ORDINARY JOE

This is how the precious gift of life turns out for most of us.

             ORDINARY JOE

 

    Ordinary Joe liked winter. The cold. The rain. The snow. The darkness. You could hide in all that. Become invisible. Disappear.

    Ordinary Joe hated summer. The heat. The blue skies. Endless bright lite. Endless sunshine. Everythin visible. You couldn’t hide in that.

    Things had started out fine for Ordinary Joe. In his teens, they were lookin good. He was a handsome guy, beddin some of the more attractive girls in his school. Hell, even a few of their Moms. He was doin well in his studies. Engineerin. He was also throwin quarterback passes that were attractin the attention of the pros.

    Yep, everythin was lookin good.

    Then a motorbike accident left him with a small metal plate in his throwin arm. Sure he could still use it okay but he couldn’t make the passes anymore.

    That pissed him off real bad an his studies fell away.

    Then he got one of his girlfriends pregnant an wound up havin to marry her. They had the kid and he had to give up his studies an take factory work to support them.

    Then the mortgage. Then the second kid. The end of dreams. Friends fell away. The drinkin started. The marriage fell away. The divorce started.

    Now Ordinary Joe was in his forties. Livin alone in a rented tenth floor flat. Hardly any friends. No real interests. Occasional women but they got canned for one reason or another. Same way he got canned from jobs for one reason or another.

    Christ one time he’d been so desperate for money that he’d worked in one of them care homes for old folks. What a stinkin job that was. Actually wipin old c***s’ arses for a livin. Changin their diapers. Moppin their drool. Shovin mulched up s**t into their toothless gobs. That didn’t last.

    Now it was a borin repetitive factory job packin internet orders into boxes. Christ. He could go a whole shift an hardly say a word to anyone. Not that it mattered. Ordinary Joe had nothin much to say anymore an hardly anybody interested him.

    For daytime, the drug of choice was Zanax. For nitetime, the drink of choice was vodka. Ordinary Joe drank himself to sleep most nites an drank himself into a stupor at weekends. It would go on that way till he died.

    Starin out the window at the downtown scene on winter’s nites, Ordinary Joe could drink himself into the darkness. Sittin there, smokin an drinkin, he often thought about how bad it had all become. Dead end job. Hardly saw his kids. Hardly any friends. Always chasin money. No hope of ever achievin anythin anymore. He was just another nobody. An ordinary joe.

    How good it had all looked when he was fifteen, sixteen. ‘Christ, if you knew how your f****n life was goin to turn out there’d be hardly any of us left,’ he often thought.

    Every day it was the grim struggle. The grim struggle to keep work. The grim struggle for money. The grim struggle to stay sane. Convicted criminals were prisoners on the inside. Ordinary Joe was a prisoner on the outside.

    He was still a fairly bright guy but the booze an the drugs an the depression an all the failures were beginnin to dull that. He was glancin thru a magazine once an he saw a quote from an old German philosopher an he was still smart enough to appreciate it.

    Nietzsche. The guy had written, ‘The first best thing is not to have been born. The second best thing is to die soon.’

    Ordinary Joe couldn’t have the first one. Fingers crossed for the second.