As If

The movie theatre is still empty, so I get my pick of seats. Of course I choose the row with the rail in front; nobody can sit in front of me and I can put my feet up without transferring theatre floor skank to a place where someone will eventually put their head.

I could have caught an earlier showing, except I was already late for the previews and maybe the first several minutes of the film. As a Hollywood blockbuster, it's important to be there from the beginning. Otherwise you're likely to miss the plot exposition in its entirety, but that could be a moot point. I'm looking to kill two hours on special effects explosions, the plot's going to be vacant anyway. The director hasn't encrypted any secret messages, nothing can be divined from the patterns in the fire bursts. They are just a special kind of fireworks so we can ooh and ahh. They are on the evening news. As if one combustion could be distinguished from another.

I could go peek into the earlier showing, but I don't have anywhere to be. People are starting to show up now. On one side of me, some guys are talking about the new episode of Cops that just aired, as if one episode could be distinguished from another. The drug charges outside of Detroit are the same as the domestic violence in Eugene, OR. I could never sit through one segment of that stuff, it's garbage, but because this other man has taken note, because a human voice is telling it rather than the television, it becomes fascinating. I'm leaning in now, I've plugged my opposite ear in an effort to block out any static noises. These guys don't notice me, but I feel really exposed. I think it must be really obvious to anyone sitting behind me, but so what, it's not criminal, it's probably not even as strange as I'm imagining.

When I finally get a real taste of the conversation that's going on, I realize that it's probably even sillier for me to behaving like this than I thought. To think, I was expending so much effort to hear this guy talk about the things he would do to some prostitute in a wife-beater tank top, "Why's this guy trying to arrest her, he ought to be gettin in that... check her pussy, see if she got a stash."

This doesn't sound right to me at all, that seems like the last place that a prostitute would hide anything of value. When overhearing this I wrote down stash, but maybe I was supposed to write 'stache instead, as some sort of pubic hair slang maybe? I'll never know.

How have I come to sit next to these people? They're vulgar and disgusting to me, and I'm surrounded. How have my life experiences, the path I've traveled, lead me to share this moment in this place amongst these people?

I write that so confrontational. I haven't asked if I'm superior, I've assumed it. But it must be so, I don't watch Cops. And I can forgive myself for anything. And I'm so aware, what with all the fault I can find in anything, I can see it where others wouldn't. And so I can conceal it.

How have I come to share this experience, as if one individual should be distinguished from another.