Not a Poem

A little piece of freewriting I spewed out this evening which may or may not find it's way into a larger piece:

I looked up from my book to see a 230 pound blonde woman peering at me from across the desk. I call her a woman without being able to properly pinpoint an accurate age. Weight does that to a person, like each pound of obesity brings with it three months of age along with some intangible sense of height. I put her in the range of 25-42, which I take notice lies directly in the middle of the prime demographic for television watching. Presumably, this was a factor in her weight gain.

"Whatcha reading?" she leaned in towards me speaking 15 decibels louder than I would have liked. I opened my mouth to answer her but she was insistent on carrying on the conversation with or without my consent. "Ohhhhhh, Vonneygut eh? He's funny". I furrowed my eyebrows together in an attempt to take hold of the idea that this woman had not only read anything written by Kurt Vonnegut but understood the nuance of his humour. My confusion wasn't fuelled by any sort of misogyny or judgment on the brain capacities of overweight people, it was more the fact that I knew that the plastic bag she carried in her right hand held a collection of years-old teen fashion magazines which she looked through thoroughly and repeatedly, I also knew that the last book she had read was written by Francine Pascal.

At this point I should probably point out that this woman, Donna, was a schizophrenic. The sudden importance of this is brought on by the fact that the book that I was reading was Welcome to the Monkey House. The thing I should say about schizophrenics is that, generally, they are not scary people. They will spout off all sorts of nonsense ranging from constant giggling to insisting that they were cut into four pieces when they were a child and subsequently sewn back together. They say and do these things passively, and most of the time with the realization that they cannot be trusted with their own thoughts. Being around them means that you cannot trust their thoughts or, by association, their words and they cannot trust yours (or even the fact that you said them or thought them beforehand in the case that they believe they can read your thoughts). When they are scary, though, it will haunt you.

© 2007