INTRODUCTION
The physical alarm clock sounds at 7:13 AM. The clock was set by pressing a button until the digits happened to align at this arbitrary time, and it has remained so ever since. He rises without thought, yet with a curious form of recognition for the clock's simplicity, its liberation from the tyranny of sleep biometrics, and from the performance of proper sleep hygiene.
The apartment sits equidistant from three strip malls in San Diego. He chose it when he saw the "Now Leasing" sign out front that afternoon and there were a few balloons tied to the railing out front. The gray laminate introduces a coenaesthesis of use; it is a product of chemistry that destroys the sweetness of touch. The walls bear the scars of a failed patchwork, a desperate history of tenure performed in haste. The light is sufficient, providing a literalness that prepares the occupant to accept the room as a finished, ready-made world. Living here is closer to renting a waiting room than to occupying an apartment. This cocoon makes no demands of its inhabitant.
He brushes his teeth with the tube of Colgate Kids that was on the middle shelf at Ralphs1 on his last visit. The paste cleans his teeth. He spits, he rinses, he leaves the bathroom.
Breakfast is whatever the refrigerator surrenders with the least preparation, usually a bowl of Kroger bite-sized shredded wheat under the half-gallon of 7Select whole milk he keeps on the top shelf, its expiration date forever three days away. He drinks a lot of milk. Milk over cereal, milk in his protein shake, a warm glass of Hershey's milk before bed. The milk is cheap, calorically dense, low effort, high in protein, and 7Eleven is two blocks away. His purchase of milk from 7Eleven is an instinctual recognition of its status as emergency milk, transient milk, as a utilitarian fluid relegated to the fringes of consumer space. His relationship with the milk transcends its functionality and he finds a form of communion impossible within the economy of perpetual signification. He loves the 7Select milk, no less than he loves a gallon of Strauss A2 Organic Grass Milk.
On the counter is a Best Buy credit card statement he has not opened. He applied for the card four years ago while purchasing a Vizio television, at the prompting of the salesperson. Since then he has used it sporadically, usually when a cashier saw the blue plastic in his wallet and mentioned the 5% back. The account's vitality is contingent upon his unconditional willingness to endure the nebulous excess of America's credit system. He takes the path of maximum resistance through commercial space without the burden of performing financial literacy.
A jacket hangs by the door. He bought it off a clearance rack at JC Penney on a tri-yearly mall visit, on a day he had come in to replace a pair of worn Cole Haan sneakers. The jacket covers the body for thirty-six dollars.
The commute to the medical device company in Sorrento Valley takes seventeen minutes in a 2013 Toyota Yaris. He likes his job. He likes that it "helps people." In six years he has migrated through several positions via the entropy of corporate restructuring, and his performance reviews remain consistently average, as excellence and failure both require intention, and for him the labor of intention is unachievable.
At lunch the car drifts towards his rotation of fast casual sandwich joints. He arrives at Jersey Mike's and orders his usual: a plastic bottle of Pepsi and the #12 Cancro Special (cold roast beef and pepperoni), a sandwich often declared "the worst" by clickbait articles and Reddit posts referencing the chain. He eats the sandwich in the driver's seat in roughly three large bites, enjoying each one equally.
In the evening he watches Netflix. Tonight, it is Small Soldiers (1998). At some point he falls asleep with the TV still glowing dimly on his dresser.
He wakes up, but before returning to bed he prepares Ovaltine chocolate milk in a Burger King promotional glass. He read online once that chocolate milk is a superior post-workout beverage, and he has never revisited the claim. He turns his phone off forty-six minutes before sleep. The number came from nowhere. He reads whichever book happens to be closest to the mattress.
He has many dreams. He has no fantasies.
