The day started with rain. The day ended with rain. I hate the rain.
I went to visit my dad today. The car wouldn't start. When it finally did I had to drive through damn Niagara falls just to get to the county mental hospital. The nurses say he's been doing better.
"He hasn't attempted suicide in over a month!" says this nurse. She is way too happy. Her eyes are too big and her teeth are too white. I don't know why she's caring for depressed old men who need to be babysitted in case they try to kill themselves when she should just quit and work as a Disney princess or something.
"Oh great" is my answer, what else am I going to say?
You know, when you're eighteen, young, tortured, and full of angst, girls think you're sexy when they find out that your mother slit her wrists and your father got checked into into a mental hospital afterwards because of repeated attempts at suicide. When they find out that you're an aspiring poet the girls pretty much throw themselves at you. They say they want to be your muse. Ten years later? Not the case. People just worry about you.
The nurse looks at me with a weak, pitying smile and escorts me to the common area where my dad sits, dilapidated, like a deflating balloon.
He asks how work is, as usual. "The lawyers at Barnum and Butler are treating you good, right?"
I don't correct him and tell him that it's "well" instead of "good." Instead I say "Oh yeah it's great. I'm feeling good about it all. I've had some interesting cases recently." Okay, yes I am lying. I've been lying. The nurses said not to bring up poetry and my dreams of being a writer because it reminds him of mom, she being a poet too. "And I bought the penthouse at Dreamwood Terrace," I add. "I love spending time there." This is not completely a lie. I do love spending time there, just not as a resident. I clean it. Yeah. I'm that bohemian starving poet stereotype that cleans the seventh floor penthouse while living in apartment 221, a shitty second floor loft. I've always wanted to be up at the top of the building on the sixth or seventh floor. I get six hours up there every three days and sometimes I pretend it's my apartment. I pretend that my diet consists of something other than ramen noodles and an occasional banana. Of course I can't tell dad any of this.
After lying to dad for about forty minutes and listening to him telling me that I am too skinny and I need a girlfriend for another twenty two, I fold myself into some origami figure to squeeze into the driver's seat of my 1986 Honda Accord. I am the only guy I know whose car is as old as he is. No wonder I don't have a girlfriend. My fountain pen in my pocket digs into my leg whenever I use the clutch.
I drive back through the rain to get home. God, I hate the rain.
I stopped hearing the rain outside at about six when I was cooking my ramen noodles for dinner. I looked out the window, hoping to see the sun. No sun. Only a foggy abyss of blech. An hour later the power goes out. I find my flashlight under the kitchen sink but it's out of batteries. Awesome. I go to sleep at seven forty one.
I am just drifting off when I hear the rain start again. Stupid rain.
