small town street talk

So it's like this:

You hear them talking in the staff room, which makes you nervous. You go outside on your break and wander around the park in the centre of town for a bit. Not much to report. A girl is crying on the phone saying something incomprehensible. Three male ducks chase a female duck. For a second you consider staying around, willingly becoming a complacent voyeur of duck gang-rape. You think maybe you are a sick little fuck and need to get help because the idea excites you in an unexpected, intangible sort of way.

You think about whether that guy you met the other night is thinking about you. You briefly wonder if he is 'the one'. Of course you know your infatuation has now turned into fantasy because you can't remember his face or the tone of his voice but you are certain that you are still in love with him. This makes you giggle and the sick fuck concept slowly seeps back into your head. You have the curious urge to be pushed face down into the wet grass by the arms you imagine come from your lover.

In a funny sort of way, you can't imagine life without the ducks and the man you think you might be able to love, the ache in your stomach and the giggles behind the staff room door. Of course, you reassure yourself, pulling your damp ugly plastic jacket closer to you, they aren't necessarily laughing at me, are they? They aren't laughing at me? Perhaps they noticed earlier when I spat on the screen while reading a funny chain email from my friend Matt. Perhaps that's what they're laughing at. Perhaps they think this ungraceful action is symptomatic of a general sense of inelegance I possess - ugliness, stupidity maybe.

The angst is killing you so you go back to the fantasy of the guy pushing your face into the grass. You can smell the freshness of it and the pulpy solidity of the earth quite distinctly. By now you have resolved that everyone is secretly a sick little fuck and all the other people passing you in the narrow streets are probably thinking similar things about strangers they've met recently, work colleagues, animals in the park...

Work is awkward so the fantasy grows. It is impossible to say when it will end.