Scapegoats to Living

Prologue


Here we are.
We begin in a tiny amniotic sac. Your own comfy hammock.
It’s like that old anatomy song. “The leg bone’s connected to the thigh bone”.

The birthing’s connected to the childhood.

Let’s examine the adolescent ages from when you’re born all the way up to puberty.

The childhood’s connected to the teenager.

Your life used to be about chasing each other around the front yard. Now it consists of staring at a bunch of squiggly lines hoping to catch a glimpse of a discolored nipple. Your existence is no longer about climbing the highest mountain, going into the eternal depths of the earth, or even reaching new planets or galaxies. It’s become a journey for the best way to get you off.
Self-gratification.

The teenager’s connected to the regretful old man.

The purpose of all of this is NOT to leave you with a newfound respect for life. It is NOT to make you feel all nice and tingly inside. This is NOT to make you smile or get you off. The purpose of all of this is to establish this very simple point:

THERE IS NO PURPOSE.

There are no more meaningful proclamations or amazing discoveries. There are no new philosophies or revolutionary outlooks. There are no extremes to be pushed to its greatest lengths. All we have left are distractions: Your habits. Your knitting. Your sketching. Your TV. Your weekly sermons. Your porno collections. They are all just to keep you from realizing that nothing matters.
Our parents, society, they all raised us to believe that we can make a difference. That we can change the world. The truth of the matter is there is nothing left to fight for, nothing to worry about, nothing to care about. Our past generations… our founding fathers… all of them worked so hard and fought for our sake so we can retain these nice, peaceful, boring, piece-of-shit lives we’ve come to call our own. Aren’t we lucky?

What you are reading at this very moment is only a distraction. Nothing more. You will come out of this with nothing accomplished, just another nice contribution to a faux distinguished and seemingly intelligent conversation. You can tell all of your lovely close friends about how you took time out of your disestablished life and actually read something… yippy for you…
To please all of you, the readers, I will put a format this whole story into a nice readable plot.
Tragedies tend to have a certain pattern to them: pain and anguish leads to the downfall leads to romance leads back to pain and anguish. And so this story will be told in regards to please your mind’s eye... you picky bastards.
Before you go any further you should know that these are the inner workings of a naïve, contradictive, insolent boy. A teenager. You can blame every eclectic thought on over-acting hormones. A lost pubescent boy, however you choose to perceive this, I don’t care… and neither should you.

******************************************************

This story begins in a bathtub spattered with red plaid upon white. Oh, how pathetically overdramatic. Basic teenage cry-for-help scene. We’ll just call this my no-longer-white sanctuary.
Look at that unconscious naked boy drowning in self-pity much more than anything else. That, my dear reader, is indeed your beloved narrator. And look at me… the crust of some kind of gigantic cherry pie.

Okay, maybe this isn’t quite the beginning as much as it is the end. I guess it depends on your views on the “after-life”. I’ll leave that part up to you.

Now for the question that’s going across any avid reader or empathetic teenager’s mind: how does one get to this point? Well it’s hard to say exactly. It’s a product of exceedingly infinite factors. We all are such products. What we conceive to be “free will” is really just a sum of several subconscious programmed responses. They call it “cause and effect” in middle school English classes. What a drag, huh? And there you were thinking that you were some kind of prodigal child with oh so many amounts of new and exciting ideas. Bummer.
We learn in installments, slowly over the years, like climbing a rope to see over the top of a mountain. Growing excited and exhausted with every foot, only to find no prize top. No glory. No discovery. Nothing new. Nothing gained. Nothing but the journey there.
The tragedy of life. It all has to end. And rarely is it ever pretty. In all reality it can be quite hideous, devastating, or even horribly empty.
So if you don’t mind realizing that everything you think has already been thought, that everything you say has already been said, and that everything you do… you get the idea. There have probably been thousands of people conceiving the same exact philosophical epiphanies preceding you and me. So if you don’t mind all of this, go ahead. Keep reading. Just remember… ignorance is bliss.


Chapter One

Look at this guy. What an overcompensating prick.
“Tell me about your most recent dreams. Were they violent?”
This guy’s unbelievable. My father’s been spending his hard-earned, 9 to 5 salary on this incompetent jerk? I’ve been coming here for two years and we haven’t even had one single textbook breakthrough. I, however, already have him analyzed a thousand times over. For example, the furniture in his office: The tacky mahogany couch, so typical of a generic psychiatrist. The larger-than-life boat painting hanging left, adjacent to his towering 6-foot window… so serene, so calming… probably a Monet. He had obviously spent more time in college contemplating interior design rather than human behavior. There’s that blindingly bright panel on his desk reading “Dr. Lemming”. He obviously shines it everyday in between sessions. Look to your left and you’ll find a wholesome family picture: the moron, his wife, and their daughter with the toothy grin; she must be about nine-years-old in this picture. Now glance at his ring finger. The tan-lines of a wedding band. God forbid that he go out in the sun when he violates the sanctity of his marriage.
“And in this dream, are all your classmates staring at your naked body?”
I didn’t really dream about waking up naked in my third hour English class. It’s just so stereotypical; I had to throw him a bone here. Now if I’m right, the proper analysis of this dream exposes my alleged “insecurity and fear of being seen for what I really am.” No no no, if I truly had such pathetic, Party of Five issues I would have shot myself in between the eyes with a nail-gun long ago.
“Well this is an immensely complex problem. I believe, in a nutshell that…” blah blah blah… “insecurities”… predictable banter… “exposed for who you really are.”
It’s so cute. Like a dog jumping through a hoop. I feel like giving him a good pat on the back or tossing him a treat. I’m sure he’d wag his spastic tail all over the office.
“Well I ponder that you should…”
Cut back to the scenery. The authentic Persian rug, hand-crafted by a team of eleven year-olds with calloused fingers that remain covered with red spots like microscopic Chinese flags from accidentally stabbing themselves thousands of times through the fabric. Those perfectly aligned metal balls sitting on his desk that bump into each other with such a consistent rhythm that you could probably record time if you bothered paying attention long enough. Kind of a “how many licks does it take to…?” sort of thing.
“Our time’s up for today. Here’s your prescription for the week.”
Yes, I’ve been taking mood elevators. Well actually, I’ve been taking the prescriptions from the counter and selling them at four times the price to crank heads at school.
It’s amazing how much teens are willing to pay for things they probably wouldn’t even buy if they were legal, just so they can feel like some sort of freak of society, like they’re not part of the mold. Yeah right. If you had any idea how many of these kids you see every day. Little Daisy Duke from the pom squad, she takes angel dust. That profound straight A student that sits in the corner and never talks to anybody, he’s keeping his eyes on his book because if he looks up he’ll see some twenty-armed, one-eyed, flesh eating monster. Side effect from the acid of course.
All of those kids you thought were so monotonous with their routines. Little did you know that this was part of that daily schedule.
Oh yeah, that bloated, ancient hag that instructed your Latin class, she’s an ex-meth addict who now consumes a handful of Prozac every morning just to get by.
But it’s not like any of these people are any more original than that generic brand-named t-shirt you paid thirty dollars for so you can promote the same absentminded designer name that sits there naked on your chest the way some hot-pink neon woman lies on her elbows on top of three blinking X’s among practically every truck route you pas. So inviting. So tempting. So overrated. So full of shit.

******************************************************

8:00 a.m. This must mean that I’m at school.
Trigonometry. What a load of crap. What a way to start the day. Commence wishing for death.
There’s a typical class setting. Thirty desks, a third of which remain vacant. Inspirational one-word posters and banners of optimism that mean to compel you to grow and evolve, but really just make you feel surprisingly more dumbfounded than ever before.
The one to the right of me reads PRIDE. I can imagine the man responsible for these posters. Sitting there at his computer desk, writing these lovely blurbs during his fifteen minute break periods between his warm beer and frozen pizza fiesta watching day shows and discovering five all new ways to be a fat and useless.
We live in a nation built on the seven deadly sins. A nation that screams, “Let’s all get fat, scurry around for more and more money with our chins pointed to the sky, hate everyone remotely better than us, and get lost in our looks and worthless objects rather than lift a productive finger in our entire lifetime”. We’re probably the only country to openly shout that we’re the best in the world… we’re so obsolete.
The topic of the period today consists of linear regression models and natural logarithms.
The topic in my head consists of wondering when exactly those glazed-over eyes and dry wrinkled lips first realized that she had spent endless nights on caffeine pills and months worth of sober weekends just so she could pass on the same meaningless cycle through the generations almost as hereditary as skin complexion or eye color. Sure, every once in a while you get a few hybrids, but no matter how much you tamper with the components, you still end up with the same ever-so-boring product.
Who knows, maybe this senile, lonely soul has yet to realize what she’s contributing to. Maybe someone should enlighten her.

The end of the day rolls along.
By the sound of a bell the frantic cattle spread like a disease through the corridors and out to their cars.
Continue tradition.
I stroll back to my beaten up, good-for-nothing four-door hunk of metal, and there, luck be damned, stands Tom and Michelle spreading flyers into windshield wipers.
You know Tom and Michelle. Everybody knows Tom and Michelle. They’re the dogmatic evangelist duo. These asexual holier-than-thou nightmares on legs catch my eye.

First mistake: establishing eye contact.

“Hello there. I noticed that you don’t belong to a congregation. We’re having an open discussion at our very own House of Our Lord and Savior. We’d love to hear some new perspective. You should definitely come along.”
By discussion they mean debate. And by open they mean an ambush.
They say that people take approximately 18,000 steps a day. Apparently not enough to escape this droll conversation.

Second mistake: establishing opening conversation.

“This week we’re meeting to discuss the inhumane and demonic actions of abortion.”
And there goes the sparking light bulb overhead.
Why can we eat unborn chicks with a side of butchered bacon as a tasty morning treat?
“God allows the killing of animals for sustenance.”
Well in this day and age you can find healthy alternatives pretty damn easily. I’ll bet your God’s gonna be a little pissed off at your negligence Tommy.
Tom’s starting to look a tad bit uneasy. I give Michelle an upward nod and blow her a kiss.

Solution: get the opposing side’s blood so boiled they can’t look you in the eye any longer.

I love seeing those two storm off. Michelle’s heart-shape figure isn’t exactly terrible to gawk at either.

******************************************************


Home isn’t much. Just a personalized setting of hell.
I read that an average American spends around 30 years mad at a family member.
I should be having a mid-life crisis right about now.
Between the silent dinners and the discordant sounds of both my father and me in separate rooms doing our evening rituals, the condensed affection spectrum doesn’t spread very long.
My room is a compiled twenty square feet of wadded paper mixed in with torn canvases I deemed not worthy enough to look at. On the wall towers my own copy of “Night in Saint Cloud”. Edvard Munch. Only he could truly understand loneliness, frustration and loss.
I spend most of my time listening to random radio stations and CD’s dependent on mood and/or current events. When the revered songwriting idol with the telescopic sunglasses announced his homosexuality I listened to techno rave music. When the former party-man president got caught with adultery I listened to destructive metal. When the hysterical…oops…I mean historical, pop sensation was accused of child molestation I listened to classical. Not for any specific reason. We all knew he had it coming eventually. Just another day to me. As long as I’m unfamiliar with what I’m listening to, I’m fine.
There’s nothing worse than knowing everything you’re about to hear. Every note. Every progression. Every bar of music. Frame by frame. Measure by measure.
My father comes in to tell me that one of his many ex-girlfriends has committed suicide. I could tell that he was surprised. I just told him that it figures. He probably gave her an unbearable case of scorching herpes.
After the slam of a door the conversation’s over. So much for a sense of humor.
The thing about my father is that he has many codependent relationships, one after another, to fill some emotional void/trauma of his childhood.
Just another victim of a victim.
A product of a cycle.
Generic. Predictable.
Just like everything else...


Chapter Two

I’m five years old, the year I start trying to sleep by myself for the first time since we got the bed two years ago, even though I‘d sleep with my parents when there was a storm or a monster in my closet.
I’m enjoying life as it used to be. The way it will never be again. The way my mind will never let me forget. Never let go. Never obtain again.
My mother alive.
My baby sister three months developed.
It was spring. Cloudless sky. Cold refreshing breeze. All of us; my dad with his glowing blonde hair, not the balding gray mess it is now, my mother frolicking around as much as her floating pink-flowered dress and the protrusion of her stomach will allow, trampling the foliage under her bare feet… we’d always walk around barefoot together outside. And me, I’m on top of the world. Twirling around hand in hand with my sweet sweet mother until my little kid stomach feels ready to implode. My father throwing me up two or three feet in the air and catching me. Listening to my mother’s stomach; to my little sister. Talking to her. Hoping more than anything that she can hear me.

Six months put that all to a halt.
In the hospital my father cried into my right shoulder.
Everything lost. Everything taken.
Everything gone.
Being hugged close to this over two-hundred pounds of snot and tears, I feel nothing. When someone cuts into your brain your nerves can’t feel a thing. Someone can tear into your mind and take everything you’ve come to know and the pain won’t even register.
The doctor told us it was excessive internal bleeding.
To put it simply, there was a clot in my mother’s common iliac vein causing it to burst, thus draining the blood from her pelvic area. And didn’t know what that meant back then.
My mother spent fourteen hours pushing, contraction after contraction. Apparently my unborn sister had been turned sideways. To make matters worse the umbilical cord wrapped around her tiny neck suffocating her, expanding her bubbled cheeks. Turning her miniscule head blue. Choking even before the first rise and fall of her chest.
They called it asphyxiation.
Most children, fortunately enough, manage to repress such trauma. I, on the other hand, remember everything. These images already burnt into my memory remain left on tape. The untold other side of the miracle of birth recorded forever. My father after going into shock dropped the camera onto the medical tray right next to him. Blood-stained blankets, frantic delivery nurses and doctors, scalpels clinging together.
Not a moment left unseen.
My baby sister had short dirty blond hair. God only knows what color eyes she had. I couldn’t manage to ask the doctors. I saw all of this on tape after they cut her out of my mom’s abdomen.
Later that day, while my father cried and sobbed and vomited in the lobby bathroom, a nurse decided to hand me the camera to return to him. She must have assumed that he turned it off. Standing there, the way a mother raccoon stands obligated to stare at the remains of her loved ones scattered on the road, compensating the missed goodbyes and happy future for one last glimpse at the ones that she adored and will continue to adore forever, no matter how awful and deformed. I watch the captured images of despair that play over in my mind right before I wake up in a cold sweat.
And just like that, everyone you love will die. Everything you enjoy will be lost. Everything you adore will leave you. Everything you live for will be taken away.
Death. Loss. Abandonment. Theft.
How is anyone expected to believe in a God let alone love one who would let all of this happen?
How can He just sit back and watch as everything and everyone slowly gets cut down?
All of his creations, all of his children, destroying each other. Destroying themselves. Standing by only to witness the cruel realities of life.
Atheism. The key. A coping mechanism.
It’s easier to contemplate an absent God rather than a sadistic one. There are only two real kinds of atheists: the ones who discard God because of knowledge and/or experience and the ones who choose not believe in God because it consoles them to think that whatever they do wrong will go unpunished.
I myself have my own religious beliefs.
There is a God, even if he hasn’t addressed me in over a decade
I believe in God, he just simply doesn’t believe in me.


Chapter Three

The light swings from a forty-five-degree angle to a nearly ninety-degree monster engulfing the circumference of the color to which it gives birth.
Yeah I now, pathetically deep and poetic. Next thing you know I’ll be snapping my fingers at some coffee shop poetry club.
It’s another meeting. A night meeting. Less of a productive session, more of a guarantee of supervision during daddy’s night shift. This man isn’t a psychiatrist. He’s a babysitter. He shouldn’t be handing out prescriptions. He should be handing out binkies and na-na’s.
“So what happened when you confronted this boy about the snot on his sleeves.”
Another story. An imagination should never go to waste.
“And why did you find it necessary to poor ammonia all over him.”
My god I’m ready to pass out. This routine’s starting to become treacherous. It’s odd how something so fun can turn into such a hassle.
Well I guess it’s not a treat if you have it everyday.
“He was dirty? And you figured that drenching him in cleaning solvents would cleanse him?”
The incredulous skepticism was cutting too close to busting my clever narrative and I was getting bored anyways. If he figures me out I’ll have to get yet another “mentor/pal”. That’s how they always introduce themselves… “Hello there! My name is… Don’t think of me as a psychiatrist. I want you to feel comfortable around here. This is your very own safe zone. Think of me as your close personal friend. You can tell me any secrets or insecurities and they will never leave this room.”… it’s the psyche’s calling card.
Let’s move on.
“Alright. We can end for tonight. However, I do want to try something new. It’s a bit of a homework assignment.”
Here we go again.
What is it now? Another new pill? Some therapeutic composure of sounds from the sea? Hypnosis? Free association? Let’s get on with it Freud. I’m sure you have some crack-whore to attend to before your money expires.
“I want you to take this.”
It’s a gray handheld spiral notebook. Leather-bound with some pretty little latch on the front. He really went all out for this one.
This should be interesting.
“I want you to write down every thought that comes into your mind during the day. Any real emotional aspect you encounter, I want for you to write it down. If you ever get significantly angry and depressed or even happy, write it down. This is a proven relaxation technique and it should help both of us understand what’s going on in your head.”
Well I can have some fun with this. Hmmm. What do I want to provoke this week? I’ve already gone through kleptomania, chronic bed-wetting, insomnia, and even necrophilia. I’m not repeating that mistake again. I had to see a specialist for a week.
What do I have left? Masochism… Sadism… Manic depression… Oedipus complex… Or maybe even psychological transference.
I could convince my psychiatrist that I’m in love with him. That should prove to be rather entertaining.
As I returned home all I could do was think of the most ridiculous issues and complexes possible. After long enough I could have sworn my head would explode from condensation. The morning proved to dawn with endless possibilities.


English. I despise it. Not the language, but the class. To be quite specific the teacher. I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one who does, at least out of the guys. It probably doesn’t help that the boy/girl ratio is 3 to 1. Of course this is a lower-level class. I guess that’s what you get for filling your finals in with E’s on the multiple choice when it only goes to D. Oops…
As for the teacher, she’s a bit under-qualified… she’s one of those teacher/cheer & pom coaches.
She’s also one of those pure-grain feminists who find it human cruelty to be a wife and mother without a career and the life that Oprah demands of her.
Feminism’s gone all wrong. Why is it that if a woman chooses to be a housewife she has automatically lost her rite of passage as a woman? Women used to fight against being expected to abide by one certain lifestyle. Now they’ve simply traded one in for another. And quite honestly they’ve only made it harder. Now women are expected to have two-point-five children, work a full-time job as a certified professional (even if they won’t get equal pay), and still live a life of luxury.
Instead, we end up with kids being raised by babysitters and television and many women feeling even emptier than ever before, so much so that they have affairs and divorces over the years just like men they have so fitfully named dogs.
I’m sorry but I thought women were the fairer sex that men were supposed to look up to rather than women sinking down to men’s filthy level.
Now I’m not talking about all women. Neither am I saying that all women are the same. But this growing trend is hurting way too many people and it’s only fair that someone point it out.
But Ms. Philanderer, that’s not her real name, just the name I gave her, she’s that type of woman. And for a feminist she’s quite a bit of a slut.
Obviously some things don’t change after high school.
She has a tendency to provide “further instruction” to the jocks, which would be believable considering how inconceivable idiotic they are if only she didn’t sit on top of her desk every lesson for the line of jocks in front row and stick her chest out like some neglected cow that hasn’t been milked in months.
Wait a sec… I’ve got an idea…
I tear out my notebook from therapy and start writing away.

First entry:

April 26th 12:57

i’m not sure but i think i have nurture issues. Maybe it has something to do with me being breastfed until i was seven years old. Or better yet, i bet it might have something to do with that time my parents paid the pizza deliveryman to watch me while they went out to a hotel and he stuffed me into a closet while he invited his friends over to get high. Oh well… i’m sure it didn’t factor into anything serious.

Dastardly nonsense is always the most convincing of lies. Hitler once said that the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it… or something to that extent. I’ve made sure to get it all perfectly. I even studied graphology to make sure even my handwriting comes off as disturbed.

Lesson One:
-Keep all i’s lowercased; this means you’re insecure and seem to think little of yourself.
-Make sure your words slant both left and right; this means you’re unstable and repressed.
-Write everything very small; this indicates poor self-image.

It’s work, but I figure if you’re going to put up an entertaining show, even if for self-entertainment, might as well make sure you have all of your bases covered.
Let’s face it, the truth isn’t entertaining whatsoever. It’s like reality television. If reality were that fun on it’s own we wouldn’t need television. It’s a complete paradox. Of course I must admit I’m not franticly clamming at the idea of eating oxen testicles or searching for the love of my life amongst a superficial crowd of collagen and silicon crossing their fingers and practicing both their winning faces and their gracious loser faces off camera, both of which involve tears and neither of which ever go as planned.

God this place is so tediously stereotypical.
If the party will look to its left, you’ll find the sluttish drama queen crying for the twentieth time this week about how she can’t keep a steady boyfriend for more than a day.
For some reason I hear her grandma in my head shouting, “Who’s gonna buy the cow when they get the milk for free?!”
If you’d please look to your right you’ll see Mr. Ghetto-fab with his hood over his head hiding the headphones blazing with whatever trendy hip-hop he last saw on MTV, although you can hear the bass from a mile away. Everything’s so damn trendy and “in” nowadays. It has to be. Otherwise you’re invisible. There’s no such thing as an original person these days. Trying to be yourself has become a trend within itself. It’s a complete black whole of style. Soon everything will collapse onto itself and we’ll start all over again. Never-ending meaningless cycles, aren’t they wonderful?
In front of you lies the soon-to-be-dropout drooling on his desk, trying to sleep off whatever adventurous experience from last night, the contents of which he himself doesn’t even remember. I can only imagine his nights full of “Dude… hit me in the face… it’ll be totally awesome”. No wonder he’s passed out.
At two o’clock you see the teenage pregnancy sitting sideways because her monstrous third trimester stomach won’t fit any other way. Either way, she’s too busy thinking of cute baby names although she’ll never keep the baby.

The instructor of bias gives her thoughts of provocation.
“You see ladies… if Romeo hadn’t enticed Juliet with romanticism when really all he wanted was the pleasures of her flesh they’d all be alive. That’s a good lesson for you kids,” she’s addressing the class but only points at the guys, “as to abstain from sexual relations at your age.”
Can you say hypocrite?
A part of me irks every time I have to deal with pampas ignorance.
My fingers keep fidgeting against my jeans to keep from doing something I’ll regret.
I glance to the side while rolling my eyes. There’s a sign that says:

“The most satisfying thing is a job well done.”

Someone, however, made a slight alteration by putting a big “BLOW” before job. The first time I spotted it, it was a good chuckle. Now it’s just another part of the scenery.
Somebody kill me.
Slowly my fidgeting goes away and I’m back to normal.
Somewhat…


Chapter Four

You feel every valve of your heart pounding open and collapsing like a faulty parachute. Your breath becomes heavier with every rise and fall as if you’re regressing and you’ll soon forget how, as if every exhale could very well be your final one. Your hands get clammy. Every pore on your body starts to moisten and you start sweating in places you never thought you could. A strange blackening, fluorescent purple floods over your vision and all your thoughts and actions are filled with panic and fear.
In my book, this counts as an anxiety attack.
I get these strange episodes from time to time. It’s almost like paranoia but without the clarity.
You begin to latch onto your chest because it feels like your hearts planning on running away. You forget your surroundings. Your fingers won’t stop moving and you wonder how long this one will last. A few seconds? A few hours?… A few days?
This is the life I lead. This is what I’m left with.
Some people might call it post traumatic stress disorder.
I call it living.
Everyone has PTSD in a sense. Your birth is a trauma. Life is a trauma. Seeing leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to depression. Depression leads to desperation. Desperation leads to escape. Escape leads to codependence. Codependence leads to death.
The moment of birth is the moment you start to die. This theory is what scientists commonly call entropy. It’s part of the second law of thermodynamics. In a closed system, disorder and randomness occurs in regards to energy breaking off bits and pieces of energy hence wasting and losing it.
This disorder. This randomness. It is the world in a nutshell. Slowly and naturally destroying itself.

Waking up is the strangest part. Somehow, during all of the hectic mind-decay, I’m still conscious on some level.
The fog has cleared and I’m in math again.
(Insert profanity here).
Half the class is huddled around the teacher in a panicked semicircle patting her back and handing her tissues.
The other half is frozen in disgust by their seats.
Should I be curious? Of course not. I know exactly what happened. I am what happened.
When people get bored or lost they pick up a hobby. Knitting. Reading. Overeating. Drinking alcohol. Wolfing down pills. Often times a choosing a combination.
I chose pranks. Call me a sadist, but it works.
Let’s play WWII. I’ll be Germany. You be Poland.
The photo is still shining on the projector wall. No one over two hundred pounds should ever be naked.
It’s funny how much more people care about being there for someone more than they care about comforting them. Alleviate yourself and store some good will with the Big Guy. There are no selfless deeds anymore. Even people who think they’re being gracious and godly really only want to make themselves feel better. Everyone wants to be the doctor… never the patient. The highs of selfish selflessness.
Don’t worry. The picture on the wall. It isn’t real. You’d be surprised what you can do with computers and enough free time these days. Just take some grotesque nudy photos off the net with the same shapely contour of the old hag and have your fun. I still can’t imagine what freaks would want to see that in the first place, but we all have our fetishes.
More often than not a bored and lonely female like herself has taken her own photos of similar content sometime in her life. I’m guessing I did a decent job considering that our victim’s still crying facedown at her desk as if she’s done something wrong.
Lies, oddly enough, can be uncannily close to the truth.
When it was all said and done… Ms. Turlington quit. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want the kids in my class thinking of my hauntingly obese naked body everyday. Hell, it was bad enough to have the janitor clean up the vomit the first time around; we don’t want to make it a daily procession now, do we?

And I used to be such a nice kid, believe it or not. That’s right. I used to be that pleasant cutie-pie you’d see taking dogs for walks and raking leaves for the senior citizen center. The kid telling jokes and reenacting scenes from movies even though he could never remember the right lines. The kid so eager to please. The kid who thought a smile was reward enough.
Cynicism isn’t hereditary. You’re not born with it. It’s a trait that grows on you. Just like prejudice or a tumor. It’s a product of lack of appreciation. Of prayers gone unanswered. Of never being heard. Of never being taken seriously. Of constantly losing everything you care about. Of watching everything significant pass through your life in a single blink.
But it’s not like I’m any different. All over the world there are abusive parents, children being abandoned or raped, spouses being cheated on, druggies killing for just one more hit, innocent people diagnosed with malignant cancer or AIDS… We are all one and the same. The only difference we have left is our perspective.
What you call sardonic I call realism.
What you call hurtful I call honesty.
What you call horrid I call hilarious.
“Tomato… tomahto.”


Chapter Five

I knock on the door three times, stomp the floor twice, and shimmy a quarter turn in each direction.
The fake issue of the week is OCD.
This one’s a bit harder to pull off, but it’s a fun game. Complicated, but fun. The rules are as follows:
Every time he says a one syllable verb (with the exclusion of be-verbs), cough as loud as you can.
Every time you need to sit down, step up on the seat, left foot first, and wobble around chanting “There’s nothing to be afraid of… there’s nothing to be afraid of…”
Think of this as a concentration exercise. Sort of like Simon says.
“Hello, you’re right on time. Please sit,” COUGH COUGH…, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I’ll attempt to avoid the monosyllabic verbs.”
My left foot goes up, followed by the right and then wobble, wobble, wobble. Then “there’s nothing to be afraid of… there’s nothing to be afraid of…”
Now we can begin.
“So how’s everything been going? Keeping up on those journals I‘m hoping.”
Oh, yes. I believe I’m making great progress. Thank you.
“Well, your welcome. I’m just glad that your progressing.”
This man sucks at the modesty bit.
His face glows, brimming with pride and accomplishment. He has the posture of a peacock. These are the types of lies your mother always declared valid because they boost someone’s self-confidence. Except this is at his expense. But he doesn’t know that, so what’s the big deal? Am I right?
“So how are the mood elevators working?”
Great. I made forty bucks just yesterday.
Every time he asks a question concerning medicine get really paranoid.
Uh… I guess they’re okay, why? Do you want to put me on more? Do you think I’m getting worse? Am I regressing? Am I going to die? Oh my god, I can’t breath. Open a window. Open a window NOW!
The rodent-like pushover he is gets up and opens the nearest window.
Every time he does something that annoys you daydream about him drowning in his own bathtub after a “hard day at work”.
When he gets back he sticks out his hands, his clammy, hairy, overly moisturized hands, as if he’s being confronted by an angry wife with a set of unfamiliar panties in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other. He’s obviously had his fare share of practice in this area. Hell hath no fury like a woman’s rage.
“Relax, relax. I’m only making conversation, it’s not about anything. Here”, he hands me the glass jar of obviously expired, unlabeled hard candy that’s been on his desk since I first starting coming here, “have some of these. I assure you you’ll be feeling better. Studies portray that concentrating on a biological function relieves external stress.”
I love his miniscule tidbits of misappropriated false information. He lies like a last minute surprise witness.
Every time he hands you anything wrapped rub it against your forehead in a clockwise motion. If you have two, rub each one against one of your temples.
I feel better now. Can I tell you about my day?
“Of course. That’s why we‘ve established these meetings.”
Everyone gather around. It’s story time!
“Alright, spill.”
Well I saw this girl walking in the hall yesterday and well… she was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. She had a plaid jacket on… blue and green… and a skirt that seemed to take flight on its own. But anyways… I was in awe when I saw her so… I started following her. She walked past a bunch of friends in the hall and I could tell that she was in a hurry to get somewhere important. Well, after about ten minutes of following her around she finally got to where she was going. And do you have any idea where that was?
“No. Where?”
It was at the corner to meet her boyfriend! I stood there breathless. Oh god how I wish I could be that important. To be that vital to someone’s day… but, anyway, they just sort of stood there making out nonstop for seven minutes. I know because I timed it. After about two minutes I figured they were too distracted to notice anything I did so I… I…
“What happened?”
I… cut off a lock of her hair. I figured… I don’t know… I envied that guy so much that I wanted to steal what he had. So by taking a lock of her hair I was taking a part of that importance. I guess I thought it would make me feel… significant.
“You shouldn’t look…” COUGH COUGH!!! “I’m sorry, voyage towards other people to discover meaning. What you should concentrate on is some self-actualization.”
Every time he says something blatantly obvious fight the urge to choke him with his own tie.
But I haven’t told you the worst part yet. Afterwards, I put it on my hotdog at lunch and ate it.
“Why on earth would you react like that?”
I don’t know. You’re the analytic one. You tell me.
“Well uh…”
I love putting him on the spot. It’s like watching the forehead wrinkles of a teenager who’s just walked in after a long and leisurely night being confronted by his awaiting parents while he thinks of any possible means of escape.
“You see, and this may be a bit of a stretch here, but I think you wanted to engulf that hair… because uh… as you stated, it symbolized significance… and you figured that you could obtain it uh… orally.”
My god, this would be hysterical if it weren’t as equally pathetic.
Every time the man with the doctor’s degree shows his incompetence shrink a few inches into your chair.
Every time the academic systems show that their producing failures let a tiny part of yourself die.
Every time you feel the world is going to implode with stupidity, the universe is doomed, and that God is up there shaking his head in disapproval and just waiting for us all to fail, stick your head between your legs and squeeze as if it were a tornado drill.
“Why do you have your head there?”
It’s just hard to deal with the truth sometimes.
Wow, I’m not lying for once.
“I see,” COUGH COUGH, “forgive me, I know,” COUGH COUGH, “damn it… I can infer that you’re partially distraught right now. How about I present you with some more prescriptions?”
Sure thing.
Did somebody say an extra hundred dollars for the week? No wonder I don’t have to work.
The laziness and blinding optimism of our times seems to convince so-called “medical professionals” that they can solve any problem by throwing pills at it. Your kid can’t concentrate? He won’t listen? He’s depressed? Well here’s some Ridiline and a month’s worth of anti-depressants. That should cover it.
This is what I like to call the easy way out. It doesn’t occur to people that their kids might be showing side effects of never going outside, of not expressing themselves on a regular basis, or of spending their whole life as a child in front of flashing screens and jumpy characters and mindless dribble that sucks any and all creativity straight out of their heads.
Oh well, for me it’s the easy way out that makes me loads of work-free money so hell-if-I-care.