It was many a year that I spent jotting notes in notebooks and on wayward Word documents. I realized that this was an inefficient system, given my poor memory. These notes are quickly lost and forgotten, and even today I will remember having written a thing on something somewhere some time ago, but Lord help me, I don’t remember what it was. I’m sure anyone who writes with intent has encountered this frustration.

Given that, do not let it fly if I ever complain that, “Nothing ever happens around here. Life is boring.” I’d have to be in the foulest of moods to even think it, let alone say it out loud.

I spent yesterday morning and afternoon parked on my couch in my boat, playing video games. I’d struck out with some women in spectacular fashion on Saturday and was not in a mood to see other human beings. My main cache of games is still in a box in a garage that I’m renting for storage, so I bought a fresh set to keep my game-playing lobe active: Dishonored, Max Payne 3, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. There was no rhyme or reason beyond the fact that I hadn’t played any of them, and there was enough extolling of their virtues to get me to buy them. It wasn’t until I started playing them that I saw some patterns. They feature male leads—badasses all—who have climbed atop a pile of dead bodies by the end of their respective adventures. They have all gone through some measure of misfortune that leads them to be cast down and downtrodden, falling back on what they do best (murder, generally) to cope with their reality. Revenge is a major plot driver, but the severity of the retribution will vary from player to player. Interestingly, they all feature some measure of moral choice. Dishonored’s design encourages the nonlethal path, and the Assassin’s Creed games provide options on the method in which a target is taken out. They can be merely beaten to the point of unconsciousness instead of stabbed through the spinal cord. Max Payne’s titular hero is probably the most interesting of the bunch to me because, like all great heroes, he’s an all around fuck-up who wiles away his time with a half-full glass of brown liquor in hand and self-loathing in every thought, bemoaning misdeeds that are long past. The few moral choices in his story are encounters with enemies who kneel and plead for their lives. I was so in tune with his need for revenge that I shot them all where they knelt.

This was my Sunday. The occasional gull squawk and boat engine interrupted my meditation.

It was around ten in the evening when I decided to stop and settle in for a good sleep and another week of the grind. I thought about places I’d like to work after this contract. Italy really caught my attention, but I didn’t know where in Italy I’d go or what I’d do. I lay and thought for an hour or so when I realized I was going to sell my Wrangler today. We’d settled on the price last week. She reminds me of myself back when I first bought the Wrangler: young and ready to break the ties of driving someone else’s vehicle. Deciding then that it was a good time to find out what I needed to do as the seller of a vehicle, I Googled it. It turned out I needed to get a smog check done as well as provide the title and bill of sale. This meant I would need to take it in early, before I handed the vehicle over to the buyer. I would not wake up in time at home. I packed up and headed to a motel close to work.

Highway 1 is one of the loneliest highways. The absence of lights, I expect. A shadowy trot up and down the edge of a black ocean. It’s one thing to think of the ocean as all surface, but think of the activity beneath and it humbles you. I see heads poke out of the water from time to time. The ripples of the water and small splashes. It’s the sort of effect you get in a thick, dark forest, or inside a cave. The smallness of your being really gets you. I headed down that highway, thinking those sorts of thoughts, and stopped in the 7-11 to purchase bottles of mineral water for the drive and motel. When I pulled in I found two Asian guys with wild hair standing by a small red car with the doors open. Nearby, there was a girl speaking Korean into a cell phone and looking intently into the store. I walked by without a second glance and purchased my consumables. I took a swig as I exited and took in the scene with more clarity. The two guys looked frustrated. The girl on the phone looked desperate for something. I looked at the guys for a few moments and they looked at me (a sight myself, big bald guy with a dark beard wearing the Hawaiian shirt and khaki pants I’d worn on Halloween and fished out of a bag as fresher laundry dwindled). I turned to the girl then and loudly asked, “Are you okay?” She turned slightly, and I walked toward her and said “Are you okay?” She said something unintelligible to me and nodded. “Are you sure?” I insisted, and she nodded again and said, “Okay.” Satisfied as I could be without throwing her over my shoulder and asking where to drop her off, I turned and drove off. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps it was the worst thought imaginable.

I arrived at the motel at two in the morning. “One night,” I told him, and thought that was important. One night. I ended the evening writing a bill of sale and popping Halls candy. I woke up late in the morning anyway, and systematically checked the room from corner to corner to make sure I’d picked up everything. I tend to scatter my things to feel like I’m making full use of the space. When I arrived at the smog place I was quickly greeted and made to wait for thirty minutes in a sort of angst, unsure of whether or not it would pass a smog check. I worried about the hassle of it. I read things about Sandy, about the madness of election season, and about book translations. My absentee ballot had long since been mailed in. Sandy is a sign of things to come for the coasts. We live in a world where books are usually translated, and I’m thankful for it. The Wrangler passed its smog check with flying colors.

All that remained was the print-outs of the bill of sale, which I picked up from a Kinko’s store before I arrived at the agreed upon Starbucks an hour and a half ahead of schedule.

I didn’t sit down with the intent to write any of this. What I wanted to write is:

This morning, on the way to Starbucks, I spotted an angelic blonde in a strapless sky blue high-above-the-knee dress wearing those beige cork-type wedge shoes that I fantasize about and request so much. If I once fetishized the girls wearing thigh-high striped socks, I now fetishize women wearing those shoes. She was opening the lift gate of some navy blue SUV or another and turned slightly to reveal that, yes, she was as young and fresh-faced as countless other women out there, but for me, at about 10:15 AM on November the 5^th, 2012, she was the only one. I crossed my heart and hoped to die with such happiness and desire in my heart.

She’ll be here soon, the buyer. We’ll fill out empty fields and sign away. I’ll watch her drive off and think goodbye, old friend.

Always the sentimental son of a bitch.