Finally,
it was my turn to go up to "Window A" and turn in my French blue
application.
The
woman behind the bullet proof glass looked like a cartoon banker man with an
enormous, hulking body that must've completely wrapped itself around her
innocent little creaking office chair, totally enveloping foam, fabric, and
chrome, probably looking like a fleshy candied apple from behind.
Her head
was like something, something that'd climbed to the top of a GREAAAAT BIG
mountain--but CRANKY because it'd been abandoned by the sherpa.
She
looked at my application over tortoise shell slivers of reading glasses, and
her facial jowls as full as my own tits, drooped and pooled at the top of her
HUUUUUGE breasts, which must've been hoisted up and resting on her massive
knees like sand bags to keep her from falling forward.
The rest
of her body was melting from a lifetime of boredom, exhaustion, and
indifference...
...and
even her lip, I kid you not--her bottom lip was so heavy and slack, it
couldn't stay up either, limply dangling down her chin like a sleepy banana
slug falling out of bed, showing her red gums and mucousy teeth.
And
speaking of red, mucousy things, her eyes were even too tired to look up at
me, and they were held in by whatever SUCTION was left from the lower rims of
her eyes
...
there was so little muscle left to stick to her eyeballs, they were open like
teeny tiny little change purses. The kind you put on your key chain and sort
of look like puffy infant vaginas.
Even
though I was frightened and wanted to RUN, RUN far away from "Window
A" and all that it represented, I wanted to stare at her long after she
time-stamped my application and told me to have a seat around the corner in
the other room because the closest thing I'd seen to this were the fetal pigs
spread-eagled and pinned to baking pans in biology class.
Good
thing she didn't even seem to sense my horror. She must've been the scary
monster neighbor in her own neighborhood because she seemed pretty used to it
like the little craggy old man with the big flapping dreadlock.
At some
point you just don't care what anyone thinks anymore--especially welfare
people. Hell, I don't even care what welfare people think, including MYSELF.
And you
know what? THAT'S the inherent beauty of this life.
--But
then she calls me back and hands me another form to fill out, and that's when
I get this whiff of that smell...
I told
you we'd come back to the smell. It's not like we have any choice because when
things go bad, that smell will hunt you down like a bad dog, throw you to the
ground, and jam its smelly boot down on your neck and spritz you all over like
a department store girl.
I hadn't
smelled it in YEARS...
The
Smell that all economic realities came down to when I was a kid. You could
dress it up or turn it around and spank it, but you couldn't run from the
truth. It wasn't the musty smell of Old People, or the garlic smell of Spicey
People from faraway lands. It wasn't the missed litter boxes smell of the Cat
People. It wasn't even the Hampery People smell. No! Not even the Tofu Breath
People Smell.
No, no,
no-- it was the Poor People Smell.
Sometimes
I think that we should’ve had that smell because we’d bludgeon each other
with frozen pot pies before school, and after school we made grilled cheese
sandwiches out of government cheese a few times.
--a few
times?
A few
times is all you need. in fact, more than enough if you know what I'm sayin'
You know
what I'm saying?
I know
you know what I'm sayin' because Government cheese never goes bad and it never
goes away. Whatever you cut off, the mold grows and extends the log back to
normal like a lizard's tail.
But the
SMELL : it's as if your TRW report had been distilled down into a perfume.
A
perfume?
Yeah, A
perfume that will forever sweat out of your pores and cling to your bra, your
hair, your bad taste and inability to buy a house.
Hmmmm
Anyway,
the tell-tale smell of REAL hard times was (DRUM ROLL, please!)--
COLD
PEANUTS. That's right. THE SMELL OF HARD TIMES WAS COLD PEANUTS. As in "brrr
cold, cold."
It was
the smell of friends who were pretty and wanted to be only a little roughed up
by HIGH SCHOOL standards, but like REALLY roughed up later on.
It was
the smell of how prettiness was only so you could make a bunch of babies to
keep your man around because men were mythical creatures like UNICORNS, and
they'd magically disappear as mysteriously as they'd appeared.
It was
the smell of friends who had big sisters WHO smacked their KOOL-AID-STAINED
children in supermarkets.
(And
when we'd babysit, we'd try on their mama’s big, platform cha-cha slippers
and turn on their faintly crusty rotating dildoes-- oh, don't cringe, because
ANYTHING worth doing in real life eventually gets crusty.)
It was
the smell of friends who had little nasty sisters who threw kittens from
fifth-floor balconies to see if they really would and could land on their feet.
They
were my friends back then because they were the most fun, as their skinny,
chain-smoking moms never cared WHERE we were, WHAT we were doing, What we
wore, WHO we did, and WHEN or even IF we were coming back.
But then
I got to thinking that we’re only kidding right?--and like this can't go on
too much more. I mean, I'm over there speaking in double negatives like I
ain't got no business to and I'd become nothing more than a LITTLE PENIS
SCRAPER.
But
lucky for me, no babies. Damn. Because babies are like diamonds...
[sing
like JAMES BOND theme “DIAMOND ARE FOREVER”] --BABIES ARE FOREVAH!!!!
Besides,
the way the kitten walked after Josie's little sister brought it back upstairs
still fucking haunts me to this day, and they hadn't even noticed because they
were laughing so hard.
Cold,
cold, heartless, meeeeeeean peanuts!
I know I
should be quiet because there's a mean thing in talking about the smell, but
what makes that particular smell? I mean, it's not bad; it's just poor.
And now
that the lady behind Window A has handed me the cold peanut smell, everyone's
gonna know now that I'm poor, too.
So I
will start a LINE OF Welfare colognes to cover up the truth
AND no one will know, FOR we will smell like the middle class : We will
smell like a full-priced box of “Tide” with a top note of freshly-mown
lawns.
[SNIFF]
Layered
[SNIFF]
complicated.
[SNIFF]
CREDIT-WORTHY!
[EXHALE]
I
never liked that whole “MOWN-LAUNDRY” smell when I was a kid : it smelled
too much like Saturday morning work instead of watching cartoons. But next to
my new COLD PEANUT smell, the aroma of freshly mown grass with a hint of Tide
is pure ambrosia.
Now, the
model for the WELFARE COLOGNE will have big platform cha-cha slippers and
panty lines--LOTS AND LOTS OF BODICE-RIPPING PANTYLINES, because at the
beginning of this surgically-smooth century, any day now PANTYLINES are GONNA
BE ALL THE RAGE! MARK MY WORDS, they’ll be Refreshing! Rejuvenating! Real!
