Suitcase

         I wake up with my alarm, but it’s my day off, and I’m in no hurry to get up. I have to pee, so I roll over to the side of the bed, hang my junk over the edge, and fill an empty beer bottle. My stomach feels like a void. I slide out of my bed like a scuba-diver; back first. My legs remain under my blankets, and my torso lands on the floor. The mini-fridge is upside down, and I swing open the door and take out three hard-boiled eggs.
         I crack open the shells, peel them from the eggs. I think about my room, about my things. I have so many things. Every now and again the clutter gets to me, and I try to organize and clean my room. I always run out of empty surfaces, and I have to stack things, jam things into crevices. I downsize sometimes, throwing things away, or taking combustibles down to the driveway and setting them on fire with a lighter.
         I have a television, but I hate myself when I watch it, it gives nothing back to me. I have books, I love my books, but they’re heavy, and take up so much space. I have the body of a chopstick, and I sleep in a king-sized bed. Clothes are piled in a corner. I have two cardboard boxes filled with bank statements.
         I drop the eggshells into my wastebasket. A few shards fall on the floor, mixing with the accumulated dust and trash. Odd bits of paper, just scraps and receipts, coffee grounds and loose change. It isn’t apparent, but if you walk barefoot on my floor, grit will cling to your sole, and work it’s way between your toes.
         
         I head out around noon, downtown, to a large thrift store. Bums and panhandlers are encrusted around the entrance. They ask me for change, and I ignore them as I walk into the store. A couple of them look pretty clean, they don’t have an apparent habit. I wonder if they’re just short on money. Whenever I see people like that, bums that don’t fit the stereotype, I want to take them out for lunch, or coffee. I want to pick their brain, they must have a good story. I never invite them, though. They might yell at me, they might not have anything to say. I’ll just save my money.
         I’m trying to find a suitcase, so I walk towards a corner filled with with old junk, appliances, large items. There are many people in the store, shuffling through the racks of old clothes, and I weave past them. A lot of poor people, or they look poor, and a lot of college students, hipsters, kids with money and fashion-sense.
         There’s a stack of old suitcases, leather, canvas and cardboard. Next to the luggage I see a man I recognize. I don’t know his name, he’s a plain-clothes security man. I met him at a grocery store I used to work at. He’s doesn’t fit in here. Most of the people shop here because they have to, or it compliments their esthetic, but he’s wearing a fitted baseball cap, designer jeans, a branded t-shirt. He’s fingering a shirt on the rack, and he keeps looking up at a grizzled bum a few racks over. He’s on the job. I approach him and offer him my hand.
         The security man recognizes me, he smiles and shakes my hand.
         “Hi, man, how are you?” His accent is thick and round, it sounds like he’s talking around a large piece of hard-candy. His skin is dark, dark brown, the shade of a coffee bean. He’s from East Africa, Kenya, I think. The security man nods towards the grizzled bum.
         “You see that mother fucker? I’m just waiting for him to take something.”
         The bum looks tense, he’s looking around. I can’t see his hands. I turn to the suitcases. There’s a brown leather one that I like. It’s worn, but it’s holding together.
         “These thieves -- they are so stupid! The petty thieves are at the bottom when they are in prison, they are everybody’s bitch. They get caught stealing a shirt, or a broken nintendo at the thrift store, or a ten-dollar steak from the grocery store.”
         The security man keeps fingering the shirt he isn’t going to buy. He’s enjoying the pursuit. He has the posture of a bragging man, a hunter bragging about his kills.
         “I like to play with their heads when I catch them, I like to make them squirm.” He laughs. “I tell them ‘you are going to prison -- you are going to get raped by five men for this shirt you stole!’ ”
         I don’t know what to say. I say “, do you think they’re hungry? That they can’t afford clothes?”
         The security man shakes his head. “They trade the stuff for sex. They give it to crackwhores, and the whores fuck them.”
         I like the brown leather suitcase. I start taking it towards the cashier, and I say goodbye to the security man.


         I want to see what I can fit into my new suitcase. What possessions are worthy of mobility, what items would I be able to take with me if I had to flee.
         I begin with necessities. Toothpaste, toothbrush. I line the bottom of the suitcase with four cotton undershirts, and then I place four pairs of boxers on top of those. My laptop is placed in the bottom left corner, and I place two button-down shirts over it for padding. I’m wearing pants, I only really need one pair. I place some books in next; Love is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski, The Essential Pablo Neruda. I will only take poetry with me. Poetry is like hard-tack. A single poem can be selected at random, read, digested and meditated upon for hours. A novel must be read cover to cover, and the potency of the story is lost with repitition and time. Any hankering I have for fiction can be quenched at a public library.
         I eat some ramen for dinner, I just eat the boiled noodles, and throw out the soup base. Too much sodium. After I eat, I put on some music and I lay on my bed. The orange sun is reflected on my ceiling, and I can hear the neighbours’ children laughing and playing. Things I’ve forgotten start flooding my head. I’ll have to eat, I need to bring a pot. I get up, and I take a small stainless steel pot out of my cupboard. I use the blade of my pocket knife to unscrew the handle, and I place the body in one corner of my suitcase. Then, it occurs to me that if I wash, I will have to dry myself. I place a couple of handtowels into the suitcase as well. A mug. A bowl. A set of cutlery. Or, I could eat out all of the time. Or I could subsist on peanutbutter and bread, just dip slices or chunks into the jar of spread. I could buy jars of pickled eggs, or peppers, or just pickles. Things that require only fingers to eat.
         I’m trying to simplify, but things have become complicated. I upend the suitcase, throw everything onto my bed. I replace the clothes, a couple pads of lined paper in place of the laptop, a bundle of pencils.