Walking in the Rain

On the cold nights like this evening, runaway youth walk alone in abandoned parking lots heading toward fastfood restaurants for an affordable meal. Head down staring into the reflective flickering overhead parking lights from the grocery store in the distance with hands stuff in pockets attempting to fend off the cold that wearing a short sleeve t-shirt and black jeans allows to seep through him. The kid can only hope three or four packs of hot sauce might warm his stomach up enough to make it back to the nearby enclosed bus stop before his clothing becomes nothing more than soaked wash rags. A few tacos, no need for the drink it is already too cold, fish out a few dollars in change, then sit down in the semi heated dining area for a few moments, damn shame he arrived so late, the indoor part of the place will be closing in ten minutes. No refuge tonight, no parents that care where he might be, regardless of time, the fact his mother still lets him in the house anymore amazes him day after day. Alternatives for skate rocker dreamers with no ambition is just about the same as if has ever been, pretty close to zero and all the toys everyone else seems to use to create half baked views of reality or fantasy cannot be purchased on the wages of a dishwasher. Most apt to turn towards the life of distribution, do I need to describe what kind of distribution I might mean, certainly not movie or those discount booklets our athletic coaches would try to get me to sell for new jersey before football season, but the kind that can either lead to life in a darker fast lane or 6x6 jail cell, still this requires, drive, social skills, and keen sense of a paranoid schizophrenic, just feels like too much effort why not just walk around all night until his mother has gone to sleep or passed out from all the pills and booze, still she holds down a job, a testament to her genetic makeup, blue collar values, and her mother who did the same thing for 45 years until liver failure and a staph infection turned her into dissolving mass of bile, urine, and shit, but some relatives would argue his grandmother had been that way long before she died.

This kid is done with television; he spends tonight watching the rain fall from the sky at a bus stop where a few other adults proceed to make their way home from whatever tortures they had to endure throughout the day. It gives him time to think, to reflect, and imagine stories, lives of others, and the isolation everyone must feel ocassionally. Most of all it keeps him from thinking about the reality of his own existence, a parent who treats him like a burden, a parasite, and inept dim witted moron who will never amount to anything more than a debt ridden, child breeding, and continously unsuccessful half ass. No wonder he stays out all night, sleeps in class, and if possible lives on the couches of the few friends compassionate enough to attempt to understand him. But on this evening, everything is calm, only the truly stranded roam the avenues pushing wheelchairs while covered in black plastic trash bags or rub their hands visciously at traffic intersections to combat the rain seeping through their torn apart canvas tennis shoes, even the prostitues battle the elements in white leather thigh high boots, marooned, set adrift, allowed only to return when the money is right, not much automobile traffic, except for me, driving past all these people, sober, scared, and not too sure what the future holds for all us.