Sam Pink - The No Hellos Diet

It’s cold.

The cold smells like exhaust fumes.

You’re exhausted.

You walk.

Pass hair-braiding places, African restaurants, a taqueria, a gay bar, a car place, a high school with murals on the outside, and a large group of backpacked kids running.

Uptown.

Pass a store that sells t-shirts with airbrushings of cars/pit-bulls/dice/eightballs/grim reapers/naked women on them.

A tattoo shop, a liquor store, and another hair place — this one with a wall of Styrofoam heads looking out at the street.

Immigration lawyers, dentists, currency exchanges and liquor stores.

Pass them all.

You find yourself already happening.

Unfocused.

Every person you pass is a person unknown.

And you’re one of the unknown people they’re passing, eating taffy and staring.

This is happening.

Pass Blood Alley.

Pass another 7-11 on the next block.

A post office.

A billboard with a person in a judge costume.

Spraypaint.

Franchise sandwich places.

Other people and places.

A Hispanic guy selling tamales out of an insulated lunch box.

A blind homeless man outside the bank.

Other places and things.

Passing.

That’s all.

Thinking without focus.

Why does the time before work always feel sad.

No.

You’re not sure it actually feels sad.

You don’t care.

You chew your taffy, feeling sick.

Worrying about how one of these bites, the taffy is going to rip all your teeth out.

How you’ll just stand there holding a drooping piece of taffy studded with teeth, mumbling “Uh uh uh.”

Mouth open.

Looking down at your mouth as it fills.

Trying not to swallow.

You think about how the worst thing of all would be the cold air touching the bleeding gums as you tried not to swallow.

Yeah, that would be the worst part.

At the Brown Line turnstile there’s a man with no front teeth, wearing a beret and a jeanjacket.

He puts his arm on your shoulder and tries to sell you a train pass for fifty cents.

He says, “Hey, my man. Co-mo estas today my man, hah hah.”

You look directly at him.

Feeling the closeness of your faces.

Noticing yourself as a vague shape in the whites of his eyes, which are yellow.

He backs off, takes half a plastic-tipped cigar out from behind his ear.

He holds the half-burnt cigar like a syringe, and waves the train pass at you.

“Fifty cents, fifty cents my man,” he says, blinking a lot.

“No thanks,” you say. “I’ll trade you mine though. Mine has more money on it and you can sell it for more. You can safely stack two bills for this swollen puppy.”

You think about whether or not what you just said makes sense.

The thing about the “swollen puppy.”

“Fifty cents man, come on,” he says. “I need to see my gramma. She hurt. She sick. Please.”

You take out a twenty dollar bill from your coat pocket and give it to him.

He shakes your hand.

You get on the Brown Line to The Loop.

*

Get off at State Street.

State Street runs through downtown.

During the day it’s always busy.

There’s a shopping area on State and Jackson where different high school orchestras play in the winter.

Sometimes you go there to listen.

You go there and buy a drink at the fastfood lobby and sit at a table overlooking the first floor, where the orchestras play.

If there’s no orchestra that day, you still stay, and make drawings on napkins or think about suicide.

Sitting in the lobby with all the homeless people.

Looking at free newspapers.

Waiting for the lake you live by to jump up and drown the city.

This afternoon there’s a very tall Christmas tree, decorated in all gold.

Gold light, gold tinsel.

There are presents underneath it, wrapped in gold wrapping paper.

Next to the tree is a high school band playing Christmas music.

You sit on the second floor and watch, holding a fountain drink.

People are everywhere and moving, Christmas shopping.

How much is happening right now.

A lot is happening right now.

Don’t think about it.

Sit there uncomfortable, trying to block the thought.

A million times a bajillion.

Someone walks by on a cell phone, pointing his finger downward.

He says, “But unregardless, Phillip. That’s my can opener. And it better fucking be there when I get back.”

At the table across from you, a homeless woman wearing a giant purple winterhat begins lining up plastic two-liter bottles on the table.

She has no teeth and her skin is very red.

Lining up her two-liter bottles on the table.

Once they’re all lined up, she talks to them at random, as if in a group discussion.

She says, “Now see, the shit is so deep, it’s better to find a way to swim downward and die quicker. Me, I got taught to swim downward, by my daddy. Now see, my daddy was in the C.I.A.”

You sit there, watching her.

In love.

My heart is breaking — you think, for no direct reason, as you watch the woman laugh at something said by one of the plastic bottles.

And this day becomes one of the silences in between your great moments, which also appear as silences.

Passing.

You reach into your coat pocket.

Take out your ex girlfriend’s phone.

She forgot it at the apartment after visiting the other night.

You access the list of pre-saved numbers, trying to read around the crack in the screen.

You type the message: “Tonight, we shall commence the blood feast” and send it to one of the pre-saved numbers.

Then select another number and send another message: “You motherfuckers thought you could drown me?”

From inside the noise of the shopping area, someone says, “Excuse me.”

A woman approaches you, holding hands with her daughter.

The daughter has ice cream on her face and shirt.

The woman holds out a partially-eaten ice cream cone and says, “Excuse me, hi. Here, you can have this if you want.” She leans towards you, holding out the ice cream cone. “My daughter isn’t going to finish it. Here. Have it.”

She thinks you’re homeless.

“Oh, thanks a lot,” you say, taking the ice cream cone.

“I wanted it,” the girl says, looking up at the woman.

“It’s no problem,” says the woman, smiling. “Have a nice day.”

“Yeah, thanks again, this is great,” you say, lifting the cone in salute. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” she says.

The girl says, “I still wanted it.” Then she yells, “Ehhhhh.”

You watch them walk off, woman walking crouched to say some things to the screaming girl.

Then they’re both gone, into the outside.

You close your eyes and say, “Ahh” in regret of not seeing whether or not the woman and her daughter could give you a ride back to your apartment.

Fucking shit.

You open your eyes, finding yourself sitting in a shopping lobby on State Street, holding an ice cream cone.

This is happening.

You eat the ice cream cone slowly, letting it melt a little, then clearing up that melted area along the rim of the cone.

It’s like strawberry flavored, but a little bit different.

You draw a skull over the president’s face on an outdated newspaper, enjoying the ice cream.

Thinking thankful thoughts.

Thinking this is surely just the first of what will be many victories today.

Admitting to yourself that sometimes it’s worth going outside and meeting people.

Sometimes not.

Sometimes difficult to tell.

Sometimes not.

In the middle of a shopping lobby on State Street, there’s a Christmas tree decorated in gold.