I’m tone-deaf and have no rhythm.
It is going badly.
Someone sings a ska song so I skank.
Everyone starts staring at me.
They are wondering what I’m doing.
Nobody knows.
They are confused about my skanking.
I am a joke.
Humanity hates me.
The song is over.
Then “Inside Out” by Eve 6 comes on. Diamond is my age, so she is a late 90s douchebag like me.
Diamond and I drunkenly scream the song at each other.
We both find
faith in nothing
.
Faith in nothing
does not unify unless you’re drunk.
Faith in nothing
does not create revolutions or unionize the masses.
It creates a good profit margin for bars, liquor stores, and drug dealers.
I sit down next to Gina.
Gina is so drunk she can’t even talk.
I feel like I’m floating in a spaceship.
There is nobody here that I really know or can relate to.
Nobody here even really knows who I am.
I don’t really know who anybody else is either.
I feel like I have no identity and they have no identities.
It is kind of nice, this drunken spaceship.
Beth gets into a fight with her boyfriend.
They are having text message wars.
They are sitting next to each other though.
Text messages cost a dime.
They have spent like thirty dollars to fight each other in the last ten minutes.
I don’t know why they don’t just talk.
I’m not even sure what they’re fighting about.
I ask Beth, “What the fuck are you two fighting about?”
“As a joke I wrote, ‘I hate you,’ in a text message and now he thinks I’m mad at him.”
“That’s stupid.”
“I know.”
She knows it is stupid but she is participating in the argument anyway. Their whole relationship is like that. They see each other for one day and fight, which means they have a huge text message war. Then for two days they don’t speak, then they have a text message war to make up. It is insane. They seem to enjoy these pseudo-fights. These breakups and make-ups. Like it is part of having a normal relationship.
I really start to drink.
I get drunker and drunker.
I feel stupid for even coming.
I just fucking feel stupid and drunk.
I look around and Beth is gone. Supposedly she is fighting with her boyfriend outside now.
Gina is drunk and everyone is asking her if she needs a ride home. This makes Gina happy. It makes Gina feel like people care about her.
Then I’m sitting in my car, driving home.
Regretting that I ever went.
I’m happy that it was fun.
But when you’re drunk and no one is in the car with you, driving home from the bar is fucking sad.
I should unstrap my seatbelt.
Slam down on the pedal.
Look out the window at the moon one more time.
And then slam the car into a rail.
Oh that would be nice.
I don’t slam into a rail.
I don’t do anything but start crying.
I feel so lonely.
People were not meant to feel this lonely.
People are pack animals.
I’m so alone.
When I’m with people.
They seem not like me.
Chang and Sasha are there.
But they only help so much.
I’m still the one who has to decide what I must direct my body to do.
I’m always responsible.
Others, they don’t mind letting some person tell them what to do, they don’t mind some old book dictating their actions and beliefs.
I don’t know, but I never could.
I’m alone.
Alone on the highway, heading to the Waffle House, not because I need or even like Waffle House eggs. I have eggs at my house. But I don’t want to go home and sit alone. I can’t do it.
I’m so drunk.
I’m so lonely.
I’m so afraid.
I was shot going over the Berlin Wall for the American Dream.
But all I got was drunk.
And very very lonely.
I pull into the Waffle House parking lot.
I’m sitting in my car, looking through the Waffle House window. Isabella walks around in her server uniform, looking young and pretty. Looking so beautiful to my drunk eyes.
Isabella stood me up.
She left me to die.
I don’t care.
I go in.
Isabella actually smiles when she sees me.
I sit down and say, “I’m fucking drunk.”
Isabella says, “I’m sorry about the other day.”
“I didn’t expect you to show up,” I say.
“I woke up late and didn’t have time to call you.”
“I’m drunk.”
“Where’d you get drunk?”
“At a bar in Warren.”
“Want anything to eat?”
“Yeah, a sausage egg and cheese on a burger bun.”
“Okay.”
I can’t hate Isabella.
I can’t hate her, but the Waffle House isn’t helping my state of mind.
I’m sitting here in silence.
Everyone knows that Isabella stood me up.
She has told everyone and they made fun of me before I came in.
This is life. You do something stupid and the world gives you the gift of humiliation.
After I’m done eating, Isabella invites me to go outside to smoke with her.
I’m so drunk and needy I accept.
We stand with a nice breeze hitting us.
Isabella says, “I think I’ve really figured myself out.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I think I’ve got a new aura about me. I read my horoscope today and it said that good things were going to happen.”
“Is that true?”
“Yeah, I said to my boyfriend, ‘You get a job or get the hell out of my life.’ And he didn’t get a job, so I told him, ‘Good riddance.’ And I feel a lot happier.”
“That’s really good.”
“So what’s going on with you?”
“I got drunk.”
“Yeah, anything else?”
“No,” I say, “but I’m pretty happy about being drunk for the moment.”
“That’s good.”
We finish our cigarettes and go inside.
I think I’ve really figured myself out.
I think I’ve got a new aura about me.
Her words pierce my drunken brain.
I feel so bad for humanity I could scream.
I do not scream. I just feel horrible.
I think I’ve really figured myself out.
I think I’ve got a new aura about me.
What does that even mean?
How does figuring yourself out lead to a new aura?
People are really fucked up.
This is the world I live in.
I’m in hell.
I’m drunk and I’m in hell.
This is how it always ends when I get drunk. I’m happy and dancing and eventually someone says something like, “I think I’ve really figured myself out. I think I’ve got a new aura about me,” and it all goes to hell.
I get up to leave and Isabella says to me, “So where you going?”
I think about saying that I’m going home to kill myself because she is so tragically fucked that it saddens me to the point of suicide, but instead I say, “Home.”
13
I’m at my parents’ house to pick up letters.
Some letters from bill companies still come to their house.