It’s after noon and he’s still passed out , hungover . He has a few books sitting on the nightstand that I’m sure he intended to read before he knew he’d spend the day in bed . Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club . I gave him Fight Club years ago and he still re-reads it . He claims Victor from Resurrection Man is crazier than Tyler Durden .

I can’t sit in this room all day when there are two malls five minutes away . I grab my t-shirt and jeans and head for the door , leaving him a note in case he ever decides to wake up and join the land of the living .

There are so many stores in the International Plaza just pleading with me to buy something .  Make a statement , stand out . Be fashionable . Be remembered .

Paulson, Matthew. International Plaza Mall Tampa Fl. 2011. http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewpaulson/5830954046/. Oct 18, 2013.

I always have trouble with that .  I’m more about blending into the background . Maybe I want to be forgettable .

“Image conveys your inner self . Image is a critical component of you .”

I don’t come to the mall to shop . I come to the mall to people watch . That’s what my image allows me to do . Remain invisible .

These people are so obsessed with how they look . The perfect dress . The perfect shoes . It’s both fascinating and depressing . I’ll never understand it .

He calls me about an hour into my adventure . He knows I don’t know how to shop . He even commented earlier on my lack of jewelry . We both know I suck at being a woman . It’s time I head back to the person who notices me .

He moved from his mom’s house to South Tampa shortly after I left the city three years ago . I would’ve guessed South Tampa’s relatively cheap based on its appearance , but the fact that he shared a one bedroom apartment with seven other guys tells me otherwise . That’s why we only ever stay in hotels when I come visit .

I wouldn’t call his neighborhood a wasteland , but it also wouldn’t be my ideal location to live .

He’s lived with two different pot dealers and claims the police couldn’t care less about the drugs in the area . He’s told me about break-ins he knew happened at the apartment complex next door , and the time a girl threatened to “have him sliced up” at a gas station . He called it an empty threat , but it still says something about the area .

  

Is this what you’d call an inner city? I’m not sure .

He always tells me there’s nothing to do in South Tampa in terms of entertainment , so we make trips across town to find things to do . 

 

1

 “They don’t want to see the inner-city kids with nothingbetter to do than walk up and down the piss and trash-littered streets .”

There are perks to having a million different worlds stuffed into one big city . It’s not too difficult to find a new one if necessary .

1: http://www.keeppbcbeautiful.org/cigarette.htm, Oct. 4, 2013.