Friday, March 6, 2009: 8:46 AM — I just woke up on the bench in the alley behind the Features Convenience Store. This is, of course, my favorite sleeping place. Throw down that old green, urine-spotted sleeping bag and it might as well be a king-sized extra soft mattress. Couldn’t ask for much more. I walked around to the front of the store and took a seat on the curb, reading the local paper from Tuesday while chewing on a piece of gum that I found in the trash the other day. 10:01 AM — Here comes today’s first customer. He’s wearing a black suit and blue tie. That’s some real originality, good-lookin’. I bet he’ll go buy a Hershey’s bar and a cherry slushy for his kid. Generic. He probably looks at me and pities me. But he is the one living his life like a robot, not having any fun. He doesn’t know what it’s like to really enjoy life. Hunting and gathering out by the convenience store, just like our ancestors. I’m the miserable one? Yeah, right. I’ll throw some rocks at him, yell out some generic insults about his mom and such. The usual heckling stuff for losers like him. That Ezekiel kid who works in there, there’s another jerk. “Oh, I have a weird face and I still work, I’m so special.” He’s really just an annoying kid. He’s perkier than those girls from the “Bring It On” movies, and he’s about as smart as this week-old piece of Juicy Fruit in my mouth. He’ll be working in that convenience store the rest of his life. 12:15 PM—Well, it’s lunchtime, so you know what that means. I’m going to go get a carton of cigarettes and a slushy. Mmm, what kind of slushy should I get today? I got a root beer sour lemon mix Tuesday. Pretty good. It tasted like that moldy sandwich I found in the dumpster on Wednesday. Good stuff. Okay, I’ll get a strawberry slushy and then mix-in some lettuce and cigarette butts, or whatever else I can find myself. This is going to be a great meal. 1:30 PM — So I just finished my lunch. It was the best I’ve had in a while. Here comes another customer. He’s wearing a black jumpsuit and a ski mask, and he has a BB gun. Kids these days, huh? Wow, there is a lot of fuss going on in there right now. I guess that guy got in a fight with the manager or something. There’s screaming, and oh that sounds like a gun. It must be a car backfiring. Now the guy in the ski mask is running out of the store with three full bags. He must’ve bought a lot of stuff, and he looks to be in quite a hurry. OK, well I’m starting to get tired, so I guess I’m going to go take a nap. I think I’ll go to the park and sleep in the grass. It’s a nice day and all, and I get tired of getting splinters in my back from the wood benches. All I do is sleep and eat. Man, this is the life. I don’t need a house, or a family, or friends… this is the life, man. This is the life.
