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He glanced back and forth from his Ennio Morricone album cover to the black and white photo of the godfather himself, James Brown, while considering all the various ways he could kill the mitigating bored that was usually insufferable at this time of year. November’s such a horrible month with your brain racing to get things done. There’s no more leaves on most of the trees and you body’s all messed up from the time change. It’s hard to drive when you can’t hardly even focus.
Living in downtown Hamilton doesn’t help the matter of November racing either. If you head out for 2 blocks in any direction you’re bound to hit a pub or club and most of them have at least one decent microbrewery choice. Three or four choices later you’re sitting behind some broke ass piano trying not to race your way trough Liszt’s rhapsody Number 10 in E major; Marc-André Hamelin’s version. It’s really hard to play anything other than a Hungarian rhapsody when you’re two block s away from Franz Liszt Avenue; not that there’s any decent explanation as to why Hamilton renamed part of MacNab Street Franz Liszt Avenue.
Sometimes a decent microbrewery choice does not actually do anything at all to the mitigating boredom. At least if you’re was at your own apartment instead of the club you would at least be playing your own broke ass piano drinking Guinness out of the can. You may even be playing the score from “Four Flies on Grey Velvet” instead of your own variation of Rhapsody number 2 or God forbid, some Billy Joel tune requested by the drunk in the corner.
He routed through a few odd drawers and file boxes stacked in the corner of the room. There must be some sort of small piece of paper conspiracy going on. Why is it that when you need the dealers number written on a small piece of paper you can’t find it but when you’re looking for dental floss, hey, there’s the dealers number? At least if you can find your dealers phone number then maybe, just maybe, you can cause a break in the mitigating boredom that is November in downtown Hamilton. At least you’ve got a shot at it.
He could get high and play his broke ass piano and let the world slip away. You wouldn’t have to think about what you should be doing and aren’t or what you are doing that you shouldn’t be or some degree in between. There was no pondering your existence once the lease is up just music, sweet music, rushing through you. It might be like surfing if he’d ever actually surfed. There’s something to the image of riding your piano like you would ride the waves and he swayed while he played as though he was navigated a tasty curl, dude.
A momentary glance out of the soot smeared window towards the lake over the various kinds of roofs of his architecturally diverse steel town. Most of the trees were already bare and
only a few held onto the last vestiges of summer vaguely obvious in their summer sunshine yellows. Smoke clouded the skyline by the bridge, as it always does, but against this autumn sky, in such a peculiar way, that for another moment he actually stopped shuffling papers and got all philosophical.
It’s a grey November day and everything in this world is about delicious dichotomy. I am as bored as I am entertained, I am as under sexed as I am over sexed, as brave as I am gutless, as strong as I am weak. It goes on and on. Men of affairs, women with iPhones talking wile driving, busily clattering up their mundane lives. Banks of predictions, policies made, prophecies broken, violence deranged and all just a few blocks away in any direction you’re bound. If there was love, would that be enough? If he paid off his student loan for those 2 semesters of first year philosophy would that be enough, enough to kill the boredom?
Pollsters and planners, incredibly sad, indelibly inked, intrinsically curbed wanderers meandering through the one way streets; imagination nil, abject sloth ten. Workers for a long time and substitute teachers scattering smiles for awhile; all of whom are swallowing pride and too much diet Pepsi. Everyone trying to find their own way of dealing with the mitigating boredom permeating every crack and crevice of this architecturally diverse steel town. If there was love, would that be enough? If they lived debt free and work free and Pepsi free would that be enough? Who knows. Back to the phone number, back to the small piece of paper with Barry’s number on it.
He hadn’t had any kind of love since he was busy racking up that student loan debt. He hadn’t had any love since his last love walked out the door. He first saw her while he was chatting up a group of girls in the corner of one of those pubs only 2 blocks away. He had ventured into that particular pub on that particular night in a what would turn out to be a rather effective attempt at a distraction from feeling uninspired and bored once he had gathered nerve by leaving the apartment 2 blocks away from Franz Liszt Avenue in search of some kind of inspiration. It had been weeks at that point, maybe even months, since any sort of creative surge resonated viscerally. The kind of inspiration that rings so loud and so often it makes your eyes ache. He missed that feeling almost more than he missed that love.
How is it possible that one’s whole body aches of boredom and frustration anyway? There was the rather ordinary chatting up of a group of semi-inebriated girls and pseudo-flirting with them (two blondes and a brunette if memory serves) as they seemed to hang on every word, doing that thing girls do where they watch your lips as you talk to let you know they’re interested. It’s good to note that blue reflective sunglasses prevent them from gazing longingly into your eyes but he didn’t have any on in the pub that night, of course. You know those kind of semi-inebriated girls. The same kind of girls that giggle and glance at each other when they think you’ve made any sort of sexual reference.
The reason for chatting up these girls was the same reason as any other
time one ventures out among the mind-numbingly boring talking monkeys in these local pubs; some desperately needed inspiration. Say what you will about shallow, materialistic, dense college co-eds, but it’s hard to grow tired of watching a nineteen year old ass clad in tight jeans. He had said something evidentially quite clever, from the giggling, when the air changed ever so slightly.
Looking up, there were these deep arsenic pools looking at him from across the room. By her smooth features, vibrant, loosely curled hair, and the slightly upturned corner of her thin crimson lips, anyone would’ve guessed she was in her mid twenties. Her eyes, however, told a different story altogether. They seemed deeply saddened, yet very wise. The kind of wisdom that gives off a kind of ageless appearance. Very intriguing in her own delicious dichotomy. She seemed beautiful in all the ways the one dimensional sorority blondes were, and many of the ways they were not. Diminutive and yet powerful; commanding almost, hiding over in the corner; socially dyslexic in her egocentric mind.
Something deep inside clicked on, beginning a constant buzzing in his previously bored and frustrated brain. It felt like a pulsing need to learn all and everything about her. A rhythmic urgency that drew him into the mysteries hidden behind those amazing, sad and arsenic eyes. Even now she remains a mystery. No idea why she walked out, no idea what he may or may not have done wrong. No idea why he still missed her so damn much. No idea.
“Ah ha, there it is.” A small piece of paper with Barry’s number on it hiding behind the Zig Zag’s. He should have known.
“Hey Barry, how’s it going, it’s Liam.”
“Dude, how the ell are ya, I haven’t seen you playing around anywhere. Everything cool?”
“Funny you ask, Barry, I’ve it a dry spell or something. All my inspiration seems to have dried up, man. It’s like I just sit in front of the piano and stare out the window and watch all the fucked up people milling about as though everyone has somewhere really important to be or something really important to do other than me. Rent’s due soon and I’m going to have to pick up a few gigs somewhere but I’m so bored I can’t move.”
“I know what you mean, Dude. Well, actually I don’t,