An Inhuman Condition

A fireplace pops and flickers on the tavern wall – the electric lights submissive and low. Dancing shadows paint the patrons’ faces like barbarians prepped for battle, and the mood is calm, spirit-enticed reverie. They pass pints to and fro’, smiling softly at the shared stories, memories and ideas. Evening approaches twilight with the wisdom of age. Its wrinkled features trace the topography of a full life. Tonight has seen the entire world, and any man would be lucky to say he came close in his years.

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Pacing. Fidgeting. I wander back and forth looking for any distraction – anything to pull me away from it all. I start walking, and it’s cathartic. All day I’ve wanted to walk. Like boiling water, I’ve been bubbling up just waiting for the right push to escape into steam. I circle the block a few times, and it’s good. One foot after the other in the cold – the warm cloud of my breath escapes, and I walk through it. Every four steps, exhale.

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Names mean something. They may seem arbitrary out of context – just a convenient mix of syllables and letters, or the signifier is not the signified. And if you take the time to deconstruct it, you can always dance your way around it – deny the meaning in a name. Go ahead, Juliet did it. What a lot of good it did for her, eh? The light burned from both of them like a snuffed out cigar (of the same name perhaps).

It’s no coincidence that many people name their children after an old relative – someone meaningful hidden in the past. It’s not always as overt as a Jr. or second, third, etc. But the meaning is there. It’s a big deal to a new parent that this young, living thing is connected to them. We make the world around us, and those names anchor it. They give them a heavy weight that sticks with us.

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My knuckles lock and crack like goddamn peanut brittle. Even with the gloves, I can’t feel a thing. It hurts to even sit on them. I don’t know if it’s cold enough to get frostbite, but it sure as hell feels like it. My nose is like a thawing icicle – frozen and dripping. My lips have a dry burn from the cold. I feel my wet socks starting to freeze, and I shiver like every muscle decided it was a fuckin’ metronome – but the hands – they’re the worst.  Skinny, little fingers weren’t made for this. I barely have the dexterity left in them to light a cigarette, and I am not taking the gloves off.

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She worked nights at the jazz club. The stars were glitter on her chest; her legs skewered the moon to garnish a Gibson. The boys called her Strawberry Martini, and you knew from the look of her she was trouble. Her hair was the red of revolutions – writhing in united uproar, curls whipping fury across her slate-blue eyes, lashing out at anything close. Her face was a pale and fragile kind; her smooth cheeks luring you to stroke them gently. Keen to kiss her lips, crimson and wet with little ripples and ripe, raspberry dimples, the smoking scarlet sent shivering twitches down your spine – a primitive warning of danger, an imminent sting and impending venom.

She danced a pole between the bars trapped in the seclusion of her burlesque seduction. They kept her back there like top-shelf liquor so expensive you could never afford a single sip. Stare and swoon all you like, there was no getting into the tigress’ cage. The real irony was in the wild freedom of her dance. We were the ones trapped, stuck under her spell. We swilled and smiled, hollered and hooted, leapt and lunged, longing for a sip of her attention. She was fluid stone, hot magma that kept on moving – too hot to touch and immune to outside intervention.

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Stop lamenting all the ways you suck. Stop wishing you were productive. Stop wanting things you don’t need. Stop doing things that don’t matter. Stop putting things off until you “have more time.” You waste plenty of time already.

Don’t take it personally, don’t get depressed. Just do better.

The more you sit around and lament whatever wishing and dreaming of a better world (better you, better circumstances, better anything), you could be doing it. You do it by doing better. Contemplation is great if you’re going forward, but thinking about the past is only backward motion. You can’t change anything there. You are powerless in the past, but you are Superman now and in the future. There are so many things you can change right now that make all of the things you can’t change look meaningless. Learn from your mistakes and do better. Don’t plan, don’t schedule, don’t make a mental note or procrastinate on it. You will lose it if you don’t start now. Just do better. Tattoo that thought on your mind and don’t forget. Do it now.

Do better.

Keep calm; carry on.

If you aren’t up for the extremes of death through failure and death through success, I have the perfect answer for you. There is definitely a way to kill yourself with mediocrity. It’s more of a long-term commitment than the other two, but it doesn’t require a whole lot of work. This is the option most appealing to my sample group, and it could be a great fit for anyone.

Do you lack (or have you given up) any real dreams or aspirations? Do you play video games all day? Are you in your mid-twenties and still living with your parents? Are you stuck in a relationship heading nowhere but content to stay because it’s comfy? Have you been working the same shitty job or type of job for more than five years? Are you starting a family? Are you a college graduate making less than $20k a year? Are you just shuffling along day after day? Are you pushing forward in a career or field of study that doesn’t make your dick (or clit) hard? Are you letting bills, rent, obligations keep you from the things you really want?

Then this is the method for you.

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Burn out; fade away.

If that doesn’t work for you, there’s always the opposite. I’m old enough to see the dangers of the folks who choose to grow up too much. There’s always the chance they get lost in it and become this thing they didn’t want. Wearing the biz-casual khakipants or necktie every day can just wear a person down to the point of being a homogenous office jockey. They start to think the career is everything. They fail at being social outside of work; they get the marriage and 2.5 children, and they fade away.

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Live fast; die young.

I’m realizing there’s a definite stage of development for any former “rock and roll” youth type where one of two things happen: you grow up or fuck up. This division seems to happen anywhere between 18 and 25, but it always happens. It’s been odd on this side of things – seeing people wasting away working at Burger King, still sniffing glue, spending every dime getting hammered or worse. It’s sad. These were my peers growing up. We fucked off and got fucked up. We did some seriously stupid shit, and some of us got over it. Some of us didn’t live long enough to get over it.

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