Youth (short)

In my youth, I used to bound down stairs like an olympian. But now my knees hurt. I reach the last of my basement steps with a sigh of relief, and reach for the light switch. That’s when I realize that the light switch is at the top of the stairs, as it has been for the past 40 years that I’ve lived in this house. My mind is staring to fade as well, but I never bounded anything with it, like I did the stairs with my knees. 

  By the time I force myself back up to the top of the stairs, I decide that whatever I needed wasn’t worth going back down for. I go to the living room and plop on the couch. My back now hurts as well. I grab the remote and turn on the TV, but nothing happens. The screen stays blank. I groan and press it a few more times before realizing that I had gone downstairs to get batteries for the remote. 

  I sit there for a moment, wondering what has happened to me. I used to be so spry, never wanting a wife or children. Now I sit here alone, full of fear and confusion and anger that can’t be saturated by my basic cable package. I try to sleep and I try to die, but nothing seems to work.

Nothing special

Every day I go out and do something. I work, I do standup, I get something to eat. I leave my apartment and I do something. What they don’t tell you about the real world is that this is a struggle. It’s easy when your parents are constantly pushing you to do stuff and signing you up for shit that you don’t want to do.

You don’t even think about it, you’re constantly just being pushed along down a path until eventually you feel the pushing stop and you have to decide for yourself what to do and where to go. And it’s very, very easy to do nothing at all. For to do nothing is the preferred state of all human beings. And nothing has become so easy to accept. We can eat whatever we like, standing won’t be required for more than 4 hours a day, if at all. 

Some people get paid to do nothing. They live in their suburban homes where nothing is promised to happen, they commute through organized roads at a time when car and traffic safety are at all-time highs, and they go and sit down to click on random computer files until 5 PM. They sit there, clicking weaving through the same parts of the internet and their precious emails, fearing that somehow their lives will be affected by the 250,000 dead Syrians.

These days, you can even do something while you’re doing nothing. It used to be that if you were doing nothing, you had to really be doing nothing. Then somebody invented the cigarette, and the world changed. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to just do nothing. Something had to be included with nothing. Now we have smartphones, which are nothing disguised as everything. I have never seen a person on their smartphone who didn’t look like an idiot. They could be looking at galaxies or complex scientific equations and they still look like fools. 

Ideally, this wouldn’t be what I choose to write. I would be writing about some incredible, imaginative world filled with wonder and amazement. But I just can’t do that. For one thing, my imagination feels like it’s been abducted. When I try to think creatively these days, my brain just gets flooded with images of the modern world such as Donald Trump, DJ Khaled, Kobe Bryant, Syria, abortion, gun violence and Facebook. So in this moment, I have no imagination. I’m not sure if it was stolen from me or if I had never had it to begin with. 

Secondly, and perhaps this is the causation of the my initial problem, but I feel like the world doesn’t deserve any fiction right now. Fiction is a distraction, apropos of nothing. It seems as meaningless to me now as it ever has, but what could ever take its place in literary art? Autobiographical tales seem worthless now that our lives are being downloaded onto the internet. 

I dreamt of my Grandmother last night. We sat and talked at her kitchen table while she smoked cigarettes. At some point in the dream I realized that I was talking to her, and I broke down and cried. She got up and left the table, and then I woke up. No tears in the real world. Clearly the dream was fake, but it wasn’t really fiction.Not the fiction I’m thinking of, at least. While perhaps a bit mystic, the dream was too realistic to turn into a story. In my mind, realistic fiction is as good as lies.

But to describe spaceships or rainbow worlds or alternate realities seems like a disservice to anyone reading this. Maybe that’s what I tell myself because I can’t come up with anything interesting that lasts more than 200 words.

So to combat this, I go out and I do stuff. But no matter what I do, no matter how interesting my experience is and no matter what new thoughts enter my brain, I still come back to my filthy apartment and plop down in front of my computer to browse reddit and Facebook. I smoke too many cigarettes and joints until I can’t feel a thing, then I stare out into the Brooklyn night sky waiting to think of something that will change the world.

A Tragedy Divided Over Time.

Voodoo lady, state your name. Why don’t you talk to me? Come on baby, I’m not so bad. I know my breath stinks and my knees buckle when most people’s would stay firm. But I’ve got a nice laugh and some stories to tell you. I’m not looking for much in return. Just a little eye-contact. 

It’s 1 AM. I want to go home and smoke what’s left of my consciousness away. This is my last chance of the night, and you already have your back to me. I scream your name over and over again until my throat hurts. I do two back flips and don’t even whisper “ta-dah.” I even try some of the lines I scribbled before I sat down next to you.

Still nothing. Why do I even want to talk to you in the first place? You’re mean, and I know what you offer me. Shame and a feeling a self-satisfaction that lasts for no more than 30 minutes. You promise me a life of variety, but I cannot recall ever enjoying that. At the same time, the ever-present lie of the consistent lifestyle was always in my face. The only thing I ever enjoyed that was consistent was alone-time. But even that was a lie, since I was never really alone for as I long  wanted to be.

Maybe that’s why I’m so enamored by you, voodoo lady. You leave me alone for long enough, but I still know you’re there. I can talk at you for as long as I want and I’m never promised a response. You’re a consistent disappointment which compliments my loneliness. If you ever talked back, it might ruin things. Or maybe it would make things better, I guess it all depends on what I said to get your attention. 

I follow you through bars and coffee shops all over town. You talk to the other guys, even some women. But not me. Am I too awkward? Is that it? Are you interested in older guys? Not too old, obviously. You’re as cold to the geezers as you are to me. It’s true, I’ve  bonded with them over it.

I resent you, but looking at your form is addicting. Every curve is a reminder of my incompetence, and every turn of your head brings me hope. But I see your tastes and I want to change them. I want to improve you and evolve you in ways that you never thought possible. And I want you to change me. You have already. You make me wonder what comes next. 

Old world values tell me to stay away from you, but new world values tell me there’s no point in doing anything. So I might as well sit here and wait for your response. I know you see me. Every time I even thinking about getting up to leave you turn and face me. You might not even smile, but your reaction is enough to encourage me to try again.

Voodoo lady, I have too much time to be impatient with you. I grow aggravated, get restless in my seat, maybe even go silent. But I will always be sitting next to you, smelling your cheap perfume and watching you sip your drink and clap your hands for others.