Tuesday

I had just walked out of work and was braving the late night Tuesday traffic in front of my office when I noticed him on the other side of the road. He was stumbling and furtively smoking a cigarette while considering crossing the road away from me. Being cursed with the ability to recognize people from afar, I noticed who he was and focused intently on something/anything to do with my ipod nano.

Apparently he was as gifted as I, as I noticed his stumbling was now circuitously finding itself going in my direction and away from the road he had seemed about to cross. Darn, there was no avoiding it; he had definitely caught my eye. I waited before pulling out a headphone, and even once I had, I left one in, in the hope that he might notice my complete lack of interest in anything that he divulged.

“What are you doing?” The poor sap was obviously drunk: he was being loud and talkative. Unfortunately, this is not a person is not usually excessively verbose, but I have noticed that he usually keeps his distance unless inebriated. Sack somehow emboldens him.

“Well, I’m just leaving work.” I listened to the radio in the other ear, ignoring the inevitable – and doubtless amusing – quip.

“Well, you certainly shouldn’t be doing that,” he chortled. I waved him away, hoping this might make the subtle point that I was trying to make. Nope, he bulldozed on, “lucky for you, I’ve been drinking for the both of us.”

Egads, this fool means to go for a drink with me. I started walking quickly. No dice. He kept up, apparently having a direction was curing his drunken wobble. Maybe if I walked in a zig-zag, I could lose him. Maybe even, I could trip him up. He seemed drunk enough - might believe he fell.

“So what are doing with your life?” Oh boy. I put the other headphone back in, listening to the dulcet tones of news broadcasting from another continent. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him going on – the odd word was filtering through, but not enough for me to actually hear. We got to a corner and he seemed to indicate he had a pearl of wisdom before we parted. Before he got a chance, I hammered him on the shoulder,

“It’s been emotional. Don’t forget to send me that report.” A swift smile and over the road I went.

“Say, suh.” What on earth was going on, this was a Tuesday wasn’t it? What did this sweating (the heat certainly did not justify it, and the scent of booze wafting off him belied the likely source of his glandular problem), wild-eyed, fellow want?

“Well, you don’t speak Spanish,” he noticed the book I was holding. Serves me right for carrying conversations starters around with me, I thought. “I have a problem. I am here seeing my mother. I’m from Naples, Florida.” He stumbled, but caught himself. “..Union Station…”

“OK, go straight down there,” I hinged around pointing him away (the wrong direction actually – seemed an appropriate punishment).

“No, no, no.” His hands shuffled before his face. He hitched his bag up. “I need a dollah thirty five.”

Great. A well dressed bum. The guilt kicked in, remembering previous moments when I had been equally inebriated and verbally assaulted passers-by searching for shrapnel to get home. Usually, I managed to finagle my way without it, but I was not entirely immune to his situation. I reached into my pocket and produced over twenty dollars in change, muttering something about “I only have a dollar.”

We both watched as I rifled through my modest wealth to give him less than he needed, before he wound off stumbling in the other wrong direction. I hoped he would fall or pester someone else, but he seemed to have found a second wind. I appeared to have been had.

The gym was almost closing, but I felt a compelling urge to force myself through wringer as some sort of self-immolation. Doubtless a Catholic left-over of some description. The devises in the gym would make Torquemada blush. A whole array of weights, pulleys, levers, handle bars, any of them an easy par with the gentle iron maiden.

I sat there grunting like some sort of pedophile in children’s changing room, as people around me demonstrated with each curl the total futility of my effort to try to make myself look marginally like any of the people that I saw on television, magazines, advertisements, the gym – in fact – anywhere, apparently I was the only sap who had not yet realized that unless one had perfect abs (what the hell were abs anyway), washboard stomach, bulging biceps, etc, then the chances were that you would die a slow and painful death. What the saps didn’t apparently realize was that they were already dying a slow and painful death. Their daily lives.

I kept grunting, grimly chuckling to myself, as the beast next to me effortlessly lifted double the amount of times double the amount of weights that I had barely been able to lift a moment ago.

“Ladies, and gentlemen, could Amanda Hugnkiss come to the front desk? Amanda Hugnkiss to the front desk please,” crackled the loudspeakers. I blurted out laughing, which suddenly threw me into a position somewhat like that which the Japanese used over bamboo shoots to extract information from Indian wind-talkers in the Second World War.

Adjusting myself I looked around for other bemused people. No-one had apparently noticed. I sighed. Was it really only Tuesday?