A Comfortable Green One

I got a couple of thrift store shirts the other day. I got to thinking about how a lot of clothes that wind up at the Goodwill, at the Salvation Army, at the Value Villages were probably emptied out of houses where someone passed away.

I woke up around 3 AM this morning with the thought clearly and heavily on my mind of how the guy died whose shirt I would soon be wearing. Did he die of a heart attack? Was his family distraught? Or maybe it was a long illness and they were finally relieved when he lost the fight. Maybe this guy had no family, no real friends.

Maybe the guy was married to a voluptuous beauty. He was a software engineer that had struck it remarkably rich, she was shifty and lazy and was seeing her stock car racing, high school sweetheart on the side. Over the last year and a half she had been adding a small amount of poison to her husband’s daily latte knowing that it would eventually weaken his heart, making his death look quite natural and allowing her to collect all of his money.

What was this guy blind? I mean she was always going out to “classes” and coming home smelling of cheap liquor and cheaper cologne. He would constantly overhear hushed telephone conversations where words like ‘sex swing’ and ‘rim job’ were thrown around willy-nilly. He had even come across an email draft of hers which noted in detail a sexual encounter in a stable complete with graphic descriptions of grooming brushes and riding crops being used as toys; she played it off that it was a piece for her Intro to Erotic Literature class. Seriously, was he self delusional? Did he love her that much?

I then began to think about english muffin pizzas and fell back into a deep, warm sleep.