A Thunderlane Trip

I’m standing by the front door inside my apartment, putting on my boots. It is a cold-sunny daytime and I have to leave. Crucial interview with a grocery store for a bagger position.

My roommate sits on the couch doing something on his laptop computer and I look at a half-filled coffee cup on the livingroom floor while my left boot is going on. Staring at the halffilled coffee cup keeps me from falling. Thank you for being there for me, halffilled coffee cup. I appreciate you, you silly fuck.

Behind me I hear there are mildly loud vacuuming sounds in the hallway outside our apartment. And I try not to let them scare me into staying inside. Trying to be brave. It is important for me to get this job. It is also very easy for me to get scared and stay inside.

My roommate says, “Hey, you want a candy. It’ll help you get the job or whatever.”

He tosses a piece of candy over. The candy hits my knee and falls in a shoe by the doorway. He puts a similar piece of candy into his mouth and rests his hooves behind his head.

He clears his throat and says, “Careful, it has some liquid stuff inside it.”

Then when I put the candy in my mouth, he says, “What flavor is yours.”

Little radios on my tongue report the message to my headhole. There are beeping sounds and I hear the message. “It’s grape,” I say.

I stare at the coffee cup and we eat our candy, vacuum sounds in the hallway making me feel tired now, not scared just tired. It occurs to me to say, ‘I wish they made grape-flavored coffee.’ But I don’t say that. I don’t say that because I believe he will not understand.

I watch him continue to look at his laptop computer. And he changes the candy from one side of his mouth to the other. Then notices I am looking at him. He moves his head side to side so his ears keep almost touching his shoulders, making a face he must intend to be funny. He is trying to make me laugh. Oh.

I look at my roommate. Just say it. Say that you’d like it if they made grape-flavored coffee.

Tell him. No, he will not understand. He won’t understand you. Just tell him. No, the statement will leave your mouth as a small void, hanging in space, growing larger at a very slow rate, until it has consumed everything, me first, willingly.

“See ya,” I’ll say, putting my hooves on the rim of the void, taking entrance headfirst.

Just say it. No, I can’t. Ok, if you can’t then you can’t.

My roommate says, “Why do they need to do a second interview anyway.”

He takes his laptop computer off his lap and puts it next to him on the couch. He sits back.

I stare at the halffilled coffee cup. Just walk out. Just say you wished they made grape-flavored coffee again then walk out and be free. You want him to know that you’d like it if they made grape-flavored coffee. So, tell him. Tell him and leave. No, I can’t. “I wish they made grape-flavored coffee,” I say.

The room remains exactly as-is for a moment. And the moment is large enough to slay. I get slain by the moment.

My roommate says, “What. I didn’t hear you over the vacuum.”

When I don’t respond, he says, “What’s up, why are you staring.”

I open the door quickly and run out, kind-of tripping on the doorstop into the hallway. In the hallway my roommate becomes only vaguely memorable. Part of a greater disliking, little different than the couch and all the other things, real or imagined. Part of the void to be carried around. I almost fall and hit my head on a light in the hallway but I am able to stand and the apartment door shuts hard.

My landlord is vacuuming in the hallway. She shuts off the vacuum. Through its detune, she says, “Hey mister. I thought you’d want to make sure to have—”

She attempts to lean on the vacuum and it starts back up and she finishes saying something that I can’t hear over the vacuum. She smiles and stares up past my area of eye contact, raising her eyebrows to emphasize something I can’t hear. It’s insane.

I entertain the idea that if my present life is the punishment for a former life, then I would never want to meet myself as the self of this  former life. Goddamn.

She continues leaning on the vacuum, staring at me. I find myself looking at the words “Las Pegasus” on her sweatshirt.

I walk away from her and go somewhere that is an extension of where I’ve just been. A bigger “right-there.” In the tiny courtyard area outside, there’s a small plastic tricycle, almost entirely buried in snow. I think a thought that is something like, “Keep track of who owes you nothing.”

And I get on the train but don’t go to the interview. Instead I have conversations with other ponies in the train, only I don’t do it out loud. Manehattan Blue Line train.

My roommate and I are on the small concrete deck outside our apartment, two floors up, looking out across the parking lot.

It’s cold. I have my underwear on. He’s smoking a cigarette and I’m scratching my elbows.

We just saw a mare smacking her kid in the face as they crossed the parking lot. It was beautiful. It felt like practice.

I look at my roommate. “Hey can I borrow your car,” I say.

“Why.”

There is a very long interval between sounds. I contribute by realizing I’m pinned to it. “I need to get some hangers from the store,” I say.

“You need to get hangers,” he says.

“Yes. For my shirts.”

“For your shirts,” he says.

He puts his cigarette in his mouth and leans back, one eye shut, trying to get keys off his beltloop. He hands me the keys.

I go to get back in the apartment through the sliding door, but I only open the sliding door a little and when I try to go through it I have trouble fitting. I’m sideways and I can’t move.

My roommate watches. “Almost man,” he says. “You’re almost there.”

Then, I’m through. It hurts, but I’m through. And I drive my roommate’s car around and go nowhere. His car smells bad.

I get on the highway for a while. Everypony is staring at me when they pass. I hate everypony. Don’t go back home. Ok I won’t. All existing ponies hate you. Yes, I know. Well then ok, keep driving so they can’t find you. Yes sir.

I exit somewhere I don’t recognize. I drive different streets in the same direction and at one point I am convinced I am the pony speaking on the radio and eventually it’s dark out and I park the car in an empty parking lot by an office building. After I park I punch the steering wheel hard, three or four times and my hoof hurts and I feel better. The word “yeah” moves through my head in neon letters.

One of the windows on the first floor of the office building is lit. A cleaning lady wears a back-mounting vacuum and cleans a cubicle. I realize that the amount of distance between where you are standing in relation to somepony else determines a lot about your behavior and feelings.

And eventually I wake up from a nap I don’t remember taking. I’m in my roommate’s car in a parking lot in front of a dark office building. I drive home.

At the apartment, my roommate is sitting on the carpet trying to get batteries into the tv remote control. When I sit on the couch I notice how bad the couch smells. It is a smell that in my mind looks big and formless like a cartoon cloud of two cats fighting and it laughs like a monster and it oinks too for some reason.

My roommate struggles to put the batteries in. “I’m tired,” he says.

“I took a big nap in your car so I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight,” I say. “Usually I can’t sleep after a big nap.” I make a motion with my hoof meant to express circular motion, and I say, “One big nap after another like that.”

Then I yell, “Big naps!”

“Good job,” he says. “Did you get the hangers.”

“Yeah they’re great. Thanks again.”

My roommate continues trying to put the batteries into the television remote controller. He looks determined.

In the hallway outside, somepony screams, then laughs. Other ponies laugh too, walking down the hall.

“Big naps!” I yell.

My roommate drops the batteries and one goes underneath the couch. He gets the battery and returns to work.

I slap both hooves down on the floor and I yell, “Big naps!” again.

My roommate says, “You’re awesome.” Then he snaps a piece back into place on the tv remote controller.

“Do you want to split an orange again,” he says. “I need something to do.”

“No, I’m good,” I say.

He nods and turns the television on and the lights off and we lie down on different couches. The room is dark except for the tv. There’s a show on about bridges. A stallion talks about bridges and I wait to fall asleep, feeling poisoned by the hoof of some bad magician, like, all the time yeah.

This is the third time this week I’ve sat in my room and thought about what I’d buy if I won the lottery—ultimately admitting that I’d use it all to pay NASA to rocket my entire apartment (with me in it) deep into outerspace where the sun’s pull had no effect, or to where there’s this other sun with the exact opposite effect on growth.

Something else I do more and more is I sit on the Blue Line train and I ride around for a few hours not-looking for jobs. It feels comfortable. I make sure to direct my sight towards my hooves so I don’t accidentally see a job.

It’s nice to just listen to the sound the train makes against the track. It’s just nice. The best part is at this certain point downtown. The train takes a long curve and the sun and this billboard with a funny looking frog on it both come out. I love it!

Right now, I’m the only pony in my section of the train. There’s an advertisement for a junior college along the inside of the train.

The ad features a smiling stallion holding books. He looks nice. One day I will figure out which stop the junior college is at and then I will go there and meet this stallion and we will help each other through life.

When I return to the apartment tonight, the first thing I do is I wash my hooves in the sink. Usually I forget. Any time I don’t wash my hooves after riding the train and then touch my eyes in my sleep, my eyes burn real bad. It’s terrible!

I dry my hooves on the couch and then I go to walk down the hallway to my room. At the dark entrance to the hallway I almost bump into my roommate. He’s just standing there quietly.

“Hello,” he says. “Did you just get back.”

“Yes,” I say. “You know that. You just said that because you had nothing else to say and you wanted to say something.”

“Did you find a job,” he says. “Anything. Where did you look today.”

I put my hoof against the wall, blocking the kitchen from my roommate. And I position my face close to his. “Yes, another good day,” I say.

He stretches and uses the stretch to step backwards a little, somewhat into the darker area of the hallway. He is looking at my mouth. “Well, good,” he says. “I knew you’d come back.”

“Of course. I pay rent here.”

“Oh,” he says, “I forgot. I have a job for you. I totally forgot about this but I have a job for you if you want it. Can’t believe I forgot about this.”

I laugh. “Oh yeah—what’s the job.”

“Uh I have, an opening for, somepony to uh—” He sniffs, then he yells, “Eat my fucking shit.”

He yells it right in my face. He laughs and I laugh too. And yes, we are people.

He says, “So, if you are the right pony for the job, let me know.”

We laugh together. Everything looks exactly the same except we are laughing. It is good. I like it.

Then my roommate slowly stops laughing. “Hey, but really though,” he says. “I do have a job for you. No joking now.”

I’m still smiling. “What is it,” I say.

“No really, I have a job for you,” he says. “I will pay you five-hundred bits to kill my dad. I can give you the address and a little under half of the money right now. He lives like two hours away from here.” He points between us and he says, “So if you’re that pony, let me know.”

There is a pause in which I imagine a puppy falling out of the ceiling onto my head, then landing in my loving hands.

“I’m being serious right now,” my roommate says. “I will give you the money if you kill him. Make it hurt too.”

He scratches his chest. He yawns.

“Hey,” I say, taking my foreleg off the wall. I allow a pause. “Give me a hug.” I say.

He smiles. We hug. The hug is somewhat long and it feels nice. Then when it’s over I walk down the hallway and go into my room and I call it a day and it calls me something else. Sometimes I can hear my room laughing at me when I go into it.