wastrels p. 4

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     I'd pissed away several years of college, and now I was pissing away whatever comes after that. A surreal feeling, because I had in my early 20s had daily premonitions of my own death in some horrible accident. But now I was here in my late 20s and still alive, living on stolen time. Sometimes I wondered, though. "Am I dead, Frankie?"
    "Well if you are, I guess I am too."
    The sky was overcast but bright, such that the concrete and big cement block buildings were saturated with pale light. It only enhanced my sense of being in some purgatory between worlds. At least the light rain hitting my forehead made me feel something. We were downtown on a street under the train tracks, headed off from that entertaining intersection I mentioned before. The shouts were still audible. I passed around a junkie. He was standing right on the corner, swaying back and forth with his gaze fixed on nothing, completely unaware of the people waiting for the crosswalk. And they pretended not to see him. 
    My own place was or had been nearer the outskirts of the city, but I'd always wanted one of those apartments that looked right out onto the train tracks, the bright red lights and constant rattle of subway cars; mostly so I'd have an excuse for why I couldn't sleep at night.
    This was back before cell phones, so it was pretty easy to just fall off the map and hide from the people who cared about you. I'd had an answering machine back at my place, but it had this great button on it labelled 'Erase' that just deleted every message without even playing them. Though at this point, like I said, the continued existence of my living space and all my stuff was an academic matter at best.

    There was one particular hotdog stand that I liked, and that's where we always went. The guy had prime real estate, right under the steps to the train, just down the street from a shitty park where some nutcase played electric guitar and sang songs about Armageddon washing away the blood of sinners. Hotdog stand guy was making a killing on the foot traffic, yet you could see that he hated them all. Whether they stopped for him or walked on by, his eyes were slitted and suspicious. He said $2.50 like it was a curse word, and if you asked for relish his hatred was hot enough to warm your hands over. I always asked for relish. Just knowing that he wanted to hurt me made my skin prickle.

    The blackouts were getting worse. I was so good at it that I could skip large chunks of time just by drinking a couple beers. The little hints of existence that poked up through the haze were like the dreams I had when I slept: I didn't know or care what happened in them, I only knew that they were better. Aside from the robotic needs of my body, my only desire was to eliminate consciousness. The air in the other world was clear and bright. I was weightless. There were no headaches. No limits to time and space. But the best part was that it wasn't real.
    It was the same when we sat for hours in the cafe and I stared at Jane. I could see her and even touch her finger, but she wasn't real. She was weightless, clean, bright, and I could imagine beaten down in exactly the way that I was. In my mind, her anger was epic. I could feel immense power building in it, energy that would soon burst from her eyes and fists and mouth in a firestorm big enough to consume the city. She was a fucking superhero.