The Plastic BastardI felt sad. The grief had piled high all around, like broken dishes after a domestic fight between television sitcom couples. I could hear it in her voice. She was truly sad, the firehouse Dalmatian that waits patiently for the fallen firefighter who is destined never to return.
Trembling in her complaints, gripes and grumbling, I had heard it all before and yet, you could truly see the depression polluting her skyline; a place where the sun never shone, and a city where the rain would forever pound the pavement, thereby causing scattered vehicular accidents everywhere.
She nervously lit a Pall Mall and stroked her cat, Mandy. Tears streamed down her face, a face, just one of the one in a million faces where lives are played out by unknown actors on the set of some forgettable melodramatic episode of an unintelligible soap opera.
I, being many miles away, just then, wished that I could help her, be with her, comfort her in her time of need. The closest I came, however, was soothing her with my voice over the plastic bastard instrument called, "the telephone."
The telephone. The great plastic bastard implement of destruction, which much to my chagrin, I had found many moons ago as a destructive suicide instrument in itself.
And indeed, what a suicide instrument it became for me; swearing off friends, lovers, parents, creditors, would-be telemarketers, pranksters, pollsters and just about any other type of village idiot you could imagine.
Frankly, however, that did not seem to alleviate the situation and only made matters at hand worse. She was still nervous, felt depressed and deprived of that one glimmer of hope that she longed for, just snuffed out like a stale cigarette butt, ashes scattering about.
Listening to her over the plastic bastard, you could hear her pathetically struggling, singing of her homelessness, her deadly boring life and latest “woe-is-me” story.
I tried to think of words to say, but as usual, she beat herself up to a bloody pulp, which always made me sad. I did my best to comfort her by giving her a long distance hug and told her she had a friend in the land of Lincoln, as I hung up the plastic bastard, just as equally depressed.
I suspect I would hear from her tomorrow.
