now

A dull grey filled my view. Towering buildings, collosi, concrete giants left over from my parents' time. The sky the same color, and I was out walking, for some reason or another. Weather, views, chills like that always make a man question himself. It's like an innate necesity, that when everyone's hiding inside their coats man, or maybe me, should just do the same. In our minds. I like the cold, there's something different, misterious almost about people hiding behind so many layers of clothes. Or maybe simply true... Who knows?

My feet were taking their own path, old haunts, childhood memories. There was the first place i ever stepped on stage as, a kids' theatre. So I'd tried acting and it didn't work out. Some people try coke, but they don't make it their life. I guess that's what experience is...mistakes. Wrong steps, twisted ankles, smacked heads on sideview mirrors. I guess you gotta get knocked out before you learn to do it yourself. The cold was starting to pinch the back of neck and my ass, and, auto-pilot style i tucked myself in a little more to my coat. Something was jabbing at my side, at first i thought it was a stich, then i knew what it was... the cause of the stich. Marlboro's. 100's, long. Fuck it i thought reaching in to my breast pocket.

"No light? Shit.."

" 'Scuze me, you got a..."
" Sorry, do you have a light?"
People were just walking right past. Fear of diseases was a bitch in this city, the once Little Paris... Now a hellhole for the free filled with the fears of the paranoid.

" Got a light?"
Interesting times make for interesting bedfellows, and high prices make for shitty people. It's like a match will put them back forever...then again in this wind, it'd take more than one.

"Got a smoke?"
"Huh? Oh, sure but i ain't got no light"
This chick looked like normaly she'd never throw me a second look, but then again addiction is a great way to meet people, whichever way you look at it. Want alcoholics? Hit up AA. Want tweekers? Hit up a trucker bar. Want sex addicts? Well, you get the picture. She rolled her eyes at the marlboro, but took it anyway. VSB. Virginia Slims Bitch... Can't even accept that they're killing themselves. Just cause it's thin and smells like roses or chocolate or italian bodybuilder sweat and comes in a pink pack don't change the fact it's tobbaco. I had this conformist idiot written down to a T.
"No sweat" she says, pulling out a lighter. Well, it's wasn't pink. I know, I'm shallow and all that... We're all so vain, even if we don't have the balls to admit it.

"Thanks"
"Thank you" she says back.
"Hey, you know what the time is by any chance?" Here I am, judging her - hell, she's doing the same though - but still trying to get some action...

Check this though, this chick, this magazine cover robot shrugs at me, looking in the distance and says

"It's now..."