Duality
Palm Beach Gardens, FL
January 5, 2008
The duality of his life had become surreal.
He loved his job and still ran it like he was dealing for his first or last
nickel, but when the phone stopped ringing for the day, the money he
had fought for had little value except for the support of others.
He learned that he could wash his clothes in the hotel sink using
shampoo and hang them on Florida terraces so they would be clean and
dry for the next day when he returned from his excursions.
And he liked to sweat and feel his muscles burn at some gym, any gym, it
did not matter, and nothing he could buy with his money could make him
feel better than the fifteen dollars it cost him for a daily pass as long as
he worked the weights hard and his t-shirt was soaked with his own
body. When he drove to the beaches, he had to pass all the rich estates
clogging the best views, most were unoccupied; he began to grimace at
the sight of them and wonder about those men he had seen on the
beaches of Key West and Venice Beach, California with the bicycles, milk
crates tied to their handle bars and a duct-taped flashlight for night
driving. He wondered who he most resembled, or if he was both, and if
his personal civil war would ever end and the reconstruction begin, or if
a war last a lifetime.
So he found sandy beaches on icy mountain tops, got within an arm’s
length of a hissing mother alligator protecting her fifteen babies in the
Everglades, and had lunch in a place serving deep-fried gator and frog
with toothpicks and hot sauce. The waitress served his swamp lunch in
a Styrofoam box with a Corona.
He must have looked so odd at dinner with his shorts and hiking boots
and crumpled shirt from being in the Everglades swamp, but he sat the
there and banged out his little story on a handheld device as the
conversations of designer kitchens and investments and problems with
the kids’ private schools echoed in the background.
January 5, 2008
The duality of his life had become surreal.
He loved his job and still ran it like he was dealing for his first or last
nickel, but when the phone stopped ringing for the day, the money he
had fought for had little value except for the support of others.
He learned that he could wash his clothes in the hotel sink using
shampoo and hang them on Florida terraces so they would be clean and
dry for the next day when he returned from his excursions.
And he liked to sweat and feel his muscles burn at some gym, any gym, it
did not matter, and nothing he could buy with his money could make him
feel better than the fifteen dollars it cost him for a daily pass as long as
he worked the weights hard and his t-shirt was soaked with his own
body. When he drove to the beaches, he had to pass all the rich estates
clogging the best views, most were unoccupied; he began to grimace at
the sight of them and wonder about those men he had seen on the
beaches of Key West and Venice Beach, California with the bicycles, milk
crates tied to their handle bars and a duct-taped flashlight for night
driving. He wondered who he most resembled, or if he was both, and if
his personal civil war would ever end and the reconstruction begin, or if
a war last a lifetime.
So he found sandy beaches on icy mountain tops, got within an arm’s
length of a hissing mother alligator protecting her fifteen babies in the
Everglades, and had lunch in a place serving deep-fried gator and frog
with toothpicks and hot sauce. The waitress served his swamp lunch in
a Styrofoam box with a Corona.
He must have looked so odd at dinner with his shorts and hiking boots
and crumpled shirt from being in the Everglades swamp, but he sat the
there and banged out his little story on a handheld device as the
conversations of designer kitchens and investments and problems with
the kids’ private schools echoed in the background.
© 2007 by Michael Domino
