Benevolence is Bliss

The stigmas and connotations of the life of a suburban kid who knows nothing of pain and suffering being violently shoved into the ADULT phase of life has left me weak and feeble at the barely-adult-age of twenty. My hair is beginning to gray and falls out slowly with little white heads at each end. I don’t comb it anymore. If I do, the bald spot is more prevalent. My hair yells out of my scalp and reaches for the stars all hours of the day in long flowing curls like a mountain in a Dr Suess book. Bat wing purple crescents accent my eyes so I look like a drug addict. I suspect this is from wearing glasses for fifteen years. Even with glasses, my eyes are just for show. I can’t even tell what color they are my vision is so horrible, and no one has been kind enough to tell me. The only praise I can give my black specs is they cover the evidence of insomnia, lulling those interviewing me into a false reality.

Maybe he’s a good kid.

I can see it on their face.

He’s just hit a rough spot.

Their smile.

He seems normal enough.

But they have no idea. The foreman hires me on death.

As I work, a pregnant woman barely old enough to call herself such trots around with a Tapout boyfriend that will never become a husband and only a FATHER in the legal sense of the term enter my aisle to hunt for toys and gifts. It’s Christmas time. The commercialization of caring. I sweat as they move closer to my position on Earth. Her belly pooches out like a zeppelin ready to burn up in the atmosphere with me holding the lighter. I’m deconstructing a cardboard display for the new "HOLIDAY" fragrances by Paris Hilton and other esteemed tween upper crust.

While my co-workers HONK-HONK and COPY THAT over the radio into my ear, I silently detest what has become of the world. I share this obsession with no one. I might be alone in this. Everyone around me seems not to notice the horror of the roles they play each morning, noon and night. They just continue to shop. I take four deep breaths that turn into a hundred panicked ones. My head is screaming:

YOU ARE KILLING OTHERS JUST AS THEY ARE- WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

STANDING HERE WHILE PISS AND SORROW FUMIGATE UNDER YOUR 7 LAYER EPIDERMIS AND ALL YOU DO IS COMPLAIN- WHAT MAKES YOU BETTER?

THAT YOU REALIZE WHAT IS GOING ON, YET YOU SYMPATHIZE?

FUCK NO- YOU ARE JUST AS AWFUL AS THE REST.

And I will not forget that.

My boss moves past the pregnant woman and tells me to pick up the pace. She isn’t paying me to drag ass. Her jowls shake as her mouth masticates on air. The hair on her head is blond. Bleach blond and snobby. When she speaks, it’s like I have x-ray vision. The stretch marks underneath her clothes are as apparent as though we were getting intimate. These marks tell me she's had one too many children and eventually, broke down. She no longer limits her condescending tones to her kids, NO; she has extended the ritualistic behavior to every person she contacts. She’s right- she isn’t paying me to drag ass, she is paying me to off myself.

Day by day I wonder how all this really happened.

Our lives are those of dung beetles working uphill and never going anywhere except back down.

No matter how many floors you pass each day in the elevator, someone is shoveling feces down your throat with a black chimney sweeps broom.

It isn’t enough that we will someday be forgotten, the world has to run the extra mile.

In our current situation (if that tastes better going down), weaklings and imbeciles alike roam freely as though the world is a microfiber pillow to rest their lazy heads, wasting space, oxygen and resources for the extent of their existence. If systematic government had never come to be, working to survive in the literal sense would hold sway. Population would be under control. Only the strong and cunning would survive. The thought crosses my mind and inside I scream,

WHAT- YOU THINK YOU’D BE IN THOSE NUMBERS?

YOU THINK YOU’D BE ABLE TO HUNT, KILL, CLEAN AND COOK ALL YOUR MEALS WHILE AIDING YOUR FAMILIARS?

HA!

YOU WOULD BE JUST AS DEAD AS ANY OTHER HUNDRED AND TWENTY POUND TOO TIMID WASTE OF SPERM.

I consider this, and accept it as true. That is my sacrifice. I would die so the world would be free of the payment plan our birth in the modern age insures.

I digress.

My chest hurts. I want to vacate this job title just as I want to vacate this town just as I want to vacate my body.

But something keeps me here.

It's nothing special to you. I'm not even sure why you're here, really.

A smile so benevolent dawns before my eyes, and yet, in memory is a poor excuse watches me from down the way. I expect these motions, for this is not the first time supernova explosion eyes on the same face squint as rosy cheeks poof out and expose dimples and a potential scar on the chin. Her neck cranes this monument and light flows over at the climax.

As I ride cloud nine on these endorphins pumping through me like a drug I just slammed in the vein, I cannot hear my boss. The co-workers on the radio become muffled and distant. The couple littering the planet with another corpse disappears. I would take this drug everyday for the rest of my life if I could. I guess I’ll have to settle for a few times a week for now.

Hannah Montana's half folded face slips out of my grasp and falls in a slow motion plane crash towards the concrete floor. I anticipate a SONIC BOOM- something to ruin my moment of pure bliss, but as physics dictate, the cardboard lands soft as a feather against warm skin.

I smile wide and natural, an occurrence that those taking my photo will only witness if they catch me off guard.

I point my face at hers and we stare at one another to see who will look away first. Some kind of mutual game.

That face takes over my mind.

That smile.

I focus all my energy on this moment.

What keeps you here?