Phenomenology

She’s a woman. I can’t remember what her face looks like now. White, older. Fifty, sixty, forty five. She asks about the bookstore across the street, how it’s for sale. “Maybe I should buy it,” she says, leaning across the desk. “I’ve always thought about it, owning a bookstore.” She goes on to ask me about the town, about the seasonality, the effects the political climate is having on tourism, while I stay a few moments behind. Like a fish and its gills, caught on the casual way in which she says it. “Maybe I should buy it.”

He calls, and asks if we have a discount for him, because he works at the meat packing plant. Of course, someone must work there; someone must pack the meat. But he feels like an unreality, to be asking. Why would I have a discount for him, the man who packs the meat? Like,specifically?

He, a different he, calls on Halloween. Asks to be transferred to the people who can help him with a death certificate. Wrong number, I try and say politely. Prank call or bad timing.

Their day to day facts keep intersecting with my own life in a way that, briefly, suddenly, creates the absurd. The stuff stories are made of,”hey, hear about this freak.”

And it’s six a.m at a gas station, Sunday morning. It’s summer, the sun is out, but still rising. Behind the building a man is hanging laundry out on his line.

Inside, I’m wearing a pencil skirt, and my mary janes, a look like some version of a vintage flight attendant, and I haven’t slept, and I’m foraging; a poptart, and a protein bar, and some almonds, and a banana, and an energy drink, and another energy drink, and maybe a third, probably, please.

The only other customer is a man buying two bags of ice and a 24 pack. He calls me ma’am, when we pass. It’s still 6 a.m on Sunday morning. The clerk looks exhausted by us both. I’m having a very good time.

To feel like, even in the most boring version of the happening,I’m standing on the other side of the anecdote. The zoo glass is always there, but now, I am the monkey.