Corruption

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So I got home around quarter after nine and I was kinda tired but not very hungry and I thought I'd do little or nothing and then watch NYPD Blue at ten PM. Because that's what my life has come down to. I have become one of those people who come home and watch TV. I actually have a few TV shows I look forward to. Like on Tuesday nights I'll sometimes watch NYPD Blue. I know it's corny but I used to watch Hill Street Blues when that was on. I mean, I know both those shows are fantasies - I know real cops are nothing like that. I know it's phony. But sometimes I like to escape into a fantasy world. God forgive me. I watch very little TV, actually. I even got rid of the eleven dollar cable I had. Eleven dollars a month and it was still too much. Don't get me wrong - I loved the reception. Everything came in crystal clear. Now when I want to watch something I have to futz around with the antenna. I have this crappy dipole antenna hooked up to the VCR and I have to futz with it to get a picture. It's annoying, actually. I still have ghosts on most channels. Channel five comes in real good - which is nice because I watch the Simpsons and the occasional Roseanne re-run. And channel eleven comes in which is also good 'cause of Seinfeld. But all the lower channels - maybe because they have less power? - come in like crap (maybe you didn't know but higher frequencies are more stable - so higher channels actually come in better - did you know that?). So I was planning to just have a sip or two of bourbon - my Old Grandad - and maybe a smoke or two and take in NYPD Blue and then write in my journal for awhile and then go to bed around 12:30. Which is early for me these days. Most of the time I'm up until two AM. I tend to go through these bouts of insomnia. I can't get to sleep. I think it's 'cause I worry too much. I worry a lot, actually. I've always been a worrier. I wish it was different - I wish I could be happy and not worry - but that's never been me. I tend to have what could generously be called a "dark outlook". But - and this is what I've found out about myself after all these years - it's not really a "dark outlook". It's not really that I'm cynical. I guess I just want things to be better. I guess it's that I want to be a better person. And the gulf between the person I should be - and the person I am - is large. And lately I feel like it's been getting larger. Like I've stepped into a void of sorts, entered some strange "No Man's Land". I've been thinking about this a lot - maybe even worrying about it. It's because for the first time I see life as finite - I see that I'm almost halfway to its end. I don't know when I'm gonna die - I hope its a real long time off. But what can I realistically expect? What can any of us realistically expect? Maybe eighty years? Maybe ninety? How many of us out there will live past ninety? Huh? Think about it. Probably the oldest person I ever saw naked was at one of my first jobs. It was in this bakery in my hometown, owned by these two sisters in their fifties. One of them lived above the bakery with her husband and her elderly mother. This women had to be ninety. We called her "Grandma" and she was just skin and bones, like an Auschwitz survivor (which she no doubt was, owing to the fact that it was a Polish Bakery). She couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds. She was so frail, her arms and legs were as thin as the handle of the broom they gave her to keep her occupied. When she'd come into the back of the bakery. She'd mumble incomprehensibly in Polish and her daughter would give her the broom and she'd spend an hour sweeping at nothing. She was, I suppose, not mentally well. But the daughters - unwilling or unable to put her in a nursing home - treated her like an idiot child and cared for her as one. They were always wiping something off her face, demanding her to "Look at me! Look at me, damnit!" while Grandma flopped her head around, looked anywhere but straight ahead. And Grandma would always wander over to me, while I was scrubbing pots and pans, and she'd start mumbling something at me in Polish. I don't think she knew who I was, really. I don't think she was in the same reality as me. One time Grandma got loose and came downstairs unclothed. I was the only one in the kitchen. I was washing dishes in the big stainless-steel sink and I had my head down and suddenly there was Grandma, in the doorway to the rear of the bakery. She started talking to me in Polish, and I looked over and she was naked. Not a stitch of clothing. Completely unaware of her state, unaware of the day or the month or the year or the decade or the place or who she was. I was transfixed by her shriveled body, couldn't believe someone so old and worn out could move under her own power. I was afraid, actually, because Grandma was coming closer, advancing with each sentence (they seemed to be sentences, the inflection rose on the end). She was a foot from me when I yelled for one of the girls who worked up front behind the counter. The girl looked in the back and saw Grandma and yelled for the daughter upstairs. The daughter bustled down the stairs - which emptied into a hallway between the front of the bakery and the rear - and saw Grandma and let out a shriek. Then she went back upstairs for a blanket. I stood there dripping dishwashing liquid from my yellow rubber gloves onto the battered wood floor until a large puddle formed. The sister scolded me for making a mess as she led her mother away.