“We have just eaten muffalettas…It was so good I almost peed my pants on the first bite and then I took a picture of it because it was such a beautiful sandwich.” – travel journal description of a sandwich, New Orleans, LA – Day 6

Over Hard

It was one of those days when the excruciating and ridiculous ordinariness of existence had caught up with me, but I was trying to be happy so I went and got myself a sandwich.

My wife was complaining again, something about someone stepping on her toes at work.  She’s a “Department Assistant” in a big manufacturing company where they make things that are so functional you never even notice them, and then they try to make them sound sexy.  That’s what her department does, the sexy part, marketing.  As Department Assistant, she does all the stuff that nobody else wants to do.  If someone wants to do her job so much that they’re stepping on her toes, I say let them do it.  Maybe she’s not even good at her job.  I bet she’s not, but what do I know.  For someone who tries to make things sexy all day, she’s not doing herself any favors.  She even wears socks to bed.

Me, I’m in the business of moving things from one place to another, and getting paid for doing it quickly.  It’s not so bad—I’m mostly home on the weekends now, although sometimes I wish I wasn’t.  There are nights I sleep in the truck, parked in the driveway.

When I walked into the deli, there were four old guys at the counter in the window, singing “Among My Souvenirs,” barbershop quartet-style.  There were two on the end who weren’t participating, maybe they were even embarrassed by the others.  The ones who were singing looked like they’d just broken out into song between bites of bagels.  No one was watching them, but no one knew what else to do either.  It made the whole scene even more awkward, like when the waitress has to go back for one person’s food, and the rest of the table is trying to ignore the plates in front of them while they wait.

The song got me thinking of a woman I’d met once, in New Orleans when I was doing long hauls.  She had these little legs stuffed into pantyhose, just like sausages in casing.  She had real thin skin, so her veins showed through and her legs looked all marbled and the pantyhose made things all lumpy and redistributed.  I’d always had a thing for women who resembled breakfast foods.  There was a time when my wife was two eggs, sunny side up.  Now she’s all broken and overdone.

The woman had had a few too many Hurricanes on Bourbon Street and ripped her toe apart getting off a bus.  The bus had pulled up across from the motel and the steep drop from the bus landed her in a puddle the size of Lake Pontchartrain, but not before she’d scraped up her big toe on the curb.  I was getting out of my truck with my shampoo in hand when the bus pulled away and I saw her.

She’d been alone, traveling on business and treating herself to a wild night out before she had to head home to her kids.  I wondered what kind of company had put her up at a motel that smelled like cherry air freshener and used to be an apartment complex, where truckers only used the shower but slept in their cabs.

In my room, I helped her out of her torn pantyhose and bandaged her up from my first aid kit.  She lost a good part of the nail and in the chunk of skin that was missing you could see that she was only bleeding out of boredom, and trying to gush out the guilt in advance.

That was some night, among my souvenirs.

The sandwich was less a sandwich than it was despair between two slices of bread.  I had hoped it would be more fulfilling, but after a certain age, a man must stay close to home and find solace in empty calories and memories of lovers like sausages.  Tonight we’re having breakfast-for-dinner, so there’s that.