Chapter Five- Little Polish Boy

    “Alan!” shouted Mrs. Lisiewicz, knocking on Alan’s bedroom door, “Come out of that hobbit hole! You’ve been in there all day!”

        Alan was pacing back in forth with a ballpoint pen and a piece of parchment in hand, thinking of the perfect idea for a poem. The sounds of a train passing by echoed through the house as Alan kept pacing, “I’m writing a poem!” shouted Alan.

        “I don’t care!” shouted Mrs. Lisiewicz, “You need to get out of your room! After all, it’s 7 at night and you haven’t left your room once today! You need to eat!”

        “I’ll eat when I’m done with this poem!” shouted Alan, “It’s all about this little Polish boy living in a small apartment. I just need to create rhymes for indefinite,”

        Mrs. Lisiewicz knocked on the door even harder this time, “You no open this door, you get no meal!”

        “Alright,” sighed Alan, “I’ll be out in just a second. Let me finish off this one line,”

        Alan came out of his room into the same dirty apartment. “Alan,” said Mrs. Lisiewicz, “We need to talk for a bit. You’re 26 and you’re still living with your parents. We can’t afford to have you living with us, you have to get a real job and buy your own apartment. Shoe shining is a job for a 12-year-old looking for extra cash, not a grown man,”

        “I can’t work in a factory!” complained Alan, “All the machinery and death that happens in there unsettles me. I’ve heard horror stories of working men getting caught in the machines and being crushed to death!”

        Mrs. Lisiewicz looked disappointedly at Alan, “Well,” she sighed, “You can always work downtown at a drugstore or at a hotel. I mean, we have the biggest hotel in the United States just down the road looking for employees! You would make the perfect bell hopper!”

        “Why would they ever accept an immigrant? Immigrants aren’t allowed to work in such high-end places!” questioned Alan getting angrier by the second.

        “You were born here, Alan, you’re not an immigrant in any way. Just because your father and I are Polish immigrants doesn’t mean you are by any chance!”

        “Fine,” stated Alan, “I’ll work in the Hotel Hightower starting whenever, I don’t know! I’ll move out once I have enough money to buy my own apartment, but first I’ll try publishing my poem to see if that’ll do any good!”

        Mr. Lisiewicz joined the conversation out of nowhere, “Alan,” he said comfortingly, “Let’s be honest. Your poems make you barely anything. It just costs more to publish them than what you actually make off of them. It’s time to lay the poems down for a while, OK?”

        “I can’t!” exclaimed Alan cheerfully as he looked straight into his parents’ eyes, “Poetry has always been a part of my life, and I’m not going to let it slip away! Even as a child, I could write a poem that’ll bring a tear to someone’s eye. No matter if my poems tanked, maybe this one won’t! ‘Flowers of the Wild’ didn’t tank!”

        “Fine,” said Mr. Lisiewicz, “But this poem ends up like every other poem you put out there, you’ll work at Hotel Hightower and buy your own apartment! I mean, you’re 26 for heaven’s sake!”

        Alan walked back into his room with a bowl of caramelized onions and sausage slices for dinner. He looked out the window and saw the city. Barbershop quartets performing in front of small crowds and rich ladies in extravagant clothes laughing as they popped into jewelry shops. A few cars sputtered down the road as lads inside waved their caps in the air like a flag. It seemed like a truly magical time.

        A bird flew by the window as a cloud of fog in front of Alan’s window lifted and revealed the immaculate Hotel Hightower with its wonders and amazements.

 

        A day flew by and Alan published his poem to the newspapers only to find newspapers scattered over the city sidewalks, trampled over and forgotten.

        Alan walked by looking for signs of interest in people reading the newspaper, but he could barely find any. In fact, he saw people dumping the newspaper into trash cans at the sight of seeing them.

        Alan went as far as asking people around the Hotel Hightower if they were reading his poem. Most shrugged and seemed not to care. His most interesting results were when a lady with curly black hair told him that she’d rather bathe in medicine than read his poem again. Everyone else seemed to share the same bias towards his poem. No matter where he went, nobody really cared about his poem in any which way.

        Alan, upset by the fact that no one took interest in his poem, headed to the Hotel Hightower for his first “real” job.