Pen And Page

One Day at a Time


There is a calendar made with every single day of our lives already planned out and all we are here to do is "X" off the days as they go by. It's all right there we will get good grades, have good friends, get into good colleges. Then we move further we will get socially acceptable jobs and get married to guys who come from "decent" families. Soon after we will have the perfect children and give them the perfect childhoods; while managing to stay in a marriage where you are still in love with each other.

While in reality we cheated on those tests that gave us those good grades because we were too busy getting wasted and stoned with those good friends. But some how we manage to get into those prestigious colleges where we are supposed to make our future. Instead we have sex with strangers whose names we never bother to learn, we trip on speed and shrooms because weed and alcohol just aren’t enough anymore. Next thing you know one day you get up on that stage with that infamous cap and gown and thank all those people who helped you get this far while what you mean to be saying is "you are the reason I am fucked up now."

None the less life moves on... you are in the real world now, out on your own trying to find an apartment which in the back of your mind you know is just a glorified term for the bordello rather than a home. You go on those job interviews hung over from the night before, call your prospective employer a bitch because the lights in their office hurt your eyes. Somehow we land that job probably because they felt bad for us or know how desperate we are, giving us a longer life span on this life. We date the bad boy who we know is no good for us but that’s why we love him, then one day someone introduces you to the "type of guy" you should be with exactly at the same moment your parent start pressurizing you about setting down. So for the sake of what you should be doing you go out with Mr. Nice Guy. One day he proposes to you in that perfect moment on that perfect day. You say yes and act like this is the greatest thing yet, while the whole time you have been screwing around with that bad boy you shouldn’t be with. You and the Nice Guy plan the "Dream wedding" but you have to fake a smile for the wedding photo because the guy you want just drove away on this motorbike leaving you with the life you don’t want.

More time goes by and you have traded in your studio apartment in the city for a house in the suburbs complete with the dog and the picket fence. You live this life with the stick in the mud smile on your face allowing your husband to think you are going on business trips while you are actually going into the city having an affair with some broke guitarist in a horrible rock band. Then a day comes when you realize you are pregnant and you don’t know whose baby it is, the next thing you know you have two kids in pre-school and kinder garden. First your "business trips" stopped now you don’t work at all. Everyone thinks you have changed and that you are happy now, but of course that’s what you want them to think so they would never suspect that everyday you dream that you could poison your husbands food so you can just be free. Slowly you get bored, tired and sick of your life, so one day when your kids are at school and your husbands at work you go out in the garden with just a towel on to tell your hot, young Spanish gardener that he missed a spot when he moved the lawn even though he doesn’t know a word of English. You have sex with him in the bed you share with your husband, it becomes a habit soon happening everyday as soon as you are alone. The neighbors have started to realize what is happening across the street but you keep it a secret hoping they will do, the kids and husband need never know than one day your husband comes home early to surprise you but catches you in bed the gardener instead.

Now, you are having fights that wake the kids every night, he wants a divorce but you stay together for the sake of the kids, continuing your affair all the while. The day comes when you tell your family that you are going to the store to buy milk while in reality you are speeding to the airport to catch the first plane out of there hoping you can find yourself again. Time passes by and you get tired of your new life of bar hopping and bed hopping, deciding it is time to go home. He agrees to take you back for the “sake of the kids" of course. By this point neither of you are loyal to your disaster of a marriage.
Next thing you know you are a grandmother and you are still saying that you are staying in your marriage for the sake of the kids. You grow older and start to fall sick. Sooner than would have been liked the day comes when you realize your husband is dead making you notice you loved him all along.



Florescent Lights


The girl with the long brown hair, flipping her head as she adjusts the phone on her ear. All the while her red highlights seem ever so vivid underneath the florescent tube lights that even the moths can’t resist. Unable for some reason to stop smiling but more surprising than that, looks like sometimes you can change more than your appearance, you changed the way you see. Sitting in bed across from her listening to the echo of the man on the other end, seems like a minute out of a love story with I love you's thrown around as a way to say sorry. Still laughing as she looks at me seeming to say "I am sorry" eyes grazing over the room around her. Where the books stock piled around her seem suddenly unimportant simply with the flash of his name on the caller ID.


Never The Same


You have always been yourself to say the least, but after all that has no substantial value to me or anyone else for that matter, other than your peace of mind of course. Regardless of your personality’s material value, you should know that it made you worth the time wasted. Despite the distance and the days that have passed, I come home hoping to find you. Maybe, hopefully the same way I left you, but I guess that was too much to ask or to even hope for. But I guess I would never know.


You hold my hand and pull me in with you. Pushing your hair our of your eyes to give me that half smile as I hope to see a glint in your eyes, instead I noticed that your eyes reflect all your desires that are somehow oblivious to what is right in front of you. As you walk and talk trying to act like more than you are, maybe more than you can ever be. But no one would ever want to be the one to tell you that it gets lonely on the inside, because once the night is over all you can do is sit on the sidelines and wonder what will come of your entourage till the next Saturday night. All the while the people, to who you actually mean something to, sit there on those bar stools watching you and wondering why they ever wasted their time on you, because after all you have changed.

You now believe that you can buy everyone around you. Affection has a price and you are willing to pay; Bottles of Champaign on my birthday, Long drives and Beach front after parties. Your love and my affection have a limit though it’s just as temporary as the sound of the click of the key as it unlocks my front door while you sit in the car watching me walk away. Soon all that’s left are the skid marks you left as you drove away.



Transit

We spend most of our lives waiting for something to happen to us. In transit from place A to B just tapping our foot as other people go by wondering why our train has to be late. Why we always have to get the short end of the stick. When we finally do take our seats we turn toward the window and start to count the seconds until we arrive at our destination, not even bothered to spare at glance at what is right in front of our eyes. So maybe we should just turn around....
There is a couple sitting across from me; at first glance they seemed typical to say the least. The man on the phone and the woman sitting and waiting. So she did, she waited but nothing happened, tired of waiting, pregnant and sitting on a hot train she taps him on the knee and tells him her head is hurting. Instantly the call didn’t seem so important anymore and almost out of no where a pillow appears on his knee. The moment she lies on his lap you can tell from her smile that she never really had that supposed head ache, she just wanted him next to her, not talking on the phone just with her. Because trust me on this I have never seen anyone with a head ache smile so much. He starts to give her a head massage silently she lies there seemingly happier than she has been in along time. He leans over and asks her if she really had a head ache, embarrassed she says no with a smile. This just making him hug her tighter and leans over yet again and starts whispering things in her ear. They are both smiling now seeming content, as she lies on his lap she watches the sceneries slipping by outside the train window. Lifting her head at a particularly spectacular point just to tell her husband how beautiful it was, it seemed like there was something else she wanted to add to that but never getting to say it. Speaking for a brief moment on what they had just seen soon going quiet but not the awkward silence types the good quiet, the one that doesn’t come around often. The whole while both kept looking at the children passing in the aisles with nervous glances wondering how their baby will be.

But I must say this was all guess work, I never did hear what they were saying, although I can see them sitting right in front of me, seeing them made me hope that there is always hope for all of us to have something real.