Earlier in the week, Erin had been doing a bunch of stuff. She’d cleaned the house. She’d painted. She was doing laundry. And she had all this energy she was trying to use and wasn’t sure what to do with it.
And that’s pretty much my headspace. I think I want to do about a million projects at any given time, but I can’t pick one, drive towards it with enough dedication, without getting distracted by something else. Not to mention the feeling of “but in the end, this is all going to amount to crap, right?” that comes with any of it.
Podcasting was easier because it involved someone else, so I treated it both as a fun time more than a work time, and I didn’t want to let that person down. All I had to do was get in the seat every week and I wound up having a great time.
Sometimes writing is like that too. I start doing it, and I’m totally in love with it. Not what is written, but the writing part. But I push myself so hard towards anything that isn’t writing with every excuse I can come up with. I’m tired, I’m hungry, I should spend time with Erin, our shows are on, the cats want attention, I have dishes, I should be blah-blah-blah-ing. And the anxiety again of, really, nothing I work on really matters. It doesn’t go anywhere. I never actually get something done that I feel is good enough, so it sits on my computer or in an email or whatever.
Anyone else talks about symptoms like these, which they are, and it seems pretty obvious that it’s brain chemistry, right? Like maybe there’s something to it that needs treatment. But I’m going to be 49 in like a month. This is how my brain has been my entire life. I don’t know how to change how I think now. I don’t know if I’d be okay with trying.
So I beat this drum, over and over, that I want to do something. Make something. Be something. Anyone on here who actually reads my posts has got to be tired of it. I’m tired of it.
Erin hasn’t been feeling well, aside from her back. Not abnormal stuff. But tonight was the night that she sends me to McDonalds.
I tend to order from the mobile app when I go to a fast food place. Because I’m both particular about what I order (in how it’s prepped. I mean, I know, it’s still fast food), and I don’t really love dealing with the drive-thru.
McDonalds normally is a pretty reasonable experience. You do the order, arrive, pull into one of the numbered parking spots, confirm the order, the eventually bring you the stuff.
Our joint here in town is… we’ll go with “hit or miss.” I often get something along the lines of, “Here’s your food,” and I’m all, “Did you also have the drink I ordered?” And they run back in and throw it together. Never a bad experience. Just not perfect. I’m fine with not perfect.
So I get to our restaurant and park in Spot #1 and confirm my order on the app. Get the immediate email saying, “Hey, you just ordered food! That’s great, we appreciate it, here’s your bill, should be right out!” This was, looking at my email, 7:22pm.
I’m listening to MCR because that’s my brain today. It doesn’t matter, but I start out with a couple songs on Black Parade, and then decide I want to listed to stuff on Conventional Weapons instead. The reference is to let you know the passage of time.
The place had two cars at the order boxes when I got there. Maybe another two or three ahead of them in the line leading to the window. I am in spot 1, no one in spots 2, 3, or 4. Yet.
I notice that I’m about four songs into Conventional Weapons as I see two cars that have pulled in on either side of me get their food and leave. I notice, I say, but I don’t really think too hard on it. Fast food is an imperfect science.
Getting notoriously close to the end of the album (not their longest one mind you), someone finally comes up to my car with a bag (minus Erin’s McCafe drink). She hands me the bag, I mention I’d ordered a Frape, she apologizes, goes to another car (arrived after the previous two had come and gone), and as she’s walking back I’ve realized that the food in the bag is not mine. I hand it back to her. She asks what I ordered, I recite it. She heads back in.
My playlist goes into the Under Pressure cover.
As Gerard’s solo album starts, another person comes out and asks about my order. I recite it again, and I start to show her my phone. She says, “Oh, you did a mobile order. Okay, they’ll bring that out to you.” Yes, that was my understanding as well.
Three or four songs into Gerard’s album, I see the last person to contact me walk out of the restaurant. Not to my car. To her own. Must be her break.
And yes, I later see her go back in from her break. I should mention because why not, I’ve added some later tracks onto the Way solo album. Other stuff he did later I guess. So it’s got time.
Erin texts me, concerned because I’ve been gone a while. It’s 8:08.
I explain that I’ve been recognized as waiting by more than one person more than one time. She asks if it’s busy, which it is. Far busier than when I arrived. I consider switching to Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars” because I like to joke with myself and I have shit taste in music obviously. Gerard keeps singing though. Erin starts to try to get me to react like a normal person and actually go confront someone about why I’m not stealing some of her fries on my drive home.
When it gets to the hour mark, as I’m looking at the other people around me (all much newer to this situating than me, but I still empathize with them), I begin to write a stern but fair note to the McDonald’s “Contact Us” page through the mobile app. Erin texts me again. I go to answer her. I flip back to the app and it has erased my message before I got to hit send.
It hits 8:30. I am a lonely fat man sitting in a Ford Ecosport listening to a very famous Emo band singer knowing that he has never experienced suffering such as this. I am now certain the Ronald McDonald is a cenobite and he has all of eternity to relish in my torment, and I have spent the first half of that eternity waiting for my McChicken sandwich, so I know what anguish is.
I walk inside. Technically, I follow the small teenager who was frustrated in her car having been waiting a mere 6 minutes after going through the drive thru where they told her to pull up ahead and they’d bring her her order. Far braver than I if less patient, I hope to ride her figurative coattails of complaints so I can look like nicer person and just be all, “No, I totally get it, you guys are backed up. I just want my food please. I’m not nearly as mean as this red-headed child. Please don’t spit in my McChicken. I won’t be able to tell, but I’m going to know that you did just the same.” But, woe is me, she has gotten her stuff and pushes passed me in the doorway as I make my way in.
The floor is slippery and I’m wearing my cut-off sweats because that’s all I’ve worn every day since quarantine started. They don’t fit me because I have no ass, so even though I tie them as tightly as I can around my ample midsection, they like to slip right down to my ankles with the hit of a light breeze or perhaps only the soft kiss of a puppy’s cough. I struggle to maintain balance and dignity, but who the fuck am I kidding?
The person who assured me that “they” would be bringing my mobile order out, who I think is the manager on duty, walks past me out the door with about three bags in her arms. I go to open it for her, but immediately am reminded that I only barely made it to the counter without my “gentleman and the lads” protruding so I do a helpless gesture of “sorry, you are already there, wish I could have been more help, but the moment has already passed” which no one sees nor appreciates.
The person who brought me the wrong food before looks at me and says, “Oh, aren’t you the mobile order?” If one could live simply off the sustenance of mockery, I would have left then, fully satiated.
“Yes,” I say meekly. Because I bear no worth as a man.
“Was that your order she just took out?”
Oh, if it had been, I might be very well reciting this as my confession during last rights.
“No,” I peep, and I show her the email confirmation on my phone. I vainly hope she’ll show some signs of recognition and remorse when it clearly shows the time that order was placed. But I guess it’s enough that she was able to count the two hamburgers, the two chicken sandwiches, the one large fry, and the Frape. After all this, if she had given me the wrong order, I would’ve driven to Mexico and gone as far as I could towards leaving this entire continent as opposed to going home and having to face my wife with the news that I couldn’t even muster the strength to get her a mocha instead of a caramel drink, goddamn my eyes.
The manager comes back and says, “Are they taking care of you?” They, you mean the Inquisition? Yes. And while I’m here, this seems like such a functional environment, can I please get a job application?
And then, I swear to you, this is the moment I heard fathoms of internet assholes scream “CUCK” at me and I finally knew what it meant and agreed with them…
I thanked them.
At 8:36pm, one hour and fourteen minutes waiting for a McDonalds dinner, I started my car and somehow managed to drive it straight home instead of into any of the three rivers that my town is named for.
The moral of this story is that there is no moral to it. I ate my McChicken sandwich and it was even saltier than normal because of my tears.
Shit man. Taco Bell was right across the street.
I don’t know. I wrote a couple of long posts on Facebook today, but I can’t make myself believe that those count as “writing.” They’re journaling, which is a good thing, minus it being on Facebook which only holds value because of the friends and family I have on it. Otherwise, it’s a waste of effort.
At least these were heartfelt attempts at some kind of storytelling. About me, my life, my issues. I’ll accept them for that. If they were just reactionary shit to memes or bullshit Facebook “news,” they’d be even less worthwhile.
I was thinking on my wait in the drive thru that my brain hasn’t really thought creatively in a while. Stuff that hits it is very in the moment, not imaginative. It bothers me. I’m a dreamer by nature. I’m a storyteller because my brain is always wandering, having dialogs and diatribes and making shit up or composing whatever. And I can’t remember the last time something stuck in there that wasn’t either a rehash of something I’ve already thought about a ton with no real progress, or just observations without additions. I’ve been living in a mundane state for too long. And I’m not adventurous, at all, but my days and nights are all inside this house. My conversations are almost exclusively with my wife, which would be fine, but we have way less to talk about that’s not politics and those we’re both sick of. We settle into watching HGTV, and now Big Brother All-Stars (which is so much UGH!). I watched the second season of Umbrella Academy last weekend which was great, but seeing it on my own means I have nothing to talk about her with. Other than my I guess bi-weekly chats with Levi where we stay up all night, I’m very closed off. Dinner with the family on Wednesdays doesn’t lead to anything deep because I’m treading lightly to keep the tone friendly for the other diners. Not because I fight with my family a lot or anything. Its just… things are really charged right now. I’m afraid anything can spark off some heavy shit that doesn’t really need to be said at the local Dairy Bar. So I bite my tongue. Me. The fucking captain of temerity. The fuck is going on there?
So my only company is me, and I’m boring AF right now. My kitten seems to like me.
It is not on anyone else to rescue me from my mundanity (that should be a fucking word!). But I really would like to be rescued. I think that’s part of it too. I’ve felt like I’ve had zero control in my life for years. I’m constantly praying for some hypothetical windfall that will never happen just so we can stop struggling with everything. It’s the same thing as when I buy a new book on writing, try a new writing program, want a new desk, a new chair… “Things will start working better now when i have this!” No, that’s never the case. Because it’s still me that’s gotta perform. I’ve only ever barely performed on my own, I’m much more motivated when I have someone. But I keep closing off to the someones that would be willing to help me. Because I’m too chicken-shit. I look at my age and think, “Well, not a lot of time left, why start now?” But I’ve been saying that for decades. I’m either still alive and here or I’m not. I’ve pre-shuffled off this mortal coil in my head, so why try anything. But that only makes sense if I have zero desire, which was not the case… until the last couple of months. I really feel so stagnant that I have nothing in me. I’m waiting for the death rattle. I’m waiting for that zombie fart to bloat and blow out of my fresh corpse. Billy Crystal would call me “mostly dead,” but I don’t have a candy-covered pill to bring me back to go save Princess Buttercup. I’m no dread pirate. I’m just dread.
