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Home Depot at 3AM |
Home Depot at 3AM on a Tuesday night. Hopping from one foot to the other. Nervously twitching his eyes shifting rapidly from shelf to shelf. He talks fast, his insides are on fire, hands shaking, sucking on his teeth. Alternately brushes nothing off his shoulders. Skittishly moving, explaining to the girl next to him what kind of tool they really need.
She chews on stubby fingernails with chipped black nail polish, and nods pensively. They both look like human chihuahuas, gaunt and shaking.
It’s 3AM at the 24-Hour Home Depot at Sunset and Wilton; no contractors here, no wives picking up plants and necessities. It’s 3AM in Hollywood at the 24-Hour Home Depot, and this shopping experience is brought on by a tweeker's demand for tiny projects... projects that will never be finished.
Tools purchased past midnight. It’s that “We have to get needle point pliers, now,” or the
“We have to paint that thing blue...” from undisciplined, not so young tweekers about to start another project after the final bump of the final line.
Their desperate activities, their unquenchable drive to retrieve that furniture from the alley and the trash bin with big ideas on how to paint and repair, then, they can make “a lot” of money selling the stuff at “like on eBay,” like “at swap meets,” and then he wont have to work day labor anymore and she can quit the bar and then and then and then...
Big eyed, shaking generation, all tatted out, all pierced, all hipsters. Setting fire to human potential with powder pabulum, and crystallized arrogance.
Calling Mom or Grandma for the rent money, oh ya, that’s hip…
Making babies for foster homes that make babies for foster homes that make babies for foster homes. The Hollywood hipsters.
And the Mexican cashier laughs as she puts on her lip-gloss and watches the Anglos chatter like chipmunks down the isles at 3AM on a Tuesday night.
copyright 2006
Brenda
Petrakos |
