Chimera

CI got an email from the hipster film lab saying I had two more days to pick up my negatives before they trashed them.  I didn't think I had any negatives there, but I thought I'd better go and check anyway.  Besides, it is just around the corner from the brewery that makes Punks beer, and I wanted to get some.  

When I pulled into the little parking lot, I saw a girl sitting on a cement block in a dirty corner between two buildings, and when I parked, I decided to grab my camera.  When I walked by her, she said something, but she wasn't talking to me.  You see her pink phone propped up there.  She was facetiming with someone, so I just smiled and walked on.  But I decided that if she was still there when I came out of the lab, I would ask to take her picture.  Why?  Beats me. It was like going into the shitty little sub shop to take pictures.  It was simply trying to get some confidence with a camera again.  

Inside the lab, two girls were working the counter.  One I had never seen before, and from the interaction between the two, I think she was new and learning.  The other one recognized me.  I like being recognized now that I don't have a life.  It is almost like having friends.  

I told them why I was there, but there was no film.

"Oh, whoever checked you out must have forgotten to put it in the computer."

I remembered that it was the pretty blonde who sometimes knows my name when I walk in and sometimes acts like she's never seen me before.  What could I say but, "O.K."  These hipster kids are not the best workers in the world.  So I have read. 

Now I was faced with making a photo of the dirty little corner girl.  Could I?  I find it far easier to not take the photo and tell myself it wouldn't have meant anything anyway, but when I came around the corner, she looked up and smiled.  I waved my camera in the air.  

"Oh, I think I'm being photographed."  

I realized she was talking to the person on the phone. 

"No, I was just asking if I could," I said.  

"Is it film?"

I turned the camera around so she could see the screen.  

"You can see the pictures."

"OK.  You caught me eating my breakfast."

It was 2:30 in the afternoon.  I felt stupid and hurried a couple snaps.  I didn't tell her to look this way or that, not to smile, to put her hand here or there. I felt dizzy.  

"I can send you the photos. . . uh. . .  you're on your phone, aren't you?"

"It's o.k.  Send them telepathically."  

"Ha.  Alright."  

When I got back in my car, I had an idea, though, and as I drove by her, I rolled down the window and said, "Do you work here?"  I pointed at the building.  "I can make a print copy for you."

"A print?  Oh. . . but I don't work here.  I'm just a visitor."  

The idea of a print seemed unusual to her.  She was a sweet girl, all smiles and gentleness.  But what was she doing there sitting on a broken cement block facetiming and eating an egg mcmuffin in a dirty little corner?  If I didn't have the photos, I would think I had hallucinated the whole scenario.  She was a pixie, a chimera. Of course I was dizzy.  What did those markings on her body mean?  Hieroglyphics or runes?  

But I was pleased enough that I had the encounter and made the pictures.  They were nothing, but it was something.  

I drove around the corner to get the beers, but when I pulled into the tiny parking lot, there was something going on.  A big tent and outside seating.  Too early for Octoberfest, I thought, but it certainly looked like it.  I could smell barbecue cooking on a grill. The parking lot was full but for one handicapped parking space.  Whatever.  I grabbed my mother's hang tag out of the glove box.  I'd only be a moment.  

When I got to the cooler, the cupboard was bare.  No Punks.  Well darn.  No beer, no film, but driving away, I felt it had not been a wasted trip.  I had some pictures in my camera.  

Yesterday I thought I would use those pictures to make up a story about my relationship with Carrot Head.  Have you heard?  He's in a jam.  Did some sex things with boys who are complaining now.  When the story came out, he tried to commit suicide.  My antagonism for him is well known around town.  Whenever friends and associates see him out, they always take a photo and send it to me.  Red torments me with it.  She is infatuated with him, she says.  She wants to meet him.  

This was sent to me about a week ago by a former colleague.  Just FYI, I have altered this in A.I. replacing my friend with the image of another woman since I haven't asked her if I could post the picture.  Otherwise, it is accurate.  But I get these "sightings" quite often.  People find it funny.  

My beef with Carrot Head comes from an incident in a tiny, wonderful restaurant in a house in a neighborhood within Gotham city limits early this century, sometime around 2002.  Long ago?  The girl whose photo I took would not have even been born.  

The tale would have been crafted around that.  

But this morning, I felt bad about it all.  I don't want to crow over someone else's misfortune and I actually feel badly for him.  He will definitely lose his gig at the Luxor in Vegas now, and probably every other gig, too.  But he is worth 70 million dollars which ain't chump change for a prop comedian, and after he pays these boys off, there will be plenty of money for him to live out the rest of his life.  Look at P Diddy.  He got off, right?  

No, other people's misery doesn't make me happy.  It is other people's arrogance that gets my goat.  I think about the girl in the photo.  What sort of life does she lead?  Not just her, but her entire community.  Was her sweetness a front?  Does she do bad things?  Does she steal to get drugs?  Has she ever committed an immoral act?  What are her goals and aspirations?

My friend and one time boss at the factory sent me a message yesterday, a "Death Notice," about two people we worked with who have died.  I wish she hadn't.  It stayed with me all through the night.  I could feel Death's cold fingers and smell its stale breath all night long.  It has left me strange this morning.  I should have died when I got run over on my Vespa.  It would have been better, I think.  I don't want to do it again, and now I have The Fear.  I don't like waiting.  In the not too far away distance, I can hear a voice crying, "Next!"  You can't cheat death, I think, but you can cheat dying.  Dying is the hard part, and I would prefer to avoid it. 

I doubt I'll be getting any more Carrot Head pictures from friends, and I will probably never run into him again.  The whole beef was stupid anyway, and I think it was my fault.  

And so it goes.  

Here is something A.I.  I can't believe it, a past reimagined.  If A.I. is going to kill us, I hope it is tenderly.