The Difference: Part I

An interesting comparison between two smart kids.

Part One~

Stephany awakens to an empty house in the lower middle class suburbs of Anyville, America. She rubs her eyes and stretches on the way to the bathroom. The warm water and the smell of her kangaroo shampoo awakens America’s fine child.

At the mirror, Stephany carefully applies makeup. She attempts to create an illusion, without thinking of it as one. Her fragile psyche struggles with the weight of social competition in an education system gone mad, as well as a living environment literally devoid of those things that really make a home. An early frown lines her face and her personality sags from an opinion of hopelessness, but the carpet is soft beneath her feet and her toothpaste contains fluoride.

She pulls milk from the fridge as the electric can opener hums its way around a can of Frisky Delites for her cat, Satan.

She breaks her fast with Sugaroos and drinks imitation orange drink, with a side of plain white toast.

Thoughts race through her head as she rocks her feet slowly back and forth on the barstool. Thoughts that would disturb her well meaning parents into action more like one would expect from well meaning parents. She looks out the window to a tranquil Tuesday morning on her street. Two pedestrians pass on the sidewalk without a trace of acknowledgement. The gray streets, the uniform houses, this hard line symmetry, holds none of the charm that the tree lined street implies. Welcome to S**t Town, thinks the precocious teen. Stephany misses her mom and hates her as she takes her pill, and turns her cell on.

The bus arrives and she sits alone, and texts her peers. So much news, so little time. A strange smile that is less than friendly appears on her face as she escapes into digital communication. Just as she is starting to relax, an incoming call pulls her back to the bus. It is her father. He is calling to tell her how sorry he is for not being able to help her with her science project. Two days past the no-show, her disappointment lies behind her eyes in the pile of excuses and letdowns. Right next to the box labeled, ‘Neglect’. If a wise person was to know her, they might suppose she was dying from teenage angst, magnified exponentially.

Her unbelievably selfish father tells her of his plans to spend ‘quality time’, but even a 13 year old girl can tell when he doesn’t really prioritize her in a fashion that reflects the love he proclaims.

Don’t try to s**t this little girl. She knows the lion’s share of the truth that her folks think she is ignorant of. It is all there on the list of Underestimations.

She blends through her day, unchallenged by and uninterested in the curriculum. She runs out of minutes on her phone and uses the hall payphone to call her mother at work. Her crappy, boring day moves into the evening, worsening by the minute. Her Mom refuses to put money in her account for minutes, as her bill is way, way too high already. Didn’t the b***h understand that once out of the loop of digital conversation, Stefany would be a target of insult and worse? As she walks up Walnut lane in her current clothing, the guard at the gate smiles and asks her about Satan. She gives him a look and says nothing. Stupid old man, probably a molester or something.

 Stephany uses her key to enter a house still empty, save the devil. She consumes food products void of nutrition. Not that she would notice anyway. Promptly at 6 she takes her medication. She watches TV and yaks on the phone, who’s new, who’s ugly, who’s a virgin, who’s not. Old rules of cruelty, pecking order, and manipulation in an immoral society armed with digital devices of terrifying power. Stephany doesn’t know anything about old rules. She learns things the hard way. Not anticipating the world around her forces her to improvise. Being thus occupied and disadvantaged, she is provoked to conform, adding to her plight.

 Like when she over-dramatized her temporal problems in her mind until she had a breakdown. That was a year and a half ago, and after being diagnosed by a medical professional, she was medicated. She isn’t breaking s**t or screaming anymore, but she ain’t out of the game either. She creates her degrading existence for lack of love, by competing in a game in which there are predetermined winners. Along the way she may encounter someone who will challenge her on her level, but short of that, well….there’s no more jobs for uneducated, unmotivated girls who live in a world where their natural inclinations are perverted by social structure.

She works on her herb garden project, but in anguish turning to rage she throws the kit on the garage floor, stomping it through her tears. Her mother’s workout mirror mimics this scene and reflects guilt no one but the children are excluded from owning.

The maternal parent arrives late from corporate America with Pizza. That’s what it says on the box anyway. There is also yet another new pair of shoes, and an empty apology for her lack of parenting skills. Ironically, these gestures void her brief exhibition of parenting skills earlier in the day.

 Stephany has no appetite. Her mother is confused but not as much as she is. She goes to her room and as the sun goes down she thumbs through the pages of a celebrity magazine and wonders why she is so bored. She has never been taught that someone with her potential will not be long amused by entertainment that is not, shall we say, art or literature or music. It is sad that many minds capable of grasping and impacting quantum physics or structural engineering will never enter the door of high school or move to another state just to ‘get a change’. Many end up medicating themselves to death. Whether it’s in an alley somewhere, or in a mansion ‘up on the hill’, or in a lower middle class neighborhood, like where Stephany lives. As darkness falls she masturbates bitterly, using her recorded mental images to fornicate with some unlikely prime-time personality, in a disturbing fantasy that pays temporary gratification to America’s beauty.

Sleep comes slowly and Stephany dreams of walking on a beach in the rain, but there are cars racing past her in both lanes  and she can’t hold the line with the sand failing beneath her. She doesn’t know, nor does her doctor, the effect her medication has on her by depriving her of REM sleep. You would recognize the brand, but you wouldn’t believe the ingenious marketing tools they have at their disposal. No, you wouldn’t believe it at all. Neither would most people. Like Stephany’s father, for example.

Seven hundred and seventy seven miles away he drops ten C on cocaine and a couple of prostitutes. Later, when he can’t make the grade, he beats the s**t out of the w****s and dresses for work in a top shelf suit and a fake Rolex. Driving down the freeway in his used Navigator, he seethes in rage at the failures of others that have so devastated his life.

Why doesn’t that f*****g kid show some appreciation for all the things he does for her?

 

Reviews

[jenniewren (J.W. Bouwma..]

GODDAMN!!!!!!!!! i have been holding this write to the side til i could really really read it.. and i am SO glad i did. there is SO much in here.. damn.

i love the unique narrative device.. omniscient yes but also completely detached. kept thinking of Rod Serling telling me a story of a girl, and the whole thing is just about to go horribly wrong when i turn the page..

i also really appreciated the way you delineated just how separated from reality, or even from the natural world, your main character is - with her chemical foods, her cell, her meds. i really can get into the mysteries within this story.. yay for already having a part 2 i dont have to wait a year to see!! *wink*

[Crowley]

If ever there was a comment about society, this is it. This as sharp as a Kershaw straight out of the box and as delicate too. Pry with that tip and you are gonna break it off. You have created a heavy and very real picture that is all too sad and all too vivid to read and not have that flutter of guilt around your mid section. Hella good Senor. Loved every word.

[Pax Analog]

Ha, a brilliant deconstruction of the absurdity of garden-variety dysfunction -- which extends all up and down the line, of course. As J.G. Ballard noted: "The crime wave is already here. It's called consumer capitalism."

Strong realistic commentary.

[Samuel Dickens]

I guess this is how it is for many kids nowadays. What a pity. It makes you just want to pluck them up out of that situation and send them to live with the Waltons.

[luciddreamer]

I have read this story many times, but this time I think I got it...the mirror to the face helped, thank you for showing me a mirror.
Peace
Robin

[Desert Dreamer]

So insightful to the world we are raising our children in, this world you describe is hard to escape for most kids. I am so glad I had a different life growing up, days of freedom wandering the wild places, parents who cared, maybe they had the first hints of exhaustion from this new culture but still they cared and gave me as much freedom as possible. I had grandparents who taught me the remnants of a previous culture, how to find food in the wild, how to grow plants, how to hunt, and most important, how to be one with the world, to respect all living things, to take only what one needs and not to be greedy. I am saying all this to show what a contrast to your story...what an awful world our culture has created and I want nothing to do with it...You have done well with your story.

[Raef C. Boylan]

At first I thought this was going to be a sardonic commentary on the parallels between Western 'anguish' and genuine suffering, but it there's even more to it than that; an exploration of...I dunno really, hunanity, damage, psychological conformity. It's a really great piece of writing Tony. Like the other reviewer says below, the detached narrative works well and is original.
Thanks for sharing this, and cheers for your review of Bad Taste.