This is the place where I wasted my life. Here is the room where I waited for you. (Not that I knew what I was waiting for.) Here is a pad where I wrote down your name. Here is a stain where the mattress used to lie. And all this remembering – this painful reverie – makes a man hungry for burger and fries. So I will cross the mighty parking lot – the concrete divider by the retail shops – to the old shopping plaza where nobody goes. By the Bowl-O-Rama, the Hit Or Miss, the Florsheim, Payless, and the moral kiosk. Concrete windows and ancient grease, cinderblocks, space for lease. Walking through the drive-thru, the manager says “Hi”. Before this was a Burger Express this was an Arthur Treacher’s, and before that, this place was the Lucky Wong’s. Eighty square foot working kitchen with functional features, doomed to be the home of third-rate fast food restaurants. I like the system here, I like the yellow and white. I like the stupid crown they give you when you purchase your Sprite. If I could, you know that I would stay here all night. Kicking back in the plastic booth makes me feel all right. Before this was the Lucky Wong’s, this was a Nathan’s Famous. For about six months, they tried this baby as a Jack In The Box. They tried giveaways, promotions, and generally acting shameless, and blameless as us nameless patrons of fast-food restaurants. Not too many in here now except for me and the flies and a little brat who’s crying ‘cause he got mustard in his eyes. His dad is scraping it off the back of the bun with a butter knife. It’s all so deeply horrible, it’s great to be alive. Before this was a jack In The Box, this was a Ponderosa. Before that, it gets sketchy, but I remember a frightening Lums. The bathrooms were impeccable but the tables could not be grosser. They serve delicious irony in fast-food restaurants. Oh, did I tell you I got a job? Yeah, I’ve been working in the transport trade. I don’t know what it is or what the hell I do, but I do get paid. Why don’t you meet me at the Burger Express? I could buy you the Whammer, or the Slammer, or the Hammer. Please say yes! But I suppose you wouldn’t like that. You’d prefer something natural. One more instantiation of how you couldn’t care less about the mighty parking lot or the concrete divider by the shops by the old retail plaza that used to be hopping when I was a kid and my momma took me shopping! I remember sitting at the counter at Schnackenberg’s and counting my pennies for a shot at the brass ring. “This box does not contain instant winner – please try again!” Before I was Napoleon, I think I was Cleopatra. In a past life, don’t you think I was Genghis Khan? But now I’m me, and I’m duty-free like a truck dispatcher doomed to spend my life in third-rate fast food restaurants. Nobody looks at anybody – we’re all nothing to see. There’s no one within miles who could stir feelings of jealousy. This really is the perfect place for a loser like me – scarfing double cheeseburgers and letting beings be. Before this was a strip-mall, this was a colonial wheat field. Before that, this land was Lenape burial ground. And me, I take my stand by the salad bar with the plastic spit shield, filling little ketchup cups and hanging around. But I’m not going down. I don’t care – I’m not going down.