written by Domenic
Mark never really wanted to move to this sh*t town anyways. He grew up in the Bronx. Far away from here on a city block that might not have ever existed. It was one of millions in the city; people on stoops and the local bar. The heat in the summer could bake you if you weren’t careful. A few blocks away there was a subway stop that would transport you to anywhere you wanted to go. Well it felt like that anyways. His wife convinced him to move out to the suburbs a while back after they had a couple of kids. She didn’t want to raise them in the city and was growing wary of it herself.
Come on, he would always say, it’ll be fine and anyways I have a good job here.
Of course that wasn’t enough and one day it was done and over. They put a down payment on some three bedroom in New Jersey and left the city. It took him so long to adjust to suburban life that he just stopped trying. You had to drive any place you wanted to go, there was no walking. People recognized you everywhere and you couldn’t just disappear into the masses like in the city. The Chinese restaurant down the block sucked and there was no Italian market.
Instead of finding a new job he decided to open up his own pizza place. It was near the local school so a lot of kids would hang around from time to time. Grabbing a slice and some soda after class was always an adventure. There was always some tiff between different cliques. Someone would end up getting a slice in the face or soda poured down there shirt but never anything too out of control.
The worst part about the ‘burbs wasn’t the little dunces who came into his pizza place. It was the adults. People who thought they were prince and princesses. As if they deserved some special treatment because they inhabited some town and had money. A place no one actually cared about. Noone knew what happened between him and another man a few years ago in an altercation on Kent Avenue. He was walking past the East River Park on a beautiful summer night and some guy started hasseling him for change. This was well after he had become jaded and crazy. When even on the happiest sunniest days he felt nothing. The guy pulled a knife on him and Mark did just the same, startling the guy. He never told anyone about that and no cops showed up at his door. Sometimes he wondered if it had even happened. There was something so satisfying about it that he couldn’t place. For the past few years it was as if the winter blues had never left him. He was perpetually unhappy about something. This was an about face from what he usually was – happy and completely content with life. Something clicked in him that he could not click back.
Mark never really wanted to move to this sh*t town anyways. He grew up in the Bronx. Far away from here on a city block that might not have ever existed. It was one of millions in the city; people on stoops and the local bar. The heat in the summer could bake you if you weren’t careful. A few blocks away there was a subway stop that would transport you to anywhere you wanted to go. Well it felt like that anyways. His wife convinced him to move out to the suburbs a while back after they had a couple of kids. She didn’t want to raise them in the city and was growing wary of it herself.
Come on, he would always say, it’ll be fine and anyways I have a good job here.
Of course that wasn’t enough and one day it was done and over. They put a down payment on some three bedroom in New Jersey and left the city. It took him so long to adjust to suburban life that he just stopped trying. You had to drive any place you wanted to go, there was no walking. People recognized you everywhere and you couldn’t just disappear into the masses like in the city. The Chinese restaurant down the block sucked and there was no Italian market.
Instead of finding a new job he decided to open up his own pizza place. It was near the local school so a lot of kids would hang around from time to time. Grabbing a slice and some soda after class was always an adventure. There was always some tiff between different cliques. Someone would end up getting a slice in the face or soda poured down there shirt but never anything too out of control.
The worst part about the ‘burbs wasn’t the little dunces who came into his pizza place. It was the adults. People who thought they were prince and princesses. As if they deserved some special treatment because they inhabited some town and had money. A place no one actually cared about. Noone knew what happened between him and another man a few years ago in an altercation on Kent Avenue. He was walking past the East River Park on a beautiful summer night and some guy started hasseling him for change. This was well after he had become jaded and crazy. When even on the happiest sunniest days he felt nothing. The guy pulled a knife on him and Mark did just the same, startling the guy. He never told anyone about that and no cops showed up at his door. Sometimes he wondered if it had even happened. There was something so satisfying about it that he couldn’t place. For the past few years it was as if the winter blues had never left him. He was perpetually unhappy about something. This was an about face from what he usually was – happy and completely content with life. Something clicked in him that he could not click back.
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