Definition of a Dangerous Man

"Where does the good man go after his blood has been 

taken

and his teeth are held in the palms of his hands?

He wanders deep into his own shadow,

where he no longer bleeds and where his bite

is reborn."

From Dead of Winter by Stephen Mack Jones

When I Die

 "When I die, I won't feel any different than I do today."

A hush came over one corner of the cocktail party as Johnny spoke these words. Johnny never had any sense of what was around him; he sucked at reading the room.

People were drinking, talking, laughing, flirting - it was Friday night and everyone in the room was happy as hell to be away from their fucking jobs. Deliriously joyous. Until..........

Anyway, Monique unwisely asked "What the hell are you talking about, Johnny?"

Johnny spun on his heel and looked her right in the eye.

"I'm fucking dead already, do I have to spell it out for you? I feel nothing, nothing at all. I'm fucking bored, I am unfulfilled as a human being. I hate my fucking job, my paycheck embarrasses me, I drive a fucking Hyundai, I live in a studio apartment in a building filled with assholes, and my diet consists of Cheetos and Spam."

Monique unwisely commented "So what you're saying is that you are not living your best life."

Johnny, loudly: "I fucking hate that saying. It is pure bullshit. No one lives their best life. It is not allowed, it is not possible. Like the fucking American Dream. Carlin got it right - He said "the reason it's called the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it. Fuck your best life."

Monique walked away, towards the bar. Time for something a bit stronger than white wine.

People began edging away, but Johnny was on a roll.

"I started killing myself decades ago. Little by little, I lost my edge. Crushing my feelings down into a pocket of pus, leaving an enormous fucking void. My sense of humor disappeared, replaced by pure sarcasm. Poison-filled and knife-edged. Hope was the first to die; I don't miss it. You might as well believe in the Tooth Fairy. Once hope goes, the delusion that you are in control of your life, that you actually have options, dies along with it. Your life is a prison and you are going to die in that cell."

Ralphie was the only one left close by. "Johnny, let's get out of here, hit a bar, get our drink on, and check out for a while."

Johnny responded "Fuck that and fuck you. What am I going to do? Sit around a bar listening to other people whine about their lives, lives that suck every bit as much as mine? Or pretend to be happy while they pretend to be happy as the bar gets thick with despair and reality? A reality that kills, slowly, painfully, torturously, and treacherously. Decades of suffering. People suck, Ralphie, and I don't want anything to do with them."

Ralphie walked away shaking his head.

Johnny decided to slip out of the party and go home. Turns out he didn't have to slip; no one was anywhere near him. "They are all fucking fools", he thought, "with their phony live your best life bullshit. Fuck them, fuck my parents, fuck my boss, fuck this joke of a life that is supposed to be so fucking precious."

He went home, grabbed his whiskey bottle and dialed up Requiem for a Dream on the TV. His favorite movie because it was utterly hopeless, filled with despair and desperation and suffering. 

And if he was still awake he would dial up Affliction with Nick Nolte and James Coburn. Nolte melts down in that movie like nobody's business, just fucking falls apart. Loses both his jobs, his girlfriend, his wife and daughter, and kills his father. Ends up drunk and alone.

Which is what Johnny expects for himself. Doesn't bother him at all for that to be his future.

Life is a vicious, sadistic, joke. The only way to deal with it is alone, with a bottle of whiskey, and dead dreams. Johnny turned up the volume.

He was happy.

Practically Perfect

I am practically perfect. 

There is only one change I can make that might improve things.

I need to start giving a shit.

Maybe.

Hail The Scumbags

"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."

Oscar Wilde

Vicious, greedy, violent, hateful, selfish, stupid, people prance across the stage. Every minute of every fucking day. They spit on their audience.

Sensitive, loving, intelligent people wait in the wings - understudies looking for a chance. They will never get it. They will never fucking get it.

The world is not built to reward people who feel empathy. It is built to reward scumbags, cheaters, liars - people who are happy to shit on everyone below them as they climb the ladder to a fat bank account.

Those with empathy look up from below and are rewarded with feces to the face. They wipe it off, unconvincingly, and take another step up - right into a torrent of rancid bile that knocks them off the ladder, to a hard landing on top of the endless pile of fools who came before.

This is the game. This is what it has always been.

Oscar Wilde understood.

Can I Help You?

"Tell me why you hate your job at the restaurant."

The answer: "It's having to fake pleasantness that makes me feel both worthless and lonely."

That, my friends, in a nutshell, is why working in customer service sucks.

Part of a dialogue from a short story called "Something About Birds" by Paul Tremblay.

Either Way

It is as helpful to meditate on the meaningless of life, as it is to meditate on the meaning of life.

Another Typical Life

Jon woke up to The Stench.

It began years ago as a minor odor, a nuisance, but nothing he couldn't deal with. Better than that, nobody else seemed to notice. At least they didn't say anything to him about it.

But lately it had been getting progressively worse. His cat slept next to him, instead of on his chest. And the pain kicked in. In his gut. Mild at first, but getting to a point where it occasionally doubled him over.

It smelled like garbage, it felt like needles.

Jon went to visit Dr. Robert. The good Doc recognized the problem immediately, as he recoiled at The Stench in the cramped examination room.

Dr. Robert said "Jon, you are rotting from the inside out. Your organs are probably 75% liquid at this point. Soon you'll be pissing liver and shitting kidney, and shortly after that you'll be dead."

Jon staggered into a chair, almost toppling it over. He asked "Where is this coming from ? (although, darkly, he suspected he knew the answer).

Dr. Robert said "I've seen this before. Many times. Jon, you are not living the life you were born to live. No human can survive that. Your mind is in constant conflict with what your body is doing. The battle intensifies as you stray farther from where you should be. Until your body temperature begins to rise, and keeps on rising until organs start to melt. Your body is essentially eating itself."

Jon spoke, tears running down his cheeks. "I hate my life, always did, just like everyone else does theirs. But I always thought I would have time to straighten it out. I thought I had time."

Dr. Robert "There's never enough time. Procrastinating while your soul suffocates, putting your head down like a bull as you make your way mistakenly through the wrong life, is plain stupid. You are 72. You are out of time. Unhappiness is a symptom. You ignored it. Now you pay."

Jon begged. "Isn't there anything you can do? I need one more chance. I can change direction, I can change myself - I just need a little more time. Please."

Dr. Robert "You are done. I'm sorry, Jon, but you have been unhappy for 50 years. You had plenty of time to do something about it and you pissed it all away. Please leave. I have other patients to see."

Jon walked out of the building like a drunken man. People on the street gave him a wide berth as they passed, because of The Stench. It was intense and would only get worse.

He heard kids laughing behind him. Reaching back to his right thigh, he realized his pants were wet. Worse than that, what he felt was thick and sticky. He knew the end was near.

Jon made it home and lay down on the couch, sobbing. He reached out to his cat - he needed her love now more than ever. She jumped up on his chest, but immediately jumped back down and curled up in his recliner.

Jon was alone.

He died later that day, as November darkness settled into his living room.