An Inhuman Condition

I sit at my desk wasting away the working hours of this dull-and-dying, penultimate day of the year 2009. This has been a lame year, limping along to its denouement in a begging-for-euthanasia sort of stupor as if it’s the golden year of an aging decade seeking a quick release. This Friday it will be 2010, and personally I cannot wait to be in its loving, infant embrace. The beginning of a new year coupled with the start of a new decade has a shimmering glow of hope as if somehow the changing of the calendar will encourage people to drink less, study more, lose weight, stop smoking or be less of an insufferable prick. I don’t personally subscribe to any of that resolution bullshit, but I still feel the radiation of possibility that floats through folks this time of year.

My attitude toward self-improvement has always been that I will make the change for myself and succeed or I will fail miserably. I don’t need programs or pamphlets, occasions or opportunities, assistance or assuagement. If something is important or necessary, I feel like I will figure it out eventually. It does me no good to pretend that I will make drastic changes in my life and then be miserable when I don’t or the changes are insignificant. I’d like to think that I’m always progressing toward a better me. I’m never sure how to quantify that theory, but I do like it. I think every few years I can look back and see some naiveté and flaws that have faded away. I’m being honed by time and experience into a mighty, virile missile.

By that logic, 2010 will see the best Nate to date. He will be stepping ever-forward into slimy oblivion with a wide smile and derisive glare. The coming year will be a delightful balance of misery and happiness coupled with an almost-lethal dose of the weird (assuming trends continue). Oddity and circumstance will seek to break me at times, but I will boldly shake my dick in its direction and march on. I can feel some good things coming, and I will do my best to welcome them.

So I propose a toast to a year of high-tech computery shit, the crack-cocaine of micro-blogging, artists and dancers, empty valentines, rampant and depressing economic collapse, awesome foods, pots of coffee, piles of cigarettes, excellent music, post-optimism, mi familia en fuego, OMGWTFBBQs, truck driving, 7.13-10.28, robots, birthday shenanigans, finally moving, the cyclical death and rebirth of a man named Winston, early mornings, late nights, two-hour travels, elections and erections, man-dates, LAN parties, sober spells, personal hells, Denny’s, friends, writing, and somehow striving despite an inhuman condition buried cancer-deep in this machine’s corroded core signifying fuck nothing.

And to a happy new year (at least some days).

I want to sleep in someone’s arms tonight. I don’t want to have sex or any of the complications that it brings; I just want to be in bed next to another person making physical contact so that I might feel like I am alive and connected somewhere in this matted wad of dead hair we call humanity. I want this so badly that I wish I knew someone I could beckon to humor me: someone warm and real and tangible and tactile. This night is made of bastard scissors that cut away my links to the world little by little as the hours pass until I am in my own desolate desert of isolated insecurity. I want to know that someone can smell my pot-of-coffee breath, the nicotine of thirty-some cigarettes on my nubby fingers, my shampoo and the remnants of deodorized underarms. I want to feel the clutch of fabric on some garment, any garment that isn’t my own solitary sleepwear. I want to feel the stitches in my dry, cracking hands and snag a bit on my wild fingernail with the sharp corner. I want to feel freezing toes against mine as they pop back under the safety of cover. I want hair in my face and a light breathing tickling my ears. I want to be wrapped in an intimate cocoon writhing against the nexus of another: any other. I want to feel something real.

The whiskey is calling my name: beckoning with siren song. I can imagine the soft caress of sipped scotch soothing its smoky way slowly down to my stomach. I taste the cool touch on the tongue contrasted with woody warmth. The olfactory ecstasy of its auburn scent sends tickles wafting through my nostrils. Its subtle caramel color has captivated my gaze, and it takes every iota of effort in me to deny the bottle her loving kiss. I scorn her for another that will not come. As I type clicks and clacks into bits and pixels, the clock continues to betray me. There will be no contrition, no absolution on this gnarled night. Not haze nor grace nor mechanized gods will arise to save or service my slumber. And I will sleep alone.

Fuck. The sunlight slicing through closed blinds jars me awake. My head feels like an overpowered subwoofer blasting trance music to drug induced patrons of some warehouse turned dance club – if one can classify trance as music and that epileptic ritual as dancing. I quickly bury my head under the pillow struggling to keep out the burden of daylight. My joints feel drained like they’re coming down from a triathlon high. I feel the sweat caked on the back of my neck and struggle to remember what new hell I’ve earned my way into. The records office in the back of my brain seems to be striking because I can’t remember a damn thing. The only thing I can do is listen to bass bursting from blown speakers. I’m so fucking thirsty.

My mouth is a very dry and rusty ashtray. The back of my throat feels like an exhaust pipe made from tanned alligator skin. I can feel some sort of doughy mass caught in my sinuses, and I need something to drink. As I peer from under the pillow, I notice the shards of light are acting as luminous wallpaper and outing every little cluster of dust in the air that would otherwise remain incognito. Once my eyes find furniture, I notice that I’ve redecorated or participated in a sleep-over. This causes me to look to the left, and the gently breathing cluster of blonde hair protruding from beneath the blanket confirms I’ve not suddenly become an IKEA fan.

The number of problems requiring solutions compels me to try falling asleep again. I wasn’t hoping to solve a mystery; I just need some fucking water. I have no clue where I am, the nearest sink could be anywhere, my legs are throbbing dead weight, the scaly exhaust gator that is my throat just shit a phlegmy mess into my ashtray, and now I have to worry about waking the blonde lump. There’s no way I’m going to swallow this snot, so I toss off my end of the covers and slowly stand. What little composure I had is immediately lost in the dizzy mess of my bassy brain blender.

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I’m spending the morning writing to myself trying to finish up some ongoing projects and finalize the formatting for the Lulu book in which this will ultimately be the title essay. For specific reasons I’ve yet to process in my own brain, this is the only thing that I am able to do today. I am not writing this out of any sense of enjoyment or a duty to finish the product, but because I just need to get out of my head and focus on something before I gnaw out any last bit of sanity that might remain in the dank crevasse. I would much rather spend my time chatting at a coffee shop with some good friends or discussing the issues currently pressing me into this position, but the options are not available.

It’s early enough in the morning that nothing is happening (even online), and I feel quite isolated at this moment. Thus I write. That’s the best part about this little farce of a hobby. It’s a method of communication to the outside world when nothing else is available. It is a way to think to myself and yet say something all the while. Unlike spoken word I have the opportunity to take time, formulate my thoughts, and edit the hot shit out of them. If I decide I really don’t want to say anything about my dick warts or my penchant for the taste of fresh-boiled kitten hearts, I can remove all that nonsense and leave you with whatever is left: the little bits of this twisted mind I’m comfortable sharing.

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At last-light on an autumn evening, a hunter advanced to within forty yards of his hopeful prey. The man stalked through the thick brush toward the sizable silhouette of what could only be a black bear. He readied his rifle from its sling and took a few steps forward. The animal clacked its teeth as a warning, and the hunter knew he had found his intended game. He struggled to target the creature through the thick flora and was forced to creep ever closer. The bear backed up a foot and stood to growl on its hind legs as a last warning to would-be predators that attack was imminent. The hunter, determined in his goal, stepped in again to find a better shot. As the bear fell forward to move in, the man hastily targeted for its head. He exhaled slowly and fired only to graze the fur far from the dark bulk of its center.

The massive animal charged, unfazed by the wound to its shoulder, and closed the distance between them in what felt like an instant. Its first blow landed on the hunter’s chest nearly expelling the wind from his piston-pumping lungs, and the second hit wrested the man’s ear and cheek clean off his face like the peeling of soup skin. The impact knocked the man to the ground with brutal, brain-bouncing force causing him to lose a few seconds of consciousness, and the bear wasted no time mouthing his leg and dragging the now-limp body into some nearby brush. The fast offense left him regaining his senses only to begin scrambling and flailing to find the gun sitting just a few feet away in the leaves.

With his upper body pinned under an immense weight, the man couldn’t wiggle away for his weapon. His flannel was shredded apart, and the animal gouged through bits of his chest. The claws dug out skin and meat, through innards, with intent to feast on the offal. The bear rent the intestines and liver from an ever-growing cavity pooling with a thick, clotty-deep red. The shaking shivers of shock had set in; the hunter’s hand no longer grasped futilely for his rifle. His pieces were simply gut-screaming, gasping with fluid-filled lungs and gargling on rusty, bitter blood. The blackness of the forest furthered his slip into nothingness: his end a welcome relinquishment of being and relief of all pain.

As if to add insult to deadly injury, the bear’s canines ripped the hunter’s scrotum like the sharp corner of a tin can tearing through a trash bag and the repeated crushing of many molars ground his testicular innards with sloppy precision akin to machinery mashing chicken-bits for McNuggets. It bit out large chunks of beer-weight, thigh fat leaving gaping shrapenalesque holes while it gulped the meat down barely chewing. With a few quick swallows reminiscent of snakes snacking on whole rodents, the beast had whittled the man’s left leg down to bones and a few sinewy snippets of flesh.

As humanity paved ever-thus into the wild, the natural lust and hunger of the world bit back at every corner until equilibrium or extinction were attained. If one personified the creature, this ursus americanus might have seemed smugly satisfied with his meaty treat. The lucky catch saved some time he would have spent scouring for shoots and roots preparing for hibernation. One might even had exclaimed when it awoke in April that the semblance of a snicker could still be seen on its visage.

Sic semper Sapiens, and happy hunting.