The other night, after a day of wandering, I was
making my way home – too late, yet again, having gone too far, yet again – so stopped
in at the Sheetz to get my XL hazelnut creamer coffee boost. All the coffee
machines seemed empty, and this old white lady worker was fiddling with the couple
that had coffee, I guess trying to get caught up on making coffee. I patiently
waited, masked up, for her to move along, and filled up a cup. She was working
further down the coffee machine line, when an older black lady came in, with a
cane, and they got to talking because they knew each other. Keep in mind, we’re
all masked up, as are most people, except for some reason in this pocket of
suburban/rural grey area in northern Virginia, all these blank-eyed young white
men who refused to mask up, proudly ignorant, more than a couple of them in
freedom style shirts supporting guns and cops and eagles and shit like that.
The old white lady says to the old black lady, “how have you been?” Old black
lady goes, “Not so good. You’re never doing too good when you just been to a
funeral.” The old white lady says, “What? I couldn’t hear you,” as she keeps
making coffee, way the fuck past retirement age, making shitty Sheetz gas
station coffee (which I love) on a Saturday night in nowhere America. The black
lady is louder this time, “Not so good. You’re never doing too good when you’ve
just been at a funeral.” I’ve moved over the creamer machine, first one broke
so had to go to the second, pushing buttons for that hazelnut diabetes juice. “I’m
sorry honey, I can’t hear you,” goes the old white women. Unmasked pairs of
angry-eyed white dudes in work-ish clothes are poking at the ordering machines
nearby, and the old black lady is still leaning on her cane, masked, both the
old women overweight and not looking in prime health, out here in this suburban
Sheetz on a Saturday night. The old black lady is loud as fuck now, in that
strange way you can be loud but still friendly, going, “Not so good. You ain’t
ever doing too good when you just been to a funeral.” And the old white lady
still can’t hear her, and the old black lady is looking at her – they obviously
know each other – and I just wanna go over to her and say, “I’m sorry about
your loss,” but it would’ve been weird. And there’s all these white men walking
around with anger in their eyes, not giving a fuck, so even masked up my
bearded white man ass might not have been all that comforting.
So I got on my red square marking six feet
distance, and some unmasked meathead redneck and his dyed blonde unmasked
girlfriend get behind me, way off the next red spot, and she drops a bag of
chips right behind me. I turn around and give them the hillbilly murder eyes my
people have always been known for, and the judghead goes, “sorry, buddy” in a
way that I couldn’t tell if he was serious or condescending. I wanted to smash
him, just in case he was being a dick, but instead got a dog treat for my
girlfiend’s hound dog in the car, and after the old white lady rung me up,
having moved over the register – I guess done with the coffee machines and
hopefully having heard her old black friend finally – I stared the dude off on
my way out. He didn’t make eye contact, looked down immediately – beta broken
gaze of a faux alpha persona. And as I twisted around in the car to convince
the hound dog named Hank that the treat was okay, not poison, I thunk to myself
how the race war America might be building up to ain’t really a race war at
all, but a battle between white men like me and all those other dudes, about
whether we want to give a fuck about anything other than ourselves in life, or
not.
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