Who needs to proof read? Pah!

I am afraid of the dark. Like the older waiter in a Clean, Well-Lighted Place, I’m afraid of all the things you lose inside the night and the dark. I don’t wander the streets at night, waiting for the sun to rise, but the idea has occurred to me before. If I could just escape the darkness, walk until it didn’t exist any more....I understand what he seeks. However, I don’t try to escape this fear of the dark by being a café, but instead by being a bodega. A bodega is loud, crowded, it doesn’t offer the opportunity to address the darkness. Yes, the lights are dim, but it offers just enough light, and just enough shadow, so that things can be whatever you want them to be. As long as I keep the lights dim, I can see people as whomever I want to. If it gets too bright, you’re forced to face reality and see everything that’s there, and everything that isn’t; If it gets too dark, it all disappears. It is all about that balance, giving myself just enough leeway to make them what I want them to be, and hide the person I really am.
Should the lights ever get too low, should they go out, I can always hold onto the sound. As long as I have that hustle and bustle in my thoughts, and in the world surrounding me, I never have to face the silence, even if I face the dark. Should it ever get too bright, a noise helps to create a distance. ‘What was that you said? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch it, I couldn’t hear.’ The noise creates room for interpretation, the noise creates room for denial. Not only does it affect what I hear, and also what I say and how I say it. Sometimes you have to raise your voice, in any other situation it would seem unnecessary, but you have to speak loudly to be heard.
To most, a bodega is scattered, unorganized and disorderly, but if you truly know it, recognize the way it works, there is a pattern. There are unspoken things that you do, and do not do; unseen practices and procedures to be followed. There are certain things I do, for reasons unbeknownst to be, because that is the way it’s done. Additionally, there are certain things I won’t do, because it is not the way I know things are supposed to work. Likewise, there are somethings people involved with me are expected to do, and not to do. It is not a strict code, sometimes the routine will vary, and yet there are consequences for breaking procedure, because everything means something. Where you sit, the way you buy your drink, it may not mean anything to some people, but it can change everything.
One of the most attractive things a bodega can offer someone who is afraid of the dark, is a certain sense of irony. The two things should be contrary, they seem nonsensical, and yet it is possible for the two to complement each other- a paradox. The balance can seem so fragile, as if any moment the scales could tip and you could be submerged in the silent darkness, be completely alone. You’re so close to it, and yet you can still remain in the clear. The situation doesn’t offer any chance to concur your fear, but the act of constantly staring it in the face gives you a sense of control, and usually the things that seem the most reckless, without rhyme or reason, are the things that are really just a form of control. Sometimes the things that make you feel the most powerful, like living so near to your fear of the dark, are also the things that make you the weakest.