i used to wish i could be alone, which is funny now, looking back. i would walk by a particularly nice high rise on the particularly nice side of town because i knew that there was an empty gallery space for rent on one of the topmost floors. once i met a boy outside that high rise; he was dirty and hunched and he had a lot of greasy hair crammed into a hat too small for his head. i watched him as i walked by because i had been walking through the particularly nice side of town every day for a while now and he didn’t look like he belonged there. he watched me as i walked by too but i don’t know why. when i saw him again the next day, and the next, and the next, i began to wonder what he did there. one day, instead of walking by, i stopped.
“what are you doing?” i asked. he looked surprised, for a moment, then confused, and then smug. i wondered why he’d looked surprised at first, because it was a fairly simple question.
“there are a lot of rich people living in this building here,” he told me, which i already knew because i had seen some of them through windows or caught them as they were leaving to walk their fluffy dogs. “but money makes ‘em bored, see.” i didn’t see, but i kept watching him expectantly, hoping he would make me see. he didn’t so i said, “how can rich people be bored?” he shrugged and said he didn’t know but that, apparently, bored rich people buy a lot of pot.
