Midgets Are Too Short

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My time alone is short lived.

Electra walks into the Starbucks. She has chained her bags to a table leg and is heading to the other Starbucks around the corner, simply because the bathroom at this one is broken. Now that's kinda stupid, no? They have a broken bathroom, but yet they are serving tons of beverages. If you drink, sooner or later you'll have to piss. What good is an establishment that only takes care of half your needs? I shake my head.

She leaves and I'm alone once more to do what I do best. I don't even see her return, and when she does, she goes off into a corner by herself. At around Eight O'clock I pack up and wish her goodbye. I tell her about Angel's computer and that it's still up in the air if I can get it or not. She on the other hand is not impressed. She is getting along fine without her laptop and had given up any hope of it ever working again. I tell her to keep a stiff upper lip, and head my way.

I get to the box after buying a chicken and rice dish from a street vendor who overcharged me. The fuck. I wanted to complain but I guess that everything is going up in New York, why not chicken and rice? I go to the dining room to eat it. Now here's the rub around here. I DO NOT INTERFACE WITH THESE PEOPLE. Complete strangers are in the dining area, talking, jiving, joking. I wade through them to an empty table and sit down to dine on my dinner. I say nothing, I don't even look up at the faces. I concentrate on my dish, minding my own business. There are some stares in my direction, but mostly I am left alone. I finish my plate, rise and toss it out in the corner garbage and leave the room. That's the extent of my communication with ninety eight percent of the residents here in the Box.

I make it to my bed and set up my laptop, sitting with my back to my headboard and going at it. Now, like I told you about Short Mexican with his MP3 request, if you can remember. I let him know in no uncertain terms that I don't have music to put on his MP3 player. Well, another resident, this one in dorm 'A' in the third quarter of the dorm, comes over to me and stops to ask a question while I'm visibly busy on my laptop. "If I got an MP3 player, could you use your computer to put music on it? I'll pay you five dollars." Here we fucking go again!!! Why in the fuck would you purchase an MP3 player if you don't have anything to load it from? No computer, no need for an MP3 player. Simple. NO you fuck.

Well this is what I wanted to say, but instead I politely said, I don't have the music on my system that you'd want to listen to. "Well can you get the music?" Frankly, no. He walks off, crestfallen. Then Igor comes in. I swear, these grown men act just like children. They see daddy busy so they interrupt him, dying for his attention. "Hey, hey." That's right, some of these stupid motherfuckers don't' even know my name. "Can you go online and check the Cuban Missile crisis for me. There are some nuclear bombs being shot from Cuba to Russia to help in the fight over there in Georgia." I'm busy doing something now Igor. He walks off, only to come back later with a portable drive that Angel found in the garbage. Now Angel showed me the shit earlier and I looked at it, but I didn't attach it to my laptop and look into it, mainly because I'M FUCKING BUSY RIGHT NOW.

But true to form, here comes Igor with it, exclaiming: "There's financial information on it from Merrill Lynch! All kind of financial information from credit cards to bank numbers and other sensitive information. All kinds of important information." So what Igor? What are you going to do with it? Open your own bank? Forge bank routing numbers? Make credit cards? What are you going to do with that information? Now if the man had a thinking cell in his brain he would ask himself that question. Just what would I do with this information, even if I could use it? Go into a life of crime? Become a fugitive from the law? He can barely be a fugitive from common sense. But still he's excited, trying to get Angel to see some value in a stupid portable drive. "Here, plug it in." Just to placate the fool, I do, and the device asks me to reboot my system, which I'm not going to do. I hand it back to him and tell him to get lost. "I'll show you! I'll show you!" He runs off, plugs the device into his laptop and pulls up some stupid scanned pages from a textbook. Highlighted and everything. What a fucking idiot. This man is a walking tool. All he needs is the perfect Svengali to make him into a red eyed, straw chewing in the field, jackass.

The night drags on. The lights are turned off at Ten, but I don't come off my laptop again. I stay on until Eleven Thirty before calling it quits. Yeah, it's been a long, homeless day. This is what I do over and over again. This is what I deal with over and over again. This is a cycle that is getting the best of me.

Before I get worn down to a nub, something must change.

Something must change before I do.

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