Blog Love Omega Glee: Why Can't The World Be Polite? (10 February 2012)

The Cleaveland Coyote prowls the neighborhood. He doesn't like to leave his lair much these days, but occasionally he's forced to leave to search for food, or in this case toilet paper because they're out at the house. Masani's at work and Francine is out somewhere so it falls to The Coyote to restock. He leaves the house on a drizzly day, and puts up his umbrella. He treads south to the Square. On his block, a woman wearing a cowboy hat walks up the sidewalk towards him. The Coyote moves from the center of the sidewalk to make room for her as he walks and searches for eye contact, but she looks away. Two human beings inches away, absent a wave of humanity like in the streets of New York, should greet one another, if only out of respect. The Coyote steels himself, tries to smile, and mumbles "Hello."

The woman ignores him and walks on. The Coyote continues on and wonders whatever happened to civility and politeness. Is the woman unfriendly in general, or just with him? Or is she harassed on the streets daily so she tunes everyone out as a self-defense mechanism? Maybe The Coyote should do the same thing? But that wouldn't feel right, he thinks. He turns onto Wouldland Avenue and turns east. Near the alley by the bookstore, an older man gets wet in the rain, drinking out of a bottle in a paper bag, while urinating on the wall. The Coyote considers crossing the street, but decides that in an ideal world he shouldn't have to avoid other people. Without other people, none of us would survive. The Coyote thinks, "I did not grow all of my own food. I did not sew all my clothes. I did not build my house. I did not make the toilet paper that I am going out to buy. We all have to help one another, even the old drunk committing public urination."

As The Coyote passes the drunk, he looks in the window of Apocalypse Books and wonders if Eve got in any new comics. Probably not, she would have called, he thinks, "Maybe on the way back I will stop in, or should I stop in now before I am carrying toilet paper? But if I bought a book, then I would have to carry it around the drugstore and one of the overzealous security guards would probably accuse me of shoplifting."

"Hey, hey, hey. Excuse me, excuse me," The Coyote hears a voice say behind him.

The Coyote's first instinct is to start walking briskly away from the sound of the voice, but he decides to be polite and turn towards the voice. The drunk is zipping up his pants and stumbling towards him. The bag with the bottle has been discarded in the alley making the drunk now guilty of littering. The drunk says, "Hey my man, how you doing?"

The Coyote says, "I am very fine. How are you?"

"I could be better. Hey, hey, hey, could you help a fellow brother out?"

"You dropped your bottle back there. You would not want to litter, would you?"

"Ah, ain't no thing. I'm done with that. I need some help though. Can you help me with that? Would you help me? You look like a good person."

The Coyote nods, and says, "What do you need? I am in a bit of a hurry."

"Hurry, hurry. Everybody's in a hurry. Shit, am I the only one who's got all day? But I do have to get somewhere. My car broke down, and I need some money for the bus to get home. Can you loan me a couple dollars, say like twenty?"

"I do not have any extra money, but maybe I can help fix your car. What is wrong with it?"

"What is wrong with it? Shit, what's right with it? It's all fucked up," the drunk looks around, and points, "I left it over there at the, at the uh, at the auto shop, yeah."

"Ah, well, they will fix it. I have to get going," The Coyote says, and follows his earlier instinct to walk briskly away from the drunk.

"Oh, it's gonna be like that," the drunk says, yelling as The Coyote crosses the street by the bank, then The Coyote hears him say, ""Excuse me, excuse me . . ." presumably to another passerby.

The Coyote fumes as he walks away. Would it have hurt him to have given the man a few dollars? Being unemployed, living on Francine and Masani's rent payments, and selling his possessions online makes him extremely frugal, but he has more than the drunk has. Should he not share? Conversely, why was the drunk hassling him? Did he accost strangers for money? Did he drink himself into poverty? Did he piss publicly and litter? What does he owe the drunk? What does he owe anyone? People create their own hells. Should we have to save them from their own creations?

At The Drugstrip, The Coyote buys some toilet paper, and an umbrella. The cashier and fellow customers are rude. Why can't the world be polite? Does it take that much more energy to make things pleasant, that people would rather smear their pain around to others? It doesn't let them share the burden; it just increases the amount of pain overall, making for a miserable world. On the way back, The Coyote intends to give the drunk an umbrella, and tell him to walk home, but the drunk is gone. Left behind to mark his presence remain a wet paper bag, a broken bottle, and a stain slowly being washed away on the wall of the bookstore. The Coyote decides that the next time he runs out of toilet paper, he'll just use newspaper until Francine or Masani buys some more. He'd rather stay home where manners still exist.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.