White Noise

Daryl Gussin

“When I was a kid I would lay in bed unable to fall asleep. Now, I’m constantly waking up, unable to stay asleep.”

“Why don’t you just get up and do something?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know…masturbate?”

“Trust me, I don’t think the lack of masturbating is the problem.”

“I mean, you live on a busy all-night street, maybe it’s just too loud. Any passing vehicle like a bus or something could wake you up and you’d have no idea that’s what caused it.”

“So I need to move?”

“Or maybe just get a white noise machine?”

“I thought the city was my white noise machine.”

“What the fuck did you just call me?” A rumbling, gravely voice increased in volume outside the man’s apartment. The noise bellowed from across the street. “I’m your fuckin’ what…motherfucker!”

You can make the cops angry, you can make the local gangsters angry, you can aggravate the Franchise Tax Board till the end of time, but for the love of all that is peaceful in this world: never piss off this city!

The two friends were frozen in terror as they looked through the curtains out onto the opposite side of the street as a storm drain mouth with two parking meter eyes deeply inhaled only to spray sewer water and street-trash across the entire block, “I’m not your fuckin’ white noise machine!”

The sound set off a series of car alarms and caused a pandemonium of parrots to vacate the nearby tree they were sleeping in.

Though too quiet to be perceived by the human ear, the vibrations of Randy Newman’s 1983 hit song “I Love L.A.” emanated from the not too far away Dodger Stadium.

                                                            ))) We love it!)))