By Homeless
After Laura, the days were long and filled with even more sad-looking blue whales than usual. The rooms of Daniel’s house became packed like subway cars during rush hour, often leaving him warm, uncomfortable and unable to move, not to mention so crowded with sadness he could barely even lift his hand up high enough to scratch his nose. And every time Daniel looked out a window, regardless of the time of day, the sky was always wet-looking and gray and, or so Daniel thought at least, seemed gradually approaching, like it was calculatedly moving in on him—an insanely focused assassin coming to smother him with its grayness until he suffocated. And rather than do anything about all this (What is there to do? was the question Daniel’s brain kept rhetorically asking), Daniel just accepted his current situation. He knew he could only wait it out and hope for the assassin-sky to either change its mind or grow lazy and apathetic over killing him because, seeing him helplessly pinned down by sad-looking blue whales, there would be no sport or challenge in removing the speck that was Daniel from this world, and so, instead, it would just leave him be. Then Daniel, with nothing else to do, would do all he could do—wait for some of the sad-looking blue whales to eventually wander out of his house on their own, as if bored or suddenly remembering they wanted to watch Titanic again.
And so the days passed like gravestones made of mud slowly toppling into each other, forcing Daniel to eventually call out of work one morning about three and a half months after he and Laura had broken up. Even though they were no longer together, Daniel could still hear Laura getting mad at him. “You really think you can afford to call out of work? What? You want to be homeless someday?” Which always left Daniel feeling guilty (although over what exactly he didn’t know), as well as incapable of taking care of himself, of being an adult and forcing himself to do things he didn’t want to do.
Daniel did what he always did whenever he had a day off—he drove to his Graceland, his fast-food office, his Golden Arched home away from home.
Daniel drove to McDonald’s.
Or his McDonald’s, as he often referred to it.
Christian rock was playing from the speakers hidden in the ceiling when Daniel walked inside (for whatever reason this was the radio station management had decided to tune into for the past month). The nice Spanish lady working the register who knew Daniel by name already had his order punched in before he reached the counter. Daniel smiled, said thank you, paid for his iced coffee with exact change, feeling embarrassed as he did so, feeling poor as he did so—even though Daniel was poor, more so just feeling ashamed of it, really—and then grabbed his usual seat in the far back corner of the restaurant as far away from the gossipy elder patrons who frequented the restaurant as well.
Daniel took his notebook out of his messenger bag and opened to a blank page. Daniel was a writer who did the vast majority of his writing in McDonald’s because McDonald’s was the one place in the entire world where sad-looking blue whales didn’t stalk him. Any McDonald’s. The location never mattered. For whatever reason, the sad-looking blue whales refused to follow him inside. Instead, they’d stand by the front door and patiently wait for Daniel to return. And when it was time for Daniel to leave, the sad-looking blue whales picked up where they left off. They’d trail Daniel back to his car, ride shotgun, or sometimes, and which Daniel found even more humiliating and degrading, the sad-looking blue whales would sit in the back and Daniel would chauffeur them around. They controlled Daniel, the sad-looking blue whales, and as much as it killed him to admit it, although over the years he had gotten used to doing so (not that that made it sting any less), the sad-looking blue whales dictated almost everything he did.
Sometimes it was simply their laid back yet imposing presence that made Daniel do certain things, or feel certain things, or think certain things. Other times just a meager look from their lifeless black eyes, eyes like pieces of coal dropped in a murky street puddle. But most of the time, and which Daniel found to be the absolute worst, the sad-looking blue whales controlled him by crying.
“Oooooh, oooh, ooh!”
Although Daniel had heard hundreds of thousands of sad-looking blue whale cries throughout his life, it was something he’d never gotten used to, and now, at this point—thirty-one-years-old and not getting any younger—he knew he never would. Daniel didn’t understand their crying, especially considering there never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to it. At least not that Daniel was ever able to figure out.
A lot of the time the crying felt random, but also directed at other sad-looking blue whales even if there weren’t any present. And during these frequent impromptu studio sessions of their own sad, sappy music, mainly consisting of just one sad-looking blue whale but it also not being impossible during the really bad days for there to be almost an entire choir of them, it became impossible for Daniel to feel content in his own skin. Something about their cries brought to the surface the quiet, subterranean knowledge of how innately alone Daniel was, of how alone all humans were, of the underlying facts that most people who weren’t stalked by sad-looking blue whales were usually able to forget about or just completely ignore—that each of us comes into this world alone and that each of us leaves it alone, that each of us is trapped inside one human body with one conscious mind that no other person will ever be able to physically step inside of and, therefore, fully understand. And that, Daniel understood, was true loneliness—your weak and lame human brain being unable to perfectly articulate what it thinks, your mind being unable to form something vague and sharp inside of you into words for the world to comprehend. But the sad-looking blue whales had found words for it. Or maybe not words, but sounds. Sounds that said more about sadness and loneliness than any human language ever would.
“Oooooh, ooooh, ooh!”
Daniel had no idea what the sad-looking blue whales were saying exactly when they cried to each other, but his mind always translated it into “I’m alone! I’m alone! I’m alone!” And when it was late at night and Daniel was lying in bed with his cats and listening to the sad-looking blue whales cry outside his window like lonely wolves howling at a moon that had forgotten all about them, Daniel would always call back to them in his head, softly, mournfully, Me too… Me too… Me too…
Daniel took his pen out of his pocket, his favorite pen—a Simpsons pen Laura had bought him, momentarily making him ache for her like his heart had blue balls. He stared down at the blank pages of his notebook, at the cruel, goring whiteness of them, but nothing remotely creative came to mind. Ever since Laura left, Daniel’s brain had become immobile, like a dead car with its license plates ripped off, left on the street for the city to tow. He couldn’t write, he couldn’t draw, and these two things he once looked forward to doing now just seemed to scare and intimidate him because, being unable to do both, these activities only made him feel worse about himself, which, therefore, only summoned even more sad-looking blue whales.
Daniel gave up on the idea of writing for the moment, took his headphones out of his messenger bag and plugged them into his iPhone. Daniel played the song “Careless Soul” by Daniel Johnston and put it on repeat. It was a live track and sounded like it was recorded in a coffee shop or bookstore. A girl could be heard coughing at one point and Daniel Johnston broke into tears twice during the track. There were no instruments. Just Daniel Johnston singing about being called to meet your God.
Daniel Johnston is Christian rock… Daniel’s brain said.
Daniel non-Johnson laughed at himself. He felt sick and hated himself. He still loved Daniel Johnston, though. Daniel Johnston was certifiable but brilliant. Daniel Johnston loved Mountain Dew and McDonald’s. Daniel Johnston even worked in a McDonald’s. Daniel non-Johnston never worked in a McDonald’s. He’d worked at a golf course, the video department of his college, a Michael’s Arts & Crafts, a Home Depot, two doggie daycares and three animal hospitals. Now, Daniel non-Johnston worked in the stock room of a PR agency that represented beauty products. The stock room was warm, cramped, had no windows and was filled with sad-looking blue whales that were extra sad-looking and invasive. But since only Daniel could see the sad-looking blue whales, it was as if they didn’t exist to the rest of the world. So, bitterly, as well as half-heartedly, Daniel was forced to go through day after day as if nothing were wrong, as if he were completely and totally healthy, all the while still being foolishly expected to travel the same speed as everyone else in the normal world even though he was carrying an extra couple hundred tons of sad-looking blue whale dead weight.
This is bullshit… Daniel’s mind would often complain to itself throughout the course of his day at his dead end job, and then allow itself to feel momentarily good, justified in its own righteousness, knowing that, yes, this indeed was bullshit, a mass amount of it, ripe, stinking and unfair, but then the same recollection would always inevitably creep back in shortly thereafter. That life wasn’t supposed to be fair, that everyone had their own metaphorical crosses to bear, and that this one, enormous and heavier than most with a sad-looking blue whale nailed to it who cried “Oooh, ooh, oooh!” was unwaveringly his. And there was no trading it for another. There was no putting this cross down and resting, and Daniel’s mind, happy just seconds ago in the brief victory of knowing that it was right, that this curse of his was, again, in fact, bullshit, Daniel’s mind would then return to its usual damp and sullen state. He would drag himself through the day as best he could, often too frustrated and tired to care how well he was doing, just wanting nothing more than to make it to the finish line where, at the very end of the day, a box of wine was chilling in the fridge at home, waiting for him.
Knock, knock, knock…
Daniel took his headphones off and looked behind him. Uncharacteristically, a sad-looking blue whale was at the back door of McDonald’s, pointing down at the handle as if asking Daniel to open it even though the door wasn’t locked.
Daniel hesitated. Not because he was actually contemplating letting the sad-looking blue whale inside, but rather because he had never seen their kind exhibit this unusually nosy behavior outside of a McDonald’s before.
Daniel turned away. He picked up his Simpsons pen and stared down at his notebook, ready to work.
The sad-looking blue whale could go fuck itself.
Homeless often wonders whatever happened to predictability? The milkman, the paperboy, evening tv? He’s the author of four books, and his second novel, “My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor,” comes out November 19th, 2024, from Clash Books.
