In fact, wasn’t I more miserable in the end than the wretch I had just spoken to? At least his suffering could be cured by medicine, whereas mine was built into my brain. Besides, suffering was subjective. And sometimes the greatest suffering of all was to suffer from nothing. So why did he deserve more help than the countless other sufferers? Including me. And how the hell was I supposed to help someone else when I couldn’t even help myself?
The bus arrived at my destination. I stepped off. It was dark outside. It was about a ten-minute walk to my parents’ house. For some reason, I still had the habit of calling them my parents. Even though, just like my father, they barely were.
I lit a cigarette and walked along the path towards their house. The walk brought forth memories of various other times that I had walked the same path, some of them good, some of them bad, most of them forgotten.
As I walked, I noticed lots and lots of identical houses in which lived identical families who had identical thoughts. I was disgusted to see that much of the forest in these parts had recently been cut down to build even more of these identical littles houses where new identical families would soon be moving in.
When I reached the house, I rang the doorbell and waited for a while. No one answered. Fuck, I thought. No one was home. The trip had been for nothing. Still, as I had a set of keys to the house, I decided to enter, if only to sit down for a while.
Inside, the house looked as it always had. Bland. With no semblance of individuality. I walked to the fridge and opened it. There was plenty of beer, just like always, as my stepfather had a fondness for it. I grabbed an unassuming bottle, opened it, and took a sip. It tasted good.
With the beer in my hand, I walked to the door of my old room and opened it. The room had black wooden floors, black venetian blinds, dark green walls, and a black and chrome ceiling fan that I’d had installed. It was without a doubt the nicest room in the house and it was now being used for storage and as an occasional guest room.
As I walked inside, I was reminded of the copious amounts of alcohol that I had consumed there. The girlfriends that I had fucked. The pornography that I had watched. The philosophers that I had read. The isolation. The drama. My fears and hopes. And tears.
I walked to the bookshelf. There were still some books on the shelves which I had left behind, among them Emil Cioran’s The Trouble with Being Born. I opened it on one of my favorite passages and read:
The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don’t know where that elsewhere is.
I had left this pessimistic book of philosophy behind as a kind of joke, hoping that my mother would one day discover it. However, it was unlikely that she had since, like most normal people, she rarely read books. And even when she did, she most certainly wasn’t interested in the kinds of books that I read. No, self-help was more her cup of tea. Just like for most people.
I’d often found it funny how the only reason that writers of self-help books were rich and famous was because of selling their self-help books. Whereas, if there was any truth to these books, the person would have to be rich and famous before writing the book and even then the advice in it would be subjective at best. But then people were stupid. And bad taste, as Bukowski said, created many more millionaires than good taste. If you wanted a good example of people’s bad taste, all you needed to do was to consider the most popular book of all time—the Bible.
As I was standing in the room, I heard someone push a key into the keyhole of the front door. I put the book away and went to have a look at who it was. It was my sister.
“Brother!” she said. “What are you doing here?”
It was true that I had rarely visited them after I had moved out. But then, like a vampire, I only visited when I was invited. Which was rarely. Perhaps it was because I tended to suck the joy out of every place I went.
“I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by,” I lied. “Where’s everybody else? I saw both cars parked in front of the house.”
“Both mom and dad are at a birthday party,” she said, taking off her shoes. “They went by taxi. They said they wouldn’t be home before midnight.”
“I see.”
“Do you wanna wait for them?”
“Nah, that’s all right. I think I’ll just come back another day.”
“Okay.”
I took a sip of beer. “So… where’re you coming from?”
“From a friend’s place.”
“Uh-huh. And how’s it going? How’s school?” I couldn’t think of anything else to ask.
“What do you think?”
“It sucks?”
“Exactly.”
“Thought so.” I took another sip of beer. “I’ll, uh, be on my way then.” I took out my phone and began ordering a taxi.
“Brother, is that dad’s beer you’re drinking?”
“Indeed it is. And if he doesn’t like it he can sue me.” My stepfather was a lawyer.
“Brother!” she said with feigned shock. I think she had gotten used to my sense of humor by now.
I finished the beer and put on my jacket. The taxi would be arriving soon. “I’m gonna head off now,” I told my sister. “Be good.”
After I got in the taxi, I told the driver to take me back to the city center.
Back to the bars. Back to booze. Back to misery. My natural habitat.
28
Once in town, I decided to give Scarlet Emperor another shot. It was almost midnight.
I entered the bar and ordered a beer. It was slightly more packed this time around. I took the beer with me and went to the smoking room. There were several people there. One stood alone by the window. To my eyes, she looked like a university student. I walked up to her and lit a cigarette.
“Hello there,” I said.
“Hi,” she said, still looking out the window.
I remained silent after my greeting to see whether she was interested in conversing with me. After a few minutes, perhaps because she felt she was obliged to, she turned towards me and asked the most common of questions—what did I do?
“I think and I drink,” I replied.
“Do you study?”
“I’m an academician of no academy,” I said, flicking my cigarette butt into the metal bucket that served as an ashtray. “But never mind me. Do you study?”
“Yes.”
“What do you study?”
“Physics.”
“Hmm. Interesting.”
After she was done with her cigarette, I asked her whether she’d like a drink. She said yes. We left the smoking room and went to the bar counter to sit down.
“So what would you like?” I asked her. I never asked for strangers’ names. For what was in a name? It was the personality that mattered.
“A rum and coke,” she said.
A rather cliché choice, I thought. “Two rum and cokes,” I told the bartender.
After the bartender served us our drinks, the girl asked me, “So what brings you here?”
“Superdeterminism,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Studying physics, I assume you know what quantum mechanics is?”
“Of course,” she said, sucking on the straw of her drink.
I removed the straw from my drink and took a sip. “In that case,” I started, “you’ve probably heard all about the different interpretations of quantum mechanics, right? You know, the Copenhagen interpretation, the many-worlds interpretation, Bohm’s interpretation, and so on.”