James Callan

Young and Alone

“Yo, white boy! The fuck you wearing?”

Sometimes I take a chance with strangers. I look them right in the eye and pretend I am feeling nothing. I tell them exactly how it is.

“Clothes.” My expression remains as bland and lifeless as one of those photo portraits from 1900.

The man’s friend laughs in the most genuine way imaginable. It almost makes me smile when he cuffs his buddy on the shoulder and mocks him. “Yeah, man!” He says, still laughing. “Something you don’t know nothing about: fashion!” He is so boisterous, so loud and full of amusement, that his exuberance cuts right through the silence of a city muted by snowfall.

“Shiiiit,” the first guy says, head down, defeated. Together, the two strangers stroll off, laughter fading with the passing blocks, audible outbursts swallowed by the weather. In front of me, the green walking man urges me to hurry on across the street. He lights up and counts down, as if a threat. Somewhere beneath all this salt and snow is a crosswalk. I cross the road, persuaded more by the golden arches looming with the promise of cheap, bad food and hot, bland coffee than the green man and his tick-tick-ticking away down to zero, to amber, and then red.

Far off, a car horn echoes. I hear a shout, then more laughter. I think of the two men who are now three blocks south of me. I look, and no one is near, so I allow myself to smile. The encounter has left me in a favorable mood.

To the credit of the gentleman that first inquired about my outfit, my style back then was rather outlandish, inviting scorn. From memory, I was wearing cut-off brown suit pants, roughly shorn somewhere between the ankle and knee. Shants, I had proudly called them—neither pants nor shorts, but somewhere in between. I wore variations of them from age 16 and would continue to do so until age 35. Nothing else. No exception. Whether the height of blazing summer or the dead of frozen winter, it was always the same. It was always shants.

My eggplant socks clashed beautifully with the golden-brown, hybrid legwear. My bruise-hued wing-tip shoes were so worn and damaged from salted, winter streets and general misuse that they were broken at the toes. I think I wore a white sweater that day; way too large, in the style of the early 90s. Loose collar, little zig-zag dashes of yellow, pink and blue arranged in random tallies across the breast. The ensemble was loud, but gorgeous. Gaudy, but fun. Not unlike those delightfully outspoken strangers who I could still manage to hear at the Sinclair a quarter mile down the road.

Snowflakes fell to inhabit my curls. They sat on my brow, big and glittery, a bejeweled tiara. Don’t even get me started on my hair—my jewfro was special, the size of a baby elephant. A woolly mammoth. Truly, the motherfucker was terrifically large. Despite the cold, I couldn’t possibly cover up my pride and joy with a stocking cap. I didn’t know it then, but those curls would fall lank in later years. Gravity would have the last laugh. It always does.

Anyone sensible was indoors, so I had St. Paul all to myself. This was before Uber Eats and streaming services, so people were being social, meeting each other, feeding and entertaining themselves without the aid of digital assistance. I was the only asshole out on my own, out in the cold on the streets. I guess I was desperate, at odds with my fuck-the-world stance. I couldn’t ignore that I was also lonely, that I wanted to connect. I’d make a big show of pushing away. But really, I was just reaching out.

As a whole, I looked the part: a real attention-seeking, sullen youth. Anti-social misfit meets spotlight-seeking spoiled brat. Suburb kid moves to the city. Dime a dozen, even if the outfit and hair separated me just a little bit.

Outside the Mickey-D’s, I saw sad faces from within, each one buried behind a flat burger or one of those dinky apple pies, gloomy expressions lost in steaming, polystyrene cups. At the time, the month before, someone had made millions after suing for burning their hand on spilled, hot coffee. As a result, all the cups came with a warning: CAUTION: CONTENTS VERY HOT. It’s coffee. It better be fucking hot.

Without a vehicle, sometimes I walked the drive-thru. This action received mixed reviews. Smiles and winks at the service window; warnings from some tight-lipped manager that it better be the last time; cordial honks from the car behind me in the queue; heckling slurs from drunks trying to feed themselves and get home before they acquire another DWI. One time, at a Taco Bell, I got a marriage proposal with my Crispy Chicken Burrito. On this particular occasion, however, the night had been as cold as a Dairy Queen Blizzard. With the elements as harsh as they had been, I elected to go inside.

The girl taking my order was enormous, but her face was perhaps the prettiest human visage I had ever seen outside of Hollywood. Her smile was impossibly white and seemed to come easy. She had  massive cheeks that shined like grease on a Big Mac patty. I read her name-tag: Patty. Our hands touched when she handed me my burger. I sort of fell in love.

I found a seat facing the menu and the staff. I took my scalding coffee and read the label. I traced a finger across the bold, capital letters, large and red. CAUTION: CONTENTS VERY HOT. I burned my lip on my first sip. I winced and spilled a dribble on my lap, gasped in pain. I had been warned. There will be no suing this golden empire. I guess I’ll have to make my millions by nefarious trade, or —Lord save me— by climbing the ladder. 

I watched the big girl, playing out fantasies in my mind that included dinky apple pies and straining for breath. I gazed at Patty, large and red. She saw me and smiled. She waved, her press-ons like sorceress talons the exact shade of her work shirt. It was impossible not to think of an awkward handjob.

I smiled back and drank my coffee, which still burned. I devoured the image of Patty with unblinking eyes, savaging away at low-grade beef with my molars. I wished for nothing more than to go home with this woman, to feel the weight of her love on top of me. Corrosive, my beverage burned my tongue, scourged my oesophagus down to my core.

Patty turned away from my leering, looked to the door when it opened with a gust of frigid air. No one was there. It was like a ghost had walked through the entrance, paused, and changed its mind. Through the open door, I heard laughter. It was far away, muted by innumerable snowflakes. I got up to go, waved goodbye to Patty’s epic backside. She was flipping burgers, miles always.

I hefted my mighty jewfro. I brushed burger shrapnel from my shants. I walked out into a city buried in snow, and, trudging along, searched for something, anything. I took a sip and frowned—without the slightest warning, my coffee had gone totally cold.