Doug Cost- Exercise 3

The jail cell door is slammed shut. Why in the hell don’t I take care of my shit? Fucking jail. Is this my life? Because I dropped out of State? I hated writing and reading. I still do. I like drinking beer and my pinch of Skoal but none of that here. Ceiling tiles. Nine times nine is eighty-one. The year we moved to Missouri away from Carolina where Mom took me to jail and slammed the door on me there. Self-righteous. I shoplifted a lousy 18-wheeler matchbox car. The metal thud is the same. I cried that time. I don’t cry anymore. I haven’t cried since that day. There is nothing to be that emotional about. I hate dealing with crying. It’s such a loaded emotion. Loaded with contempt for the man. Same shit different day is my day in day out, except for today. Now the man has got me in here. He controls when I shit, when I eat which is shit too, and when I leave. Maybe Jennifer was right. I’m pretty no good for her and her goddamn goody-two-shoes attitude. Besides the fact she is just a bit crazy too and connected to her dad in a very weird way because her mom is psycho like my mom. Crazy and just waiting for the crazy enough to put her in a home, but I am connected to her. She thinks she knows what is going on but she never leaves the house. I am 1200 miles from home. A chain gang Greyhound. She said she would get me out of here, but that would require her leaving the house, getting up, getting out into the world. Exerting effort instead of being a spectator from the furthest bleacher cheering me at a Pop Warner football game. That was when she used to leave the house, now she is stuck. Locked into her head, emotionally wrecked, physically absent but she does come over to the house. She sits there and recites the news from any and all channels Fox, MSNBC, Headline, CNN, ABC, Springfield Examiner because there is nothing in her life. She is empty of what she used to hold for me. I am lost in here. I don’t know what to do or how to protect myself from the eventual, of what is to come. I don’t even really know why I’m here. I left the state. How can running book ten years ago get me in jail? In a state that now has legalized gambling. Hell, they have so many horse tracks, dog tracks, and now you can place your bets on the Internet. The one time in my life when I had it easy. I was bankrolling. I had more money than I knew what to do with. Until that day in April when I came back to the dorm. I didn’t even notice the state trooper car sitting out front. In a dorm of thousands, I never thought. And after I got off the elevator and was heading down the hall, I still didn’t realize the trouble until I saw the trooper come out of my room. My first instinct was to bolt. Like that scene in Seven, but I had no gun. I don’t even know how to run. I stopped. He saw me. Thomas McGulicutty he ordered. They had torn my room all apart. My black book being the object they were pouring over. Questions. Do I answer? Do I get a lawyer? What I know now. I was dumb. I was only nineteen. And you never know how something which seemed so minor at the time can continue to follow you around. It followed me around. I once again had put it all but out of my mind. The probation officer, the rules, the lack of freedom, the end to my college career, the beginning of struggle. How do you track me down in Missouri, drag me all over the United States and bring me back to Lingenfelt, North Carolina. Craphole of all crapholes. I was basically a contributing member of society. As much as I can possibly contribute. I’m generally pretty much to myself. I’ll fill your beer take your order but don’t ask for pleasant conversation. Engage me in some intelligent dialogue about something other than yourself and I might respond. Sports is a topic I talk about and know about. What I would do for some ESPN. Dragged away in the middle of the All-Star game. I think Kevin would call that irony or some other writer term. He will have a field day with this one. How many short stories will he write about this? A novel. I guess it all depends on how much time I spend in here. He is probably concerned, but he won’t do anything. Too busy in his life. Too busy having everything work out for him. Everything just seems to fall in his lap. He doesn’t even have to exert effort. He just magically moves from one success to the next. He won’t even find a rut. He never does. He moves on to the next success in some continuing inverted reflection of my own. His success, my downturn. His success, my downturn. He wins some scholarship, some great new job, and some sweet hot girlfriend. Meanwhile I labor on, switching bars and switching bars as each fad fades in the distance. I have to move on to make money. Brewster’s, Skinny Dick’s, Miss Kitty’s, Lava Lounge, Graffiti’s, The Romper Room. I may have tended bar at the last ten new start up bars in the city. A year, two at the tops, before they are doomed by their customers as out-of-date, fashion and then on to the newest bar in town. I contribute serving beer to society. I try to stay out of trouble. I sometimes get pulled over. Sometimes I drive drunk. I get into bar fights. I’ve probably broken up more than I’ve been involved in recent years. Now, it seems rather pointless and usually results in blood and charges and that was what I was trying to avoid. I don’t like the police and I don’t like my blood outside of my body. It makes me woozy. And not the kind of woozy I feel when I’m drunk. I like that kind of woozy where I black out or what I like to call time travel. Travelling to a destination unknown and not remembered. It could be anywhere, but I’m still in the place I started. I forget everything. I don’t remember coming home. I don’t remember the last hour or two of the night. I don’t remember calling the cab, or the paying, or the getting in the front door. Mostly I don’t remember anything until the waking up with a bruised up knee and a scratch or two on my arm. It’s mostly vague and it’s mostly not embarrassing because everyone I’m with won’t remember either. So it’s ok. Until the next week when we go back. When am I going back?