It's Ok, Though

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For the second time this week a girl—a beautiful girl—looked my way with desire in her eyes. I’m serious. It was desire! I tell you: DESIRE! And I did nothing—nothing!—but smile back.* This inaction, albeit chivalric, left me in a sour mood. Sour. SOUR! I left work a short while later hungry and ticked off. The weather outside: raining—no: sleeting! The fierce, unrelenting wind very nearly murdered an umbrella I’d owned for a decade. (Well, perhaps I owned it for only a half-decade, but still closer to a full decade than an actual half-decade. So, like, seven years? Six and a half? The point is that I’ve never owned an umbrella for this long in my entire life.) Whilst battling the elements, I stepped into a frigid puddle of dirty water—filthy, oily curbside water. It seeped through my left shoe, soaked the sock, and all but froze my foot to death. Amputation seemed a likely possibility. All this, only to find: no new issue of PerformInk. Meaning: I’d walked blocks and blocks and blocks up Belmont Avenue (well, ok, three blocks, but these are long silly locks—no, no rather: they’re long, city blocks) in this wretched weather for nothing. Nothing! NOTHING! And there, in the rain, I snapped my battered umbrella in half and crammed it into a curbside trashcan. And then, when I came home, I hurled my clock radio against the wall. It’s ok though. I hated that clock. 
7 April 2000 

*[Anything more might’ve spoiled the moment. No? No. Id est, anything more might’ve ruined the fantasy. Yes? Yes. Well. “Moment”/ “Fantasy.” Eh. “Potato, potahto.”]

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