," and did not appear to be a place for spinning and drying. Maybe there were machines inside for that purpose, but it did not appear to be worth the effort to stop, park, and go inside.
"Lucy's Laundry" was just around the corner, just a short drive back through the projects, yes, a laundromat. After a u turn and avoiding a couple of police cars, my laundry was ready to launder. Next door to the laundramat was a bar, which neon signs sparked a similarity to the market across the street, signs written in a language that was not an elective in my high school thirty years ago. The sounds of ooompa ooompa sliced through the walls from the bar, louder than the television that echoed through the empty laundramat. Luckilly there was a parking spot in front of the facility, it seemed like an unsafe area to park, especially considering the motorcycle on the back of the truck was worth three times the truck, not to mention the guitar inside of the truck being worth nearly as much as the truck, or the many pocket sized gadgets inside the truck, or to say the least, the bottle of whiskey sitting on the front floorboard.
You have been in a laundamat? Do they all have big windows facing the sidewalk? The original plan was to study V7 construction while the clothes washed, but the office had sent me a supply of decals to distrubute, but not before tearing and bundling them. That is not normally part of my job description, and when returning to the office that hasn't been attended to in two months, a discussion is in order as to who is supposed to be tearing those stickers. But, that seemed like a good opportunity to use the time to tear and bundle as it had to be done. The tops of the machines nearest the windows seemed like the best place to tear, allowing a view of the truck on the street, to watch for anybody that might be curious about stealing.
Suddenly, while standing there next to the window, a man appeared. A very blond looking man, seemingly quite out of place in that neighborhood. He stood on the opposite side of the window, staring at me for over ten minutes. It was an uncomfortable feeling. Through most of my life, people have stared at me, wondering, "What the fuck is he doing?" So that wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but this person was so close, two feet away, right in my face, giving me the creeps. That made me feel uncomfortable. What does he want? What is he thinking? Doesn't he have anything else better to do than stare at me through a window, two feet away? Some say the eyes are the windows into our soul.
It takes a lot to intimidate me. The Harlem streets, being a white guy stranded there at 2a.m. on a frozen February morning did not intimidate me, the Newark alleys, barefoot with no jacket in a downpour, the biggest meanest bikers or black guys, just kill me and get it over with. What intimidates me? That little blonde guy intimidated me, staring through that window, two feet away. Finally, he walked in and said that my Ignacio Bike Week, 2007 t-shirt reminded him of his father who died two weeks before his birth. He was from Boston. How did he end up in Omaha? He was in the service in one of the Carolinas, had a beautiful house on the beach, a beautiful wife. The hurricane destroyed his house and the insurance company didn't pay up in time, so they moved to her family in Omaha. He would still be in the service, but was discharged because he nearly killed the man he caught sleeping with his wife. Why do people tend to blame the person fucking their spouse when it is the spouse that is the problem? Sure, we have a problem, oh, and the best way to solve that is to go out and fuck somebody else. Fuck you too. Some Muslims say, "Beat your wife every morning. If you don't know why, she does."
He asked about my purpose and if he could help. Amazing how some people start off creepy before becoming the most trusted of friends, while some people pretend that they are the most trustable, yet end up being creepy scumbags. That man in the window could have been many things. That creepy feeling, did he give it to me, or did he open the window to a creepy feeling that was inside of me? Two feet away, through a window he gazed, a total stranger, right in my face, staring. What was his problem, or was it my problem? Who is looking into your windows? Draw the blinds if you wish, the creepiness does not disappear by itself. This story could have taken many twisted turns down countless sick avenues, and here you are wondering why you bothered to read this shit at all, which is no doubt because you have nothing else better to do. What will you do about that? Truth is stranger than fiction. The question is, will you linger in my mind longer than that stranger in the window?
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