Thanksgiving Blues

My thanksgiving meal was a sham – double  patty cheesebuirger, extra onions and jalapenos, mustard, no ketchup, smacked down on the chipping red paint of a picnic table. I didn’t order it sans ketchup, of course; they just gave it to me that way and I was in no position to complain. It was quite a shabby sight, if you don’t mind me saying. My bag passed out in the backpack equivalent of a fetal position at my feet, canteen upright replacing the soda I refused to get for an extra 75 cents (no, no drink, yes I’m sure, no not sprite either, muchas gracias). My overalls hung wrinkled on my body, bunching up in the crotch when I sat down. Happy thanksgiving to you and yours, I grumbled.

The young woman behind the counter had a ponytail that looked oppressive. It was the kind of ‘do that tugged so tightly on her hairline that sections of her forehead started to stream into the center of her skull, forming ditches from her eyebrows to her ears. She seemed much too hurried for the pace of the day with that hairdo. I picked up my burger and shoveled a quarter section into my mouth. Thanksgiving and Brownsville: streets dead, shops locked and gated, no cars, no foot traffic, just me, wandering up to blackened convenience-store windows salivating at the pre-packaged donuts. Chris says I’ve been spending too much time on buses. Astute observation, jackass.

It would be more enlightening to say I’ve spent too much time alone while surrounded by dozens of people. I’ve spent too much time apart from the familiar – too much time away from family and friends. I’ve spent too much time spewing the banal, redundant witticisms to strangers, too much time telling truths about myself and not enough lying voraciously just for the fuck of it all. I’ve spent too much time in transit, too much time in motion, too much time as a timeless bitch; that would help clarify things.

So inevitably I get locked in the dankest caverns of my mind, talking to myself, playing with my thoughts, prodding and poking at my inner sensitivity with hot rods and pointy sticks. And as a side effect I don’t end up doing much of anything at all. Mostly because I don’t feel like it. You really have to be in the mood for that kind of thing.

The second quarter of my thanksgiving repast finds its way into my jowls. I gnash and look up at the taught-haired woman staring with sorrow. Usually I can smell the source of melancholy on a person. Shit job, shit day, shit husband, shit hangover. Regret, faithlessness, sickness and death. But her sorrow is all confused and wishy-washy. I can’t quite pin it down. Licking grease from my lower lip, I try to look into her eyes. They light up as she turns back and chats with her co-workers. And then back to me – that flood of sorrow once more. What is she trying to show me? Where does this pain and devastation come from, how did it become so sodden, why all the weight?

And then I smelled it, sniff, a definite terrifying whiff – shit. The sorrow’s for me. She grieves for my bag, down for the count, shuffled under my sandals. For my double patty cheeseburger all garnished and sweating on thanksgiving day. For my patronage in dead streets while Brownsville is on lock-down or cozying up with family, and my own sad sorrowful eyes. So she serves me a side of fries, with a bottle of ketchup from the back, to feed my Thanksgiving Blues.