New Data Coming In

What else should I be, and where? I’ve been taking an online course in computer programming, but I almost never leave the grounds. I have Anthony Rother muzik piped through the house now and it keeps me edgy and somewhat frantic. A cover letter with my resume, such as it is, sits unsealed on top of the television that rarely gets turned on. Also, I’m probably drinking too much coffee.
I keep running into a young woman at the 7-Eleven. She’s all emo, but in a good way. She told me she was punk in the eighties, and though her appearance belies the age she would have to be, I believe her. She might be recalling the nineties and just got her decades mixed up. It took her long enough to open up.
She smells like attar of roses, and claims I’m fortunate to have met her as she is today because when she was pumped full of teen spirit, in the days before Kurt Cobain turned himself into a memory, she says, she never used to bathe regularly, and though her au natural odors were offputting, she enjoyed the privacy they afforded. She could walk through crowds with aplomb and did not have to stay down in a hole.
I haven’t had my hair cut in months, and the other day when I just threw on an old flannel shirt to run up to the store for some cigarettes, I met Andrea there, and she told me I looked like Kurt, and that was the highest compliment she could pay a stranger. I reminded her that we couldn’t really consider ourselves strangers by this time, and she said, “Yeah, whatever.”
I was stocked up on dry noodle soup and invited her over for lunch, and she said she’d have to think about it. I asked, “Do you work?” never thinking she might still be going to school, and she said, “You mean for money?” So what was there to think about?
Andrea is about to change her mind. I can feel it. I’ve changed mine.
I decided to have my hair cut, and send out the resume. I don’t want to remind anyone of Kurt Cobain. It’s going to take a while, however, to leave off the digital music and the coffee. Those kinds of things are habit forming, but if she does show up at my door, I know there are some Pearl Jam and Nirvana albums in the record collection gathering dust in the basement.