Scene In A Parking Lot

I had a quiet moment at The Asylum last week, the morons were not around and I was temporarily alone.

Standing at the cash register looking out the enormous window that looks out over the parking lot.

I enjoy this window because it offers me a perspective. I watch real life happening out there. People coming, people going. The Asylum is located in a large plaza and there is a lot of activity.

The perspective comes from the fact that I am shackled to Bizarro World, an upside down world filled with morons, psychopaths and mental defectives. Working in this place and searching for logic is like breathing under water and expecting to live.

It just ain't happening.

The perspective comes from knowing that these people are living their lives as I drown. They are most likely not coming from or going to work, they are most likely running errands, taking care of business, maybe shopping for fun, you know, just doing life's little things.

So I look out there and try to quell my murderous instincts.

Last week two cars pull up, park side by side,  a man gets out of one, a woman out of the other. They talk a little, laugh a little, it's obvious that they know each other well. Youngish, maybe late twenties, early thirties.

They start transferring stuff from the guy's car to the woman's car. Boxes, knapsacks, a two foot small imitation Christmas tree. A fair amount of stuff.

In the middle of the activity the woman stops, draws the guy towards her and kisses him the way every man wants to be kissed.

Passionately. Intensely.

They linger a little, close, and then get back to loading up her car.

When they are done she pulls him in again and kisses him passionately. He, being a typical male, runs his hand down to her ass which she promptly relocates to her back.

Again, they linger, talk a little, then finally climb into their cars.

They drive up to the parking lot's exit side by side. When the traffic allows, he turns right and peels out, burning rubber, screeching tires.

She turns left and drives quietly away.

It was an intense experience. There was nothing voyeuristic about it. I was mesmerized by the scene because I knew something heavy was going down.

I witnessed lives changing. Lives changing right before my eyes. An ending, a beginning.

There was love there,  anger and disappointment, there were dashed dreams and hope.

Somebody made a mistake, somebody made a bad decision, somebody made a life changing decision.

Took me a little while to settle down, thinking about how we humans interact. How intentions are pure but get twisted, how we think we know our hearts and then act in contradiction to our nature. Our emotions.

Our best interests. Our own welfare, physically and emotionally.

I watched because I was seeing real life being played out right before my eyes. The heart stuff, the soul stuff, the real deal. Not the superficial shit we have to deal with every day.

It was a tough scene in a parking lot.

I wonder how many other parking lots had their asphalt melted by emotion that day.