Money Talks in the Middle West

So I moved to Indianapolis last Tuesday night while the night was dark and the weather cool. From Southern Illinois. The books I read and the people I know all say the same thing: The Big city's a "tough place". With mom and my girlfriend both dead and a recent diagnosis of Major Depression, I figured Indianapolis might be for me.

Main Town had no business or room for me, anyways. Ironically it was not "Main"-ly anything but ordinary, if not "Main"-ly overtly conservative church-going and unjust. When the most important lady in my life, my mother, died, the local church president asked me for one thousand dollars in order to tip the chanter during the funeral. I did. I was grieving and full of love for Jesus, unknowingly succumbing to someone or another's love for cash.

When the second most important lady in my life died, there was a similar motif in the splashing undercurrent. The fact is she didn't die physically but died romantically. I died emotionally and her family died morally. She left me for a billionaire executive's son. He wiped his butt with dollar bills!

I carried these events as scars everywheres I went, so I told myself "Enough is enough!" and got into my unsexy jaloppy and drove into Indiana for a new adventure. 

An hour into the drive, the speed of my jaloppy severely lowered as I neared the city, the skyscrapers said, "Hello!", from between thick, deep clouds. It was dark but the lights brightened the cornfields of middle Indiana like a mushroom-cloud panorama. I almost forgot the two ladies I lost when I looked up at

those buildings. Something about them screamed, "Go, go, go, get a move on and never look back." 

The highway succumbed to more competent and organized pavement. The concrete and brick rose up in claustrophobic air. Anyways, I'd made it, and that deserved a victory drink. In a more competent tale you might've thought a while before I finally found a pub. In blistering reality, I found five or six on the same block. That night, I chose "Henry's Bar and Grille". After parking, I entered the semi-crowded establishment.

I didn't search for long for a chair at the counter. I found one in the way, way, corner by the wall. I would be a wallflower that night(and probably my whole life!). I said a "What's up?", to the bartender. He said a "What can I get ya?", and I was blasting off. I was to get regrettably unbalanced for the next three

hours, but not because of the amount I drank. It was what I witnessed. At eight-thirty a man wearing a Hoosier's hat visibly sent a watermelon margarita to a "hot" looking woman at the end of the bar. After some unnecessary conflict between the woman, the bartender, and three of her friends, the information got

through to her: the watermelon margarita was from Hoosier-hat. She glanced over to the man who raised his hand and smiled. Hot lady had grabbed the thin stem of the glass, and fought the crowd on the way over to Hoosier-Hat. With thirty people watching hot lady placed the martini in front of him with a light clink.

Rejection needn't any words.

It was getting late. I wanted to find my hotel. Indianapolis was going to be grand! As I turned to leave I heard the entrance bell clink. I then discovered that the bartender was ringing a bell hanging over the cash register. "Finito!" the customers yelled. A guy in a three-piece suit, light grey, came in flashing a Hollywood smile. I fought the crowd on my way out, but somehow I learned who this guy was. Leonardo Finito. The guy's last name was above every License plate in Indiana. A car dealership tycoon. "Wow.", I thought. Finito did the cold-approach to hot lady and as I walked out he was already talking to her. Outside, my jallopy was parked next to a very sexy white Lamborghini. "Hmmm, must be Leonardo Finito's", I said to no one.

Hot lady and Finito burst outward into the night, as they kissed their way all the way back to the car, and home. I got into my unsexy car, angry for a reason unclear to me. I turned on the radio while I drove, to a blaring commercial with a dude announcing: "Get two for the price of one!" Later, as I laid my head to sleep that night there was one phrase in my mind's eye: "Money talks!"

I awoke the next morning to fighting and screaming from the outside alley right under my hotel window. There was a grocery store next door. "I just want to go home and relax! I've been working third shift! Use your own credit card, and don't use mine," Tired-and-broke-man said. 

"Honey Buns, our money is only in one account," Tired-and-broke-man's-wifey said. 

"Not anymore, you cleaned me up!" Tired-and-broke-and-probably-unfairly-accusatory-man replied. They got into a car and drove off with no groceries.

"Necessary argument", I said out loud in the empty hotel room. My anger I carried from Main Town was trying to emerge again. I ate breakfast and drove back to Main-Town that same day. The reason my adventure to Indianapolis was short lived, had to do with unresolved memories. I told myself, "Nowhere in this country and the world will anyone escape the power of money."

Before I returned home I stopped at a gas station to necessarily fill my tank with necessary gas, paid for by necessary cash I made at my necessary job. No wonder this green paper was so important!

Down the street there was a liquor store. Outside of it was a vagrant asking for money. I gave him my change from the gas attendant.

"It's not much, but it certainly adds up," I said. My bitterness at the church for its request dissipated. My bitterness at my ex-girlfriend dissipated also. And I was back living in Maine Town, Illinois, Middle West, U.S.A, Earth, Milky Way, Endless Universe.