Presumptions of a degenerate hipster

It's early morning. He rolls out of his bed. It's barely even a bed at all. It's more reminiscent of a futon, with less than appealing back support. It has wheels and squeaks when he gets up. But at least it makes extra room for his book collection, a collection organized and tagged with a most delicate precision. He walks to the bathroom across the hall, looking in his roommate's bedroom as he skulks by. She has a King sized mattress, the bed takes up half the room, the room twice as big as his. "Fucking bitch, try sleeping on my cot for one goddamned night," he mumbles to himself. An unlikely outburst from the boy of silence and restraint, the king of the mysterious pretension, jeff proehl.

Jeff finds solace in a breakfast of tofu flakes and crushed raspberries. Though the taste is strong, and the texture grating, he can feel the world changing around him, bit by bit, person by person. It screams out for help, and he will try, in the only way he can, to heed the call.

He gets out of the house an hour before work starts, if only to avoid Renee's early morning mood swings. The walk to his favorite spot is muggy, but a cool breeze blows the flopping red hair out of Jeff's face just long enough to catch a glimpse of the Sears Tower on the horizon. He sits on a bench about a block away from WHOLE FOOD INC, reading a dostoyevsky novel, pondering the ways in which time and interpersonal relationships bend around each other. A squirrel runs up a tree close by, and he gets up, attending to the majesty of nature which has aroused his spirit. The squirrel darts about the tree, through the branches, through what Jeff now realizes as life, and death, and everything in between. "Ahh, off to the grind," Jeff says to his new friend, and walks down to WHOLE FOOD INC. Inside, Mr. Snickerbottom, a lanky and bearded man, is waiting for him, as Jeff is the only employee coming in for the shop's opening. "Jeff," he says with a chuckle, "whole foods wait for no man!" Jeff remembers how fortunate he is to have such a pleasant boss, and a well-maintained, meaningful work environment. "To spread the love of Grain to man is God's work!" Jeff yells to Mr. Snickerbottom. The shop owner laughs a hearty laugh, knowing this was the first and last phrase Jeff would utter all day. He remembers when he was a young man, full of gusto and idealism like the budding Mr. Proehl. Jeff opens the shop's door, an old and rustic maple snapcase, and lets the sun shine in for another wonderful day in the world of natural food sales.

The day flies by, with a lot of new customers coming in, a busy day indeed. "Those fliers you taped up around town last week must finally be paying off," says Mr. Snickerbottom. Jeff nods politely, and goes back to silently attending the customers purchasing the fine products sold at WHOLE FOOD INC. He loves helping the interesting and diverse people who find their way into the shop. Jeff has his favorites; Mr. Applebaum, the eccentric gardener from Lincoln Park; Joe Schneedly, a sharp and charismatic marketing executive from downtown; Mrs. Marconese, the beautiful housewife from the suburbs, who takes day trips into the city if only to remind herself of the world beyond her fence. And Jeff truly enjoys fulfilling their agrarian fantasies, all of their natural food needs. He stands in solemn silence, pointing at aisles, motioning at the price on the register, saying nary a word. His demeanor gives to the patrons a certain hope, relaying an undeniably staunch support for the products in the store, and the lifestyle which they denote.

Soon it is 5 o'clock, and Jeff wonders how the time had gone so quickly. He despises his daily walk home to the apartment, the apartment where SHE is waiting. As he slowly wanders down the street, he wonders aloud to himself whether Renee's job at Urban Outfitters has made her even more bitter and resentful than usual. Or had she always been so coarse? "Aww shucks, what a pointless train of thought," Jeff says to a passing butterfly, whose wings flutter and blow in the warm Chicago wind. And as it had been, as it was, as it would be for the months ahead, he would return to his apartment, and bear the weight of the dreams that had been buried within.