the city was a mean old broad, and so was my sunday. me and some guy—just another lost soul killing time—went out for brunch, the kind where they serve regret on a plate and charge extra for the privilege. then we pounded pavement, drifting through stores like ghosts with empty pockets. didn’t buy a damn thing. just left fingerprints on glass cases full of things we’d never own.
this week, i’m back in the grind, punching the clock like a sap, sticking to business hours because that’s when they let you work. last job didn’t care when you worked, just that you got it done. back then, i was a king, a labor aristocrat, calling my own shots. now? just another stiff pulling the national average, watching the dream shrink in the rearview. but at least i got a union now, a real-deal pension, not some flimsy 401(k) scam dressed up like security. something about that makes me sleep easier—like knowing i’ll get a coffin with my name on it instead of a cardboard box.
next week, though? next week, i hit the bars, where the drinks are stiff and the men are softer than they look. i’ll be cruising, playing the angles, maybe bringing two, maybe three back to my place for a little midnight symphony. if the whiskey flows right and the neon hums just so, i might even call it a perfect night.
I signal to the bartender and he slides a glass across the bar. I catch it without looking and down it. It’s water, but I wince anyway to put on a show for the lady next to me who clears her throat.
“Excuse me, I think that was my wa-” she starts, but I pull out at a cigarette and offer it to her. The bartender looks like he’s about to say something, but I silence him with a steely glance which he gives me as I place the cigs quickly back in my pocket and make a heart gesture. I slam my empty glass down on the table. “Another.”
The broad stalks talking about her dead-end job in the union. I smile fondly, and tell her about my union-busting days working as mayor’s lapdog back when the city was a crime-addled ruin of its current self. I miss those days. The daily beatings of the unionists made me the man I am today, and I beat off my fair share of them too.
She gives me a look and asks if I want to go back to her place for a little music. “Sorry toots”, I say, “I don’t play the clarinet.”
She fixes with me a look, a look that a thousand women on a thousand dark days have given me; shock, awe, admiration, and another look which people assure me is this thing called “puzzled revulsion” whatever the hell that means.
She leaves, and I watch her go, and part of me wishes that I could go with her to that midnight concert. But Jazz is the only woman that I need, which bums me out because I really like 1970s progressive rock.
that’s the price you pay for crackin’ down on the workin’ man and chasin’ skirts like a two-bit romeo with a death wish. Trust me, pal—goin’ after men is like findin’ a loaded heater in a dark alley: it’s faster, it’s cleaner, and nine times outta ten, it won’t leave you bleedin’ out in some gutter wonderin’ where it all went wrong.
I tip my fedora down and take a drag of my cigarette, blowing a plume of smoke whilst suppressing the urge to cough. I prefer vape pens and nicotine patches, but she doesn’t need to know all my secrets. “You dames are all the same”, I say cleverly, “with your big city ideas about efficient heating”
“But let me ask you this”, I reach into my trenchcoat and pull out a leaflet, “is it really more efficient to burn fossil fuels to heat up a dark alleyway than to just wear a trenchcoat?” A silence greets us as the HVAC begins to hum at higher frequency. I push the leaflet about the sale on trenchcoats at a nearby warehouse into her porcelain hands, and then without looking back, stride mysteriously out of that alleyway.
back in the day, if a guy said he was packin’ a heater, he wasn’t talkin’ about stayin’ warm—unless you count the kinda warmth that leaves smoke comin’ outta a guy’s chest.
I chuckle darkly as she whispers sweet nothings to me to turn back, but my days of spraying gasoline on my chest and setting it on fire to entertain the morbid curiosities of my friends and admirers are over. “Friends don’t let friends demean themselves” I say. I make a power fist and hold it high, just like my therapist taught me.
the city was a mean old broad, and so was my sunday. me and some guy—just another lost soul killing time—went out for brunch, the kind where they serve regret on a plate and charge extra for the privilege. then we pounded pavement, drifting through stores like ghosts with empty pockets. didn’t buy a damn thing. just left fingerprints on glass cases full of things we’d never own.
this week, i’m back in the grind, punching the clock like a sap, sticking to business hours because that’s when they let you work. last job didn’t care when you worked, just that you got it done. back then, i was a king, a labor aristocrat, calling my own shots. now? just another stiff pulling the national average, watching the dream shrink in the rearview. but at least i got a union now, a real-deal pension, not some flimsy 401(k) scam dressed up like security. something about that makes me sleep easier—like knowing i’ll get a coffin with my name on it instead of a cardboard box.
next week, though? next week, i hit the bars, where the drinks are stiff and the men are softer than they look. i’ll be cruising, playing the angles, maybe bringing two, maybe three back to my place for a little midnight symphony. if the whiskey flows right and the neon hums just so, i might even call it a perfect night.
I signal to the bartender and he slides a glass across the bar. I catch it without looking and down it. It’s water, but I wince anyway to put on a show for the lady next to me who clears her throat.
“Excuse me, I think that was my wa-” she starts, but I pull out at a cigarette and offer it to her. The bartender looks like he’s about to say something, but I silence him with a steely glance which he gives me as I place the cigs quickly back in my pocket and make a heart gesture. I slam my empty glass down on the table. “Another.”
The broad stalks talking about her dead-end job in the union. I smile fondly, and tell her about my union-busting days working as mayor’s lapdog back when the city was a crime-addled ruin of its current self. I miss those days. The daily beatings of the unionists made me the man I am today, and I beat off my fair share of them too.
She gives me a look and asks if I want to go back to her place for a little music. “Sorry toots”, I say, “I don’t play the clarinet.”
She fixes with me a look, a look that a thousand women on a thousand dark days have given me; shock, awe, admiration, and another look which people assure me is this thing called “puzzled revulsion” whatever the hell that means.
She leaves, and I watch her go, and part of me wishes that I could go with her to that midnight concert. But Jazz is the only woman that I need, which bums me out because I really like 1970s progressive rock.
that’s the price you pay for crackin’ down on the workin’ man and chasin’ skirts like a two-bit romeo with a death wish. Trust me, pal—goin’ after men is like findin’ a loaded heater in a dark alley: it’s faster, it’s cleaner, and nine times outta ten, it won’t leave you bleedin’ out in some gutter wonderin’ where it all went wrong.
I tip my fedora down and take a drag of my cigarette, blowing a plume of smoke whilst suppressing the urge to cough. I prefer vape pens and nicotine patches, but she doesn’t need to know all my secrets. “You dames are all the same”, I say cleverly, “with your big city ideas about efficient heating”
“But let me ask you this”, I reach into my trenchcoat and pull out a leaflet, “is it really more efficient to burn fossil fuels to heat up a dark alleyway than to just wear a trenchcoat?” A silence greets us as the HVAC begins to hum at higher frequency. I push the leaflet about the sale on trenchcoats at a nearby warehouse into her porcelain hands, and then without looking back, stride mysteriously out of that alleyway.
back in the day, if a guy said he was packin’ a heater, he wasn’t talkin’ about stayin’ warm—unless you count the kinda warmth that leaves smoke comin’ outta a guy’s chest.
I chuckle darkly as she whispers sweet nothings to me to turn back, but my days of spraying gasoline on my chest and setting it on fire to entertain the morbid curiosities of my friends and admirers are over. “Friends don’t let friends demean themselves” I say. I make a power fist and hold it high, just like my therapist taught me.