The Wizard of Was

The madness doesn't subside.  Did I already say that it started like an episode of The Twilight Zone then morphed into Fifty Shades of Gray?  Insert dream sequences and phone calls in the night.  My friend told me I will end up with a dead rabbit on the stovetop.  One thing ends, another begins.  No--two things end, and therein lies the rub.  At work, I was given a t-shirt by HR that has one word emblazoned on the front: WAS.  I am feeling forlorn.  The Wizard of Was.

I am touched sometimes by people's concerns.  A friend of mine once told me that my problem was that I wanted a woman to think about me all the time.  Hell, he said, you're lucky if she's thinking about you when you are standing right in front of her.  I realized how true a statement that was.  And so, if we were talking about a woman who supposedly had feelings about me, what chance would I have that others would think about me at all?

That pretty much became the assumption I lived by.  I don't believe I exist for people unless I am standing in front of them, and only sometimes then.

But people have been telling me I need to go somewhere, to get away.  I used to go all the time, they say, but I haven't had a vacation in years.  They must be noticing something about me to bother saying it.  I am sure they are correct.  I need to get away.

A mattress on the floor, books and records in Peaches crates, a stereo, a ficus.  A ficus?  Everybody had them.  It was required, I think.  Look how easy it was to get out of town, though, how easy it was to change your life by running away.

The factory whistle blows.