Lost at the Y

It was crazy how crazy I felt.
Winding my prayers with the dark street, hoping it would connect.
It was already 7:02, I was mad at myself I didn't leave earlier.
You should always leave earlier when your going somewhere you've never gone before.
I didn't realize the oven was going to take so long to pre-heat my dinner.
"and I thought frozen pizza was supposed to be easy to cook",
I groaned, as I gave my fist a shook.

I felt so rushed I had missed the turn.
So now I'm hoping this back road, dark with anxiety will circle me in.
It was my first time going to this group; or to anything like this.



The road did connect.
7:04, pulling into a parking space.
"Geez, this YMCA is big",
"I'm not in Everett anymore," I thought to myself.

There were karate classes and skateboard ramps in the windows as I ran around to the front.
Part of me wants to stay and watch the brown belts do 360's,
but my punctual foot is 4 minutes ahead of me.
I open the first of double glass doors as someone exits, I always want to hold the door for them, but they have their own door, and it's up to them if they want to accept my generosity or not, except for tonight I'm less generous, and as soon as they start to open their own door, I rush in mine, and repeat this exercise through the next doors as well.

I ask the young man at the front, "Where is the writers group?"
"3rd door down on the right", he says.
I rush down, worried I'm going to be walking in in the middle of an epic reading, or something.
The door is locked and the room is dark.  "what?  How could this be?"
I walk up and down the hallway looking for other options, but there are just skateboarders and white belts everywhere.
I walk back to the front desk lad, and when I inform him of the tragedy, he double checks the schedule and shrugs his shoulders, "sorry dude."
"So does that mean it was cancelled, then?"
"I guess so."

I had been trying so hard to transcend time, and now I'm meandering back to the parking lot in listless disbelief.  I slowly take the walk of irritation back to my car, then I look up, and realize I have absolutely no idea where I parked.  I walk around for a few minutes, half looking for my car, half soaking in the spectacles through the windows, half trying not to look suspicious to the Mom's pushing baby stroller's past me.  "It's OK", I want to tell them, "I was just in a hurry to become a famous writer, but apparently it's not happening, so now I'm just trying to remember where I left what brought me here."
There's this huge guy lifting even huger weights, he's walking around with like 800lbs on his shoulder like it's a 1990's boom box, or something.  He has this thick black hair rolled up on top of his head like a bee hive.  I'm trying not to stare, but I wonder if his weights were a ghetto blaster what they would be playing.

Then I see a sepia toned room, with people in vest's smoking pipes drinking brandy by a fireplace.  "Holy crap!"  It's Stephen King, Joyce Meyers,  Walt Whitman, and Shel Silverstein.  Stephen is holding a piece of paper up as he reads a line or 2 and they all point and chuckle.  I wonder what they're reading, as I realize the pieces of paper that were folded up in my back pocket were missing.  "They're reading my work!"  I exclaim with giddy realization.

"What was that?" Someone asks. I turn and see a security guard holding his flashlight like a night stick.  "Oh nothing, I was just.." I turn back to the room to point, bus it's all dark and nothing is there.
"Can I take a quick look at your membership card?"  The guard asks.
"I don't have one."
"So why are you here?"
"Well, I thought I knew, but what I thought turned out to not exist, and now I'm just lost" I said.
"Ah, you're the third person this week", said the guard.
"Really?"  I said, wondering if he knew what I was talking about.
He handed me a key.
"What's this for?" I asked.
"Do you know why lost people ask questions?"  He asked.
"Because they're lost?"  I asked.
"No", he said.  "It's because they don't think they know where they're at."

I looked back towards the sepia room and it was still dark.
Then looked back and the guard was gone.  "Did I just imagine that?"
I looked at the key he had handed me, and it was just my own car keys, and I realized my car was actually right in front of me.  I got in my car and it smelt like pipe tobacco and brandy.  I looked over to the weight room windows and the strong guy with the ghetto blaster weights bee hive haircut was gone.  I checked my back pocket and my papers were still not there.  So I went home; as I wondered to myself, where had my writing gone?