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I throw on the same clothes I was wearing yesterday and don't bother to shower. I've never understood how people can do that to themselves every single day. I might take a bath a week, and change my clothes about as often. I remember on my second day of junior high, a boy I'd never seen before in my life sneered at me and said, "Didn't you wear that shirt yesterday?" I hadn't yet learned what sort of clean freaks people can be, and I was shocked. In those days I showered just as infrequently, and once the word got out it resulted in a lot of ribbing.

"Ribbing". Jesus Christ, it was worse than that. The boys could be assholes, but the way the other girls acted was just ridiculous. I've always considered myself a great armchair psychologist, but I can't fathom what was going on in their minds. It was some kind of contest, but every time I looked for its base there seemed to be nothing. Once in awhile someone would break out of the daze and demonstrate that they really weren't as fucking stupid as they acted, but that was only when we were alone, which wasn't often. Once or twice I even got the idea that I might be making a friend of someone, but soon they'd be back on the other side of the fence, sticking me with little razors of criticism every chance they got. At least the boys who got picked on could band together, building friendships out of their mutual exclusion. The girls couldn't even do that.

After I got a little older I found I could get along with people somewhat, going out to lunch or to see a movie, but halfway through I'd always start wondering why I was wasting my time. My conversations always turned into a game where I'd try to get the other person to go away as quickly as possible without actual telling them that I wanted them to leave. I got really good at it. I've just got no use for people. I always see them as impediments. I'm just not sure exactly what they're impeding me from.

I get my stuff together and take off. It's cold outside for this time of year, but I keep my coat open and my head level. It's a striking contrast to the people around me, who have their arms crossed and their heads down, trying unsuccessfully to escape the freezing air. I catch the eyes of one old man and realize by his expression that an unapologetic young woman with a scowl on her face must be one of his greatest fears. I want to laugh as he scuttles away, but settle for a grin. I feel like the ruler of every person who passes, and only wish that it made me feel any better.

I walk for a few chilly blocks then unlock the door to the Fastway Food and Lotto, the convenience store where I work. The air inside is beautifully warm, and for a moment I actually appreciate my surroundings. I sit behind the counter and lean back, closing my eyes and letting my mind travel, appreciating the quiet.

After a minute the jingle of the door interrupts me. A lady comes in to buy cigarettes and a lottery ticket. I realize that my face must be set into a mold of rejection, to match my feelings towards this faceless person, so I try to force a smile. Sometimes if I act pleasant long enough I can convince myself that I am pleasant, and that it's okay to be here. I can see customers as valuable human beings, just stopping in for a quick breather before continuing their battle against the world. It doesn't work today. It's seven a.m., and the world is still bathed in a harsh light that cuts through disguises and tells me that this woman's existence is not only pointless, but annoying as well. She doesn't seem to want to stop talking to me, so I pull out my collection of time-worn, wholly expected responses and lay them on her, mindlessly reacting to her every phrase, waiting until she's satisfied. I hate to act this way, but there's just no other choice. To her, anything but blatant politeness would be seen as rude. How much more totally boring could a person possibly be? How is it that everyone is like this? At least she lost on her damn lotto ticket.

After she leaves I rub my eyes and put on a tape. I have to play it low, and it has to be easy music, with no hard edges. That's okay, because I like some music like that, but I do get tired of listening to the same dozen tapes over and over. I used to bring in different stuff, but the guy who owns the store has walked in on me too many times; he doesn't want any music that might startle his customers into thinking, though his understanding of the situation is not quite so precise.

The music starts while I grab some breakfast. I can take whatever I want because nobody keeps inventory, but I rarely take advantage of it. Just a sandwich here or there, and maybe some milk. This morning I decide to start the day off right with a couple of chocolate bars and some cherry flavored carbonated spring water. They don't sound like they'd mix, but I've gained a tolerance for all sorts of weird junk-food combinations.

I see that the new magazines are in, which means I'll be seeing the two perverts soon. We always get three copies of Playboy and we always sell two. One guy is short and bald and has never once looked me in the eye, though I notice him taking quick glances at me all the time. The other guy is also short, fairly pudgy, and he buys a whole fucking cartload of pornography. He must buy a dozen magazines a month, and he always looks at me. He stares right at my eyes while I ring up his magazines, so I usually take the time to properly browse each cover. I think he likes the idea of my eyes running over the same naked flesh that he'll be jerking off to in half an hour or so. He's sort of leery, obviously, but he's not overly crass, and I guess he doesn't really bother me. He's totally unashamed of his purchases, which is relieving, but if I met him in a deserted alleyway at night I'd still turn the fuck around.

Throughout the morning there's a steady stream of coffee and paper buyers, mostly truckers who don't seem to have anything better to do. They always loiter around and nurse a few coffees, talking their fat asses off the whole time. I used to get really curt with them, never quite telling them that I don't give a shit about them, but getting as close as possible without losing all semblance of professionalism. I guess they didn't care for my attitude, because before I knew it my boss was giving me a "valued customer" speech. "They don't steal, they keep out of the way of the other customers, and if they want to talk a little bit then you should let them." He didn't bother to mention that the bastards only spend about a buck fifty a day, unless they forgot to buy cigarettes somewhere else first. I can just see them stopping at every second store on their route, talking the ear off the helpless clerk and trying to worm their way into the employee bathroom because they've gotta drain all that coffee. So it's in my contract now, I guess. I've gotta listen to them. But that's all I do. I sweep, I mop, I clean the windows, I read a paper, I smile, I nod. I never answer. I don't even know what they're saying to me. Finally they smile and say they've gotta go, jump in their truck, light up a cigarette and probably daydream about me giving them head behind the counter. Or maybe they imagine me closing up the store and going with them, so that I could suck them off while they drive. I bet you could make a lot of money that way. Ride-along whores. Only you couldn't call them whores. I mean, who wouldn't pay out the ass to have a sweet, easy chick ride next to them while they drive? If I were a trucker, that's what I'd want. Hmf. If I were a trucker.

I look around and wonder what I'm doing here. The store has become so familiar that sometimes I can't tell the difference between it being empty and full, until a customer comes up to the counter. The people are right there, but I don't see them. They could steal armloads of stuff and I wouldn't notice. I'm just not cut out for this type of work. I've got a list a mile long of things I don't want to be, and convenience store clerk is on it. I started this job two years ago, rationalizing it as just an in-between step, a way to pay the rent until I can do what I really want to do. But all I want to do is sit around all day and do nothing. Read books, listen to music, eat and sleep. Which isn't doing nothing, but it might as well be. Doing nothing unpleasant, therefore doing nothing at all...

I close my eyes and try to think of a way out of this. In theory I could go to school and get a job that pays more, but what's the sense? I've got enough money now, and more would just be more. I'd still be doing work that I hate. I don't want to be an editor, because I only want to read the books that I choose. I can't be a music critic because I don't want to spend my time dissecting music. I don't even know how you'd become a music critic. I just don't have any profitable hobbies. There's nothing fun that I could do, even if it didn't pay well. Nothing I could do to fulfill myself. The only life I can imagine is having this job, or another job like it, then going home and trying to squeeze as much contentment as I can out of my remaining hours. I'm waiting for the day when I'll wake up and it'll all be clear. I'm saving my money for that day, so I can quit my job and pursue a more meaningful course. I just hope that day comes. Comes soon, I mean; I hope that day comes soon.

My shift is over before I realize it, but I don't see that as a positive thing. It simply proves that my life is hurtling past me, the mundane nature of my work giving it a sick kind of speed, like taking an anesthetic and being shot from a canon. I walk home slowly and take the time to look around and notice things, though I don't see anything that I haven't seen before. At least it's warmer now.

I get to my apartment and collapse the moment I'm in the door. I lay motionless for about an hour, trading my fatigue for a general sense of tiredness. Then I run a bath, toss my clothes in a corner and step in. Sometimes I get into a groove of taking a bath every day, just to relax, but it usually breaks before long, because I hate the feeling of being newly clean. It makes my skin feel tight and uncomfortable. It's not so bad as long as I make no attempt to clean myself, so I don't. I just lay there with my eyes closed, concentrating on a small piece of my mind to keep from falling asleep.

I wonder if when I'm old and wrinkled my skin will still feel tight after a bath? I really don't like thinking about it. The young, lost girl, relaxing in her bathtub, trying to forget her troubles... it's not a bad image, when I can forget that it's me. Just pretend that it's someone else, and it has a certain appeal. The wrinkly old woman, looking for guidance while she lays in the tub, that one's not so good. Fuck, neither of them are good. But I don't want to be old. How could I have any good times, any personal triumphs, and real joy of living, when the fact that I'm old and ugly will be bobbing constantly in the back of my mind? How can I meet people who I would want to be with when they're all old and ugly too? Who wants old friends? Who wants to wake up in the morning as a completely different person than they are now?

I hear a police car drive by and a shiver runs up my spine. I've never been in trouble with the law, but the sound of sirens still makes me nervous. As I get out of the bathtub I ponder the people who make all of this policing necessary. I only have a few hours of solid time to myself before I'll end up asleep and then at work again, but I can't decide what to do. I used to watch tv sometimes, but I smashed a hammer through the screen a year ago. I haven't used the hammer since. Laying down in my bed, I wrap my blankets around me, the water on my body quickly turning warm. I think back to my tv and mumble, "...just a big, warm cinnamon bun..."

There were only a few shows I could watch, and I almost gave them up too, because of the commercials. It got to a point where I just couldn't stand sitting through them. That's not why I busted the tv, but it could have been. Those shows built a cage around me, by my very want to see them, and trapped me inside with the advertisements. It was a ridiculous kind of torture.

Sometimes I'd find a commercial that I actually liked, which was a godsend. There used to be this gum commercial with an absolutely beautiful girl in it, one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen, and I actually found myself going out of my way to watch tv in the hopes that I'd see it. I'm not attracted to girls in the sense that most people mean, but I love to see beautiful women, the same way that boys love to see beautiful men, whether they admit it or not. It's hard for me to find people that are attractive. Good looks aren't hard to come by, especially on tv, but attractive people are. The right attitude is what's hard to find, because all the beauty in the world won't cover up the fact that you're an asshole. Unfortunately, being ugly tends to mask a good personality more than adequately. I've never fallen in love with anyone ugly, and I doubt that I ever will, but I don't see it as any great hypocrisy. Physical beauty is an enormously important part of what makes me glad to look at someone. It just isn't everything.

Maybe tomorrow I'll buy a pack of that gum, as a sort of reward to the company. I read somewhere that the next best thing to good advertising is painfully annoying advertising, because it gets stuck in your head, and that seems to be the course most advertisers take. I suppose it must be easier to think up lousy ads, if you're a fucking idiot. But bad advertising used to work on me too, in a way. I'd find myself drawn to certain commercials, wondering how anyone could degrade themselves to such an extent on national television. There are better ways to make money than to act like some kind of goddamn ape on tv. Then I'd start to wonder if maybe they liked acting stupid in front of millions of people. The next thing I knew I couldn't take my eyes off them, because I simply couldn't understand them at all. My definition of a perfect world would be if some schmuck wrote one of those commercials and no one would agree to act in it. Everyone would just refuse, everyone would have enough self-esteem to see that the world held more for them than that. Wouldn't that be great? I'd love to live in a world like that. But people aren't like that. They'd stab their best friend in the back for a bit-part in any lousy piece of shit they could get, as though it were not up to them to decide what is good and what is bad, as though they are unable to reject the option of becoming a mentally comatose whore. And after awhile, I'm sure they don't even realize that they're walking hand in hand with the devil. Their critical faculty just leaves them completely. I can't stand those people. I don't even know why I'm thinking about them. They just make me sick. I lift my train of thought and place it on another track.

One time, while I was still living with my parents, I was sitting reading while my mom was in another room on the telephone with one of her friends. She talked about what a challenge it is to raise children and how no one wants to see their child fall into familiar pitfalls, but all one can do is step back and allow them to make their own mistakes. Then she started talking about how I had hated school and mentioned how she had urged me to try some extracurricular programs, reasoning that if I didn't like them I could just quit. I thought it was funny, firstly because it would have been terrible advice and secondly because she had never said that to me. I wondered about this friend of hers and what sort of basis made their relationship tick.

Then she said that I was obviously going to have to blaze my own trails in life. The woman on the other end must have said 'the same way we had to' because my mom answered, "Um, yes, just like us," her tone admitting that it wasn't true. But it doesn't matter. I hardly see any of them anymore. It really isn't hard to give up your family, it's just that most people don't have to.

One day before I moved out I was lying in my old room, just thinking about things. I stood up to go to the bathroom and froze. I was at least two feet taller than I had remembered myself being in relation to the rest of the stuff around me. It was such a familiar environment that I didn't even realize I'd grown. I saw my own shadow on the wall, stretched almost to the ceiling, and knew that all of the people I had looked up to, all of the figures I had tried to emulate, all of my youthful ideals had become me. I was grown up. I was in place to do everything I had ever wanted to do, the features of my face now fully defined, like a plow to push past anything that might try to stop me. Sometime after that I lost the feeling. The conflict disappeared, leaving me in a balance of not wanting any more than I have. But I obviously want something.

I push off my covers and walk across the room, my skin cooling immediately. I throw on a long sleeved shirt and a pair of pants, which warm me more quickly than I expect. I make a bowl of cereal and sit backwards on my chair, leaning forward while I eat, trying to let my troubles drift away, as though it were only so easy. I'm so fed up with stories without happy endings. Happy endings are all I care about anymore. I finish the cereal and toss the bowl in the sink, thinking that maybe I'll go for a walk. I can't have a happy ending until I find a beginning, a beginning that no one taught me how to find because no one else has found it. All I can do is look, for a clue, a hint, anything that will bring me closer to solving the puzzle. I sigh, but a small part of me feels like it might be on the brink of smiling too.