Golden

The speaker goes “Dum dum dum dit dah dum ba dum dum dit da dum” (literally, those are the lyrics) as I sit here texting multiple different girls saying multiple flirtatious things in a convoluted and failing pattern of rationalization to myself that there are multiple ways this could end, some of them even good, when I know I don’t actually have the patience or attractiveness to harbor any kind of relationship.

I like to think I’m crazy, I like to think I’m special. I like to think I’ve had an inherently more difficult life than most of my peers and that I have the intelligence to out-perform them despite it. I like to think I’m better and smarter than everyone else, and that I see the world in a different, objective, and superior way to the rest of humanity. I like to think I’m a revolutionary, and my insignificantly high IQ, impeccable ability to rationalize and analyze, attachment “mutations” (I don’t think they can be called issues), and provocative sense of self all do a great job of gathering evidence to suggest I’m right.

I’m not right of course, the odds are not in my favor. How many other drug addicted hipster geniuses have existed throughout history? A lot. Da Vinci was one of us, he was one of the select few who turned out to be sort of right, but damn was he miserable. The indisputable truth behind being right is that there are always those who don’t believe you, and in most cases those individuals add up. Imagine Martin Luther King Jr. being stampeded by a perpetually angered KKK group, and then realize that that isn’t imaginary at all.

We semi-geniuses are actually an unlucky bunch. Smart enough to see so many issues unaware to the masses, too stupid to change it. The geniuses fix the world, the semi geniuses talk about how they should do it better, and the genius-minorae just have s****y television shows. And boy do I know about s****y.

Being an outspoken, cynical person brings a lot of ups and downs. People often misunderstand me, and get angry. I say they misunderstand, but perhaps I tend to overestimate the distance to the boundary between comically indecent and scandalously inhumane. Either way, the fact that I’m far from as perfect as I’d like to be causes a good bit of anxiety. I could say that then creates the cycle of drug use leading to worsened mental health leading to more drug use, but I won’t because everybody says that and I have to be different.

Back to the lyrics. I can’t think unless there’s an ambient rhythm flowing throughout my ear-holes, and these ironically childlike lyrics are the perfect vibrations. My mind drifts into thoughts about Girl Prime, then to Girls A-D, then back to Girl Prime, and then meaningless dramatizations about work and petty injustices. The pointless words are conducive to clear thought, and obviously suggest some topics of their own, like the word dumb.

I think a lot of things are dumb. Sometimes I think I’m dumb, oftentimes I think you’re dumb. I think it’s dumb that I live in this country and this house, and it’s dumb that I really wouldn’t want to trade it. Really, I think love is dumb.

The emphasis in society and hormones to retain a mate is unbearable. To be powerlessly devoted to your best friend and yet still lust uncontrollably over every girl that flicks her hair in your direction is emotionally draining and requires practice. I’m like the Lebron James of horniness.

Sam called me just as that thought got written into my subconscious as a potential memoir title.

“Jack?” her voice came through my phone tattered and audibly blurred, but still sounding remarkably Sam-ish. Playful and concerned at the same time. “Are we still hanging out today?”

“Obviously Sam.”

“Ok, damn! I just got home, so can we do earlier?” Playful banter was what she’s best at.

“Yeah I can be over in like ten.” I offered. A 6-minute walk that I made almost every day.

“Yes perfect! Ok see you then!” She said, I could hear her practically beaming, like sending a smiley face emoticon through the old-ways of telephonic communication.

I immediately jumped out of bed, dropping my laptop to switch to clutching my iPod. I found my nice jeans on the floor and grabbed a flannel in my closet, as well as my contraband and paraphernalia. There’s no better way to socialize than using illegal drugs, and hell, maybe this time she’ll get high enough to f**k me. 963’rd time’s the charm right?

Pocketing my illegals and rearranging to hide them, I jogged downstairs to tell my mother where I was going. I did this almost every day, and despite the suspicion and threats of rehabilitation programs of my parents, she almost always let me go. In most interactions with my parents, I constantly have a feeling of defense and worry, like I’m a rebellious rat that a pair of unstable tigers keep as their pet.

“Yes, you can go. Please remember tonight grandma is coming over, so absolutely no using.” My parents learned to refer it as “using” from the last outpatient people, it’s got a more negative connotation.

The walk is half through the woods across from my house and half down a series of aesthetically pleasing but otherwise horrendously planned residential streets. Braden, Ohio, is the perfect example of a picturesque, inefficient community.

I like watching the brown and grey fractals that small stones make in the dirt path down the hill, the deer obnoxiously jumping away from the sight of me, the creek below with accents of white and grey among the whole of green and brown. If you mix these colors of the late afternoon suburban adventure you’ll get a muddy vomit color, but all I can see is gold.

I don’t feel gold, but I’m in its presence.

The red and blue priuses passing me with the roar of an electric spacecraft strike a lovely juxtaposition to the advancement of man and the brilliant cohabitating give-and-take relationship with nature man hopes to achieve. I’m reading too far into it, those people just want to buy less gas.

When I see Sam coming towards me with her hair in that messy bun, the long tie-dye camp t-shirt hiding her shorts and her small frame maneuvering around. She knows she’s hot, you can see it in the way she just so subtly swings her small hips side to side, even the rest of her stays stagnant and noticeably well stood. She had a ski accident a few years ago, before I know her, and by all odds should have died. I like to think that we’ve both beaten our odds, but really I’m waiting until I actually do to say it. We tell each other everything, except the things we don’t want to of course.

“I want a cigarette.” I say when we hug, fighting down that mental erection that inevitably surfaces.

Summer smells like smoke, moves like Sam, and is painted gold.

Later, watching her sit next to me, close enough to touch but too far to do it casually, I had the familiar urge to stroke her hair behind her ear. It’s a cliche move but it’s rather satisfying. The odd circumstances of having your best friend aware that you are in love with them would usually create awkward conversation, but somehow we’ve moved past that.

“What are you thinking about?” She asked me.

“You, as usual. You look cute by the way.” I always worry that my incessant compliments annoy her and feel ungenuine, but I keep saying them anyway. “That shirt looks good on you.”

“Thank you.” she said with her smile filling me with a full view of her dimples and a full heart of lead. “Jack, can we talk about something?” That sounded bad, f**k.

“Of course we can.”

She sighed and began “You’re too dependant on me. I love you but you need to learn to be your own person. You can’t let your happiness be completely controlled by me.” She was right, but I was hurt that she said she loved me. It was spoken a lot and every time I was just betrayed and saddened.

“What are you saying?” She hadn’t ever brought this up in a manner so serious before. It had been touched on but I never felt like she was threatening to act on it.

“I just…” she paused, it was a bad sign. She always spoke with a constant flow of information, it was what drew me to her, I think. “Jack I really care about you and I’m worried that this is unhealthy and that I’m killing you.”

“Yes, it is unhealthy. I’m miserable every day, but it would be a lot worse without you with me.” I half pleaded.

“It isn’t going to get better for you until you stop caring.”

I choked out “It would get better if I had you…”

“Jack, you can’t really believe that will happen, can you?”

I tried to respond but all that came out was a sound like my vocal chords scratching together and breaking. Where was the compassionate, sympathetic Sam that I loved? I still loved this Sam, obviously, as it was this Sam making a ‘grown boy’ cry in broad daylight. Today was supposed to be golden.

She continued, “Look, I’m leaving tomorrow for three weeks anyway, can we just take a break until I come back? Just so we can both find ourselves?”

I wanted to shout at her. I wanted to ask how she could do this to me, I lived my whole life for her, gave her anything she desired that was within my power. I’d been celibate for years because nobody wants to f**k someone head over heels with a different girl, she of course screwed countless guys, looking for love, and came to me crying when it didn’t work out, despite every warning I would give. I wanted to say that I’ve already found myself, and I’d given it to her.

“Yes. We can do that.” Jack, you p***y.

The following weeks were a pool of blood spilled from emotional instability. I twisted the knife with detrimental introspection. I realized how selfish I’d been, it isn’t fair for me to play the victim. She was a person, just as complex and probably just as depressed as me, and I couldn’t expect her to fall into my arms once I had cut them off and given them to her. She hadn’t been taking advantage of my affection, she was just too kind to refuse it.

All this new knowledge that I had been a dick didn’t come as a surprise to me, and it certainly didn’t change the fact that I felt like s**t. Not golden.

The first few days were spent taking a shower four times a day, to escape the mind draining explosive depression. Can depression be explosive? It felt like it, but it could have just been a gradual increase in tide, and now my dam of rationalization had finally burst.

Three weeks came and went, as I had been counting the days left in my head every waking minute, and that final day my phone rang. It was her.

“Jack?”

“Hi.” Why did she always start the conversations?

“How are you?”

“I think I invented a new mental illness, how are you?”

“Um, I’m ok.” Just ok? Why just ok? She continued, “I’ve been thinking…”

“I had a feeling.” I retorted, colder than intended.

“Look I… I had a good time at camp and… and I just think we should continue this break. Or maybe just not call it a break.” Now, I was certainly not prepared for this. I expected a tearful reunion. Probably too many cynical books.

“You… I… what?”

“Jack,” she said, “We shouldn’t be friends, it’s not fair to either of us.”

I’d like to say I called her a b***h and threw my phone out my window, that I outlined every way she had wronged me, but the truth is I said “Ok.” and I had eight more months of payment on that phone.

That song is one of my favorites now.

Reviews

[Persona]

I've noticed you don't seem to have any reviews, so I'm here to help. Your style at the moment is 'here's a fact, here's another fact about my character' etcetera. You like to tell everything your character thinks about himself, but there isn't much mystery to hook me in. Your character is very self obsessed as well so he doesn't come across well - I assume that's on purpose though. It's very self analysing and superficial. Good stories are deep and evoke mental and emotional connection with a reader. The character's more like a caricature of an egocentric guy but he doesn't come across as real. Maybe he could have some good points too?