“SAY YOUR MIND IS A ROOM,” Bernstein goes in English today. “What are the furnishings?”
Mona starts writing immediately, Miss full of ideas, Miss I just don’t want to go out with you, Roger. Sorry. It’s never going to happen. Like she couldn’t have told me that freshman year, and saved me the trouble of asking her out forty-six times over four years. I have counted them.
Come to think of it, I don’t remember her going out with anyone. Yeah, she’ll go to a dance with some guy, get crowned. She’ll hug the football player who made the winning touchdown. But that’s it. For all I know, she could be a lesbo. I should fix her up with Wal-Mart. But then again, not. A lesbo wants another lesbo, not a faggot.
That new girl wasn’t bad. The one who dropped her tray. She wasn’t the kind, but there was something in her eyes, deerlike, that got to me, the way she tugged that tray like she was asking me for a favor. Her smile was sweet. And her legs were amazing. I asked George and Randy about her and they said, “What new girl?” So I still don’t know who she is. I’ll look for her again at lunch tomorrow.
Say your mind is a room...
Journaling sucks. Big time.
. . . a room.
I need to transfer out of this class.
Last night on COPS there was a car chase. The criminal dude jumps out of the car in this residential neighborhood and the cops chase him into people’s yards. Even the cameraman is running. You can hear him panting; he’s out of shape. The criminal jumps over a wall and the cops are freaked, but then one gets up in a tree, and he jumps on the dude and knocks him down. The cop breaks his femur. But the criminal is on his face in handcuffs.
That’s what I’m after. The real world. Life as it happens. Not this fake crap. All these girls like Mona with their college applications and life goals burn me up. It’s like some hag feminist told them that what they should expect in life is everything, but without lifting a finger.
One day, when I’m a cop, I’ll pull Mona over and give her a ticket. I won’t give her a break. Maybe I’ll even find a way to arrest her. Probable cause.
That’s the room I see in my brain: a jail cell. The furnishings are some cots, a sink, a broken toilet, and a cement floor. And criminals; yeah, the scum of the earth, one by one, filling up that cell. Me bringing them in handcuffed, giving the losers a tour of their nice new surroundings.