Denny's

10:30 at night on a Saturday and I'm at Denny's choking down a meal that was obviously powder only moments before. I started stopping in here because of a Peruvian girl from the deep south that caught my eye. As the local retards and afternoon drunks hit on her I am fascinated by her darkly good looks and fake cans. She eventually makes her way over to my table to shoot the shit. She is still wearing the effects of a two day old hang over sparked by the introduction of large quantities of mushrooms and cocaine.

She tells me about her ailing head and loss of mucus membrane as I stare at her, my eyes glancing from her dark eyes to notice the abundance of sex blotches on her exposed flesh. Hand prints mostly. Bluish yellow areas of bruising on her neck and arms. I ask her about them to see if she will deny the obvious but she doesn't, she just rolls her eyes and smiles. The more I see of them the more obvious it is that she has recently had a liaison with either a rather large angry man or a rhinoceros that mistook her for a fence that it was stuck on. Due to the fact that the rhino population in the central Arizona is fairly sparse I decided that if she hasn't been raped, she just liked it rough...real rough, probably rougher then I want to deal with. I don't want any part of this, I've been here too many times before.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that I am still looking to get laid at 45 years old or the fact that I am fishing at a Denny's? This is about the slowest my life has ever been. It's like the theatrical trailer for death. “Coming soon to your hometown...the end of it all!” Yea baby, now I'm just waiting to die.

It's mid-July in Arizona. It's hot, really fuckin' hot. The kind of hot that sears the inside of your nose if you breath too quickly. You slow to near non-movement and anything you do beyond the safety of air conditioning could prove life threatening. Birds seem like they could burst into flames mid-flight and the pavement scorches your feet through the soles of you shoes if you stop moving. Climate wise, this is as close you will ever come to Hell short of being a pedophile, and I'm stuck in it.

Suburbia, it's a Goddam trap. I don't think anyone ever spends a moment of time daydreaming about living in the middle of rows upon rows of cloned houses. Painting the fence, mowing the lawn and barbecuing with your fat drunk friends next to your above ground pool. Things were brighter when your mind wanders during class when you were still in high school. The thoughts that left gaps in your schooling were of adventure, excitement, warm weather and beautiful, smart women, not going to your 9-5 job for 30 years and retiring...only to die 2 years later.

Everything that you are taught is designed to lull you into your place in modern society. Your dreams are replaced with responsibilities and the bright light of exploration is replaced with the gritty fabric of political correctness. By the time you realize that you lost your dreams you have become lock jawwed and actionless, you are now trying to live your life as it is and any dreams of anything else seems moronic and irresponsible.

I have always been a dreamer even though I have never been sure what my dreams are. Maybe my dream is just to be able to dream without guilt. In that sense I have been unbelievably successful. The best I have been able to achieve is not being trapped, that is before I found myself in this restaurant.

Even as I sit here I find myself longing for the fairytale like hamlet that I know is waiting for my arrival to complete it. In a cottage covered with trees and light there is the girl. Young, exotic and smart. The light of life still shines brightly in her eyes. Tucked away in her own thoughts she has been waiting.

It's a village full of free thought, culture, good food and winding roads you never get tired of traveling even if those roads always bring you home. There are no personalities that stand out above the rest. Everyone is interesting and vital in their own right. No cops, no government and no standard in which you are expected to carry yourself. As the crickets and night time sounds fade as you reach the brink of sleep, a lazy smile crosses your lips with the anticipation of waking the next day.

It's a fine, fulfilling life. The requirements of the outside world fade and you feel the excitement of the simple things filling the void created by trying your whole life to be fabulous. Happy to just exist on a daily basis you know that if you can just stay here your life is not wasted.

“...it's amazing how big a cock feels when your as fucked up as I was. But then again maybe his dick was really just that big, I haven't been able to shit right since that night”! Holy shit, my Peruvian Princess is still talking. It seems that she has gone into great detail on her sexual exploits from a few days ago and I haven't heard a word. I guess it really doesn't matter though, she hasn't noticed. I must have nodded my head and uh-huhhed at the right moments because she is still rambling on about it...in explicit detail. I don't know if the food actually tastes as bad as it seems or it's just the air in the room that's making me sick. All I know for sure is that I want to pay my bill and get the fuck out of here. This is not what I signed up for.