Post by xunpredictablel on Nov 24, 2011 23:05:13 GMT -5
I open my eyes. This is supposed to be the part that people call a “brand new day” but I feel like this day is just recycled from the usual crap I have to do. I just feel like it’s a torn up day, mashed back together day, and given to ignorant consumers day. I hear the alarm clock screaming in my ear. I feel myself poking against the sheets and I roll my eyes as I roll out of bed.
I walk to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, I just feel like a generic nobody. I feel like I could be anybody with this face. A canvas brushed clean, waiting to be painted on with some sense of originality. However, I was robbed of individuality the day I entered the work force, the day I graduated high school. I reach over and turn on the sink, splash my face with cool water. I turn on the valve to let the water run free in the tub. I wait. I feel the water with my fingertips, determine it is too hot, and move the valve. I wait. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
After my shower, I walk to my bedroom and sit on the bed. I look at the incredible mess of a room around me; I look at myself in another mirror and tear my gaze away. I sigh and close my eyes. I stand up and put recycled clothes on. I walk to the kitchen.
Before I even get there, I hear the sizzling of eggs and the humming of my beautiful wife, who is making breakfast. I walk in behind her and wrap my arms around her, but it wasn’t out of sincerity. It was out of obligation. Sociology in college taught me that there was no such thing as sincerity. Durkheim says there’s nothing but obligation; one is only oneself by the varying obligations. I know that’s not what he really said, but that’s what I got out of it. I kiss her cheek and maybe I feel a twinge of sincerity, of desire to make her happy. But in the end it’s just a dead-end relationship with nothing left in life except to stumble through it and try to find some slightly happy ending.
I eat, I get in the car. I push on the gas peddle like my life is depending on it and I laugh at myself for sounding so cliché. I speed down the highway and I never get caught, I never get caught when I want to get caught. I feel like time and space can mesh together and form some sort of hole for me, like it already has formed a hole, like I am floating in nothingness. I am floating in nothingness.
Career, job, certification, college degree. It’s like that’s all that matters anymore. The “man” is making us into robots and there’s nothing I can do about it because I’m just a pawn in this chess game. I wish I could march up to society as an entity all its own and let it know just how detrimental it is to everyone around it. I wish I could rip it apart with my bare hands like some hero in some video game I used to play when things actually mattered. Now I just follow exactly what I’m supposed to do, rebel to some certain extent just to keep myself alive and feeling like I have some semblance of life. I used to be the rebel. I used to have long hair and wear silly sunglasses. I used to surf. I used to ride my car in the sunshine on my way to the beach.
I sit. I am in my cubicle. I want to spin around in my chair out of sheer boredom but I cannot. That is considered inappropriate for the workplace. I want to decorate, but I cannot. That is considered overly personable. I need some sense of home in this place where I spend half my life but there’s no sense of home if the heater is always on to conserve energy and I swear I always sweat. There’s no sense of home if everyone looks like they are undead, if my boss screams at us because we’re not living creatures, we are merely toys for him to order around and demand to work. I am getting paid, I should not complain, but throughout my life I will hate this job. I will hate my career and any other career I could possibly get.
My name is Jason. My mother thought I would do something adventurous and daring if I had a name that sounded charming. I got a lovely wife and then settled down. I’ve done nothing daring with my life because to actually live demands some sense of stability and hatred for one’s life. There is no possible way to live comfortably and have no sacrifice. I feel as though I’ve sacrificed so much.
I begin to remember my mother and father again. They were loving people, really. They were interesting and fun and intelligent. My father was a chef of his own restaurant and my mother was a nurse at the local hospital. They both liked their jobs, I think. They didn’t love them, but they paid the bills and allowed free time for their hobbies. I wish I could learn from their memories, from the way they would enjoy their lives outside of work and celebrate every day as if stability and comfort didn’t matter. I want to remember them, but it’s too painful, really, to know I’ve let my mother down. I was supposed to make something of myself, I was supposed to do more than find a nice little cubicle-like ditch to bury myself in.
I drive home, find my wife in our bedroom watching American Idol or Dancing with the Stars or something like that. She smiles at me, asks about my day. She tells me again that she appreciates that I work so hard so she can stay at home and clean and cook. This makes me smile a little bit inside and I try to force my exterior to smile, but I think all I manage is a slight upturn of one corner of my mouth. She walks up to me and wraps her arms around my waist and smiles into my shirt. She pushes her blue eyes up to mine and then lays her head on my shoulder. She utters that she loves me. I say it back. I pull her into my arms even tighter and we fall down on the bed. We just lay there, her all tangled up in me, and I watch her silly show that only women enjoy. I feel something inside me, and it’s as if I could be happy in that moment. I almost let myself be. She asks me what I want for dinner, I say, “anything, it doesn’t matter.” and she smiles and gets up, leaves the room. Then, I’m alone like I always am. I try to remember how we met, but I can’t. Not right now. My mind won’t let me be happy.
I open my eyes. I slam my hand down on the alarm clock and sit up. I push my fingers into my eyes and press against my face as if the tension in it would fade if I just pushed a little harder. I get up and I walk into the bathroom. I look at the mirror and I want to smash it, but then I remember that it’s not the right thing to do, smashing, and I merely turn the water a little hotter in my shower. I walk out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and push my bedroom door open. She’s still asleep. I dress quietly, and leave for work. I could have tangled her in my arms again. I could have.
My boss looks angry. I hover over my keyboard a little more diligently, type a little faster than I normally would. He storms into my cubicle and slams his palm against the wall in some passive-aggressive nature. I finish what I’m typing and look up nonchalantly. He stares me down as if I’m the devil and begins to ramble about some papers that I never got to him or something to that effect. I wasn’t exactly listening and I’m sure I mumbled some excuse to him that wasn’t entirely valid. It’s not like I really cared at all anyway. I didn’t care about much anymore.
I get home, finally, and I find my wife in tears in front of the television. She looks up at me and begins her routine. She stands up and walks over to me, wraps her arms around my waist and smiles very slightly into my shirt. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses me and I barely kiss back and she starts crying harder. She starts talking about things like she thinks I’m not interested in her anymore and she starts asking if there’s someone else in my life she needs to know about. I laugh a little bit and I say no, of course not. There’s no one else. I look at her with these eyes, begging eyes, pleading with her to just understand that this is not who I usually am, that she just needs to stay with me and let me know that she’s here for me. She looks up into these eyes and smiles a little bit. She pulls me down onto the bed and cuddles against me until she gets up to make dinner.
She comes back in a silk pink robe, and I want to tell her she’s beautiful but I can’t. She holds out a bowl of spaghetti for me to take and I do, I smile because it’s my favorite food and she knows that. She leans her head against my shoulder occasionally as we eat, and we watch the television in silence, understanding silence. When we finish, she takes the bowls and comes back, sits in my lap and kisses me playfully. I have no sexual desire but I wish I did, because she’s beautiful and she has a beautiful body but I can’t bring myself to touch her like she deserves to be touched. I want to, but all I can manage is to lightly touch her hips, begging her to understand. She does. She kisses me all over and we fall over, both of us laughing (although I barely am) and we bunch ourselves under the covers, curling up into each other against the cold of the fan.
I open my eyes. I’m sure I have lipstick stains all over my face because I looked over to my wife and her lipstick is so, so smeared. I halfway smile and make my way to the bathroom. I shower, look in the mirror, cringe at the sight of myself, and dress. I walk out to the sound of breakfast. Look at my wife – her lipstick is gone and her hair is slightly crazy but she looks at me and she smiles as if I just made her morning. I walk up to her and wrap my arms around her waist. I smile a little bit as I smell her shampoo. I eat and leave.
My mood depletes. I look at my pile of work and I feel a twinge of anger. There’s always so much. I work so hard and there’s still more to every day than I can manage. I sigh and start working. I am defeated. I am a man of defeat.
I come home and I fall into bed. My wife curls up to me, confused and upset. I fall asleep. She sighs and gets up to make a single dinner. She comes back, curls her legs underneath her, she watches TV on the bed as she eats. Salad. She takes such good care of herself. She gets up, washes the dishes. She showers. When she comes back, I can smell her shampoo. I wake up slightly and turn over to drape my arm over her waist. I maybe dream of my favorite show as a kid, Conan the Barbarian. I think about the new movie they made. I wish I were her warrior, I wish I were strong enough to pull her into my arms and rip her away from our mediocre life. Maybe one day I would be.
It’s Sunday. I wake up, carry on with my typical routine. I get in the car. I change my mind and get out of the car. I walk to the bedroom. I sit on the bed and pull at my wife’s hair playfully. She wakes up and grins at me. She asks me what I’m doing and I say that I’m waking her up so she can come see my parents with me. She smiles a kind of sad smile and wakes up. She’s ready and beautiful in five minutes. I never understood that. We get in the car and I turn on the ignition. We’re off.
It’s a thirty-minute drive. My parents liked places that were out of the way and so we buried them somewhere in a forest-covered cemetery. She makes jokes the whole way out there. I hate it when she tries to do this, because her jokes are so stupid. It’s almost charming typically, but right now it’s just annoying. I look at her and try to humor her but I feel like I’m failing so I just stare at the road as if deep in thought. She doesn’t care that her jokes are bad. She just sits up and laughs at herself. I can’t help but smile a little bit. She’s an amazing person.
I park. I stumble out of the car, caught on my despair and the seatbelt. I help my wife out of the car. She smiles at me. We trudge through the pine-straw. I grab her hand. We make it to their graves. It’s like I can feel them smiling through the earth. I grab a handful of it. I squeeze it in my hands and let it fall between my fingers. I wish they were back. I could ask them how they made their lives work and how they managed to love their lives. I could ask Dad how to be a better husband to my wife. I could ask Mom what she’d want to hear. I could finally make her happy. That’s all I wanted at this point, I guess.
I walk to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, I just feel like a generic nobody. I feel like I could be anybody with this face. A canvas brushed clean, waiting to be painted on with some sense of originality. However, I was robbed of individuality the day I entered the work force, the day I graduated high school. I reach over and turn on the sink, splash my face with cool water. I turn on the valve to let the water run free in the tub. I wait. I feel the water with my fingertips, determine it is too hot, and move the valve. I wait. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
After my shower, I walk to my bedroom and sit on the bed. I look at the incredible mess of a room around me; I look at myself in another mirror and tear my gaze away. I sigh and close my eyes. I stand up and put recycled clothes on. I walk to the kitchen.
Before I even get there, I hear the sizzling of eggs and the humming of my beautiful wife, who is making breakfast. I walk in behind her and wrap my arms around her, but it wasn’t out of sincerity. It was out of obligation. Sociology in college taught me that there was no such thing as sincerity. Durkheim says there’s nothing but obligation; one is only oneself by the varying obligations. I know that’s not what he really said, but that’s what I got out of it. I kiss her cheek and maybe I feel a twinge of sincerity, of desire to make her happy. But in the end it’s just a dead-end relationship with nothing left in life except to stumble through it and try to find some slightly happy ending.
I eat, I get in the car. I push on the gas peddle like my life is depending on it and I laugh at myself for sounding so cliché. I speed down the highway and I never get caught, I never get caught when I want to get caught. I feel like time and space can mesh together and form some sort of hole for me, like it already has formed a hole, like I am floating in nothingness. I am floating in nothingness.
Career, job, certification, college degree. It’s like that’s all that matters anymore. The “man” is making us into robots and there’s nothing I can do about it because I’m just a pawn in this chess game. I wish I could march up to society as an entity all its own and let it know just how detrimental it is to everyone around it. I wish I could rip it apart with my bare hands like some hero in some video game I used to play when things actually mattered. Now I just follow exactly what I’m supposed to do, rebel to some certain extent just to keep myself alive and feeling like I have some semblance of life. I used to be the rebel. I used to have long hair and wear silly sunglasses. I used to surf. I used to ride my car in the sunshine on my way to the beach.
I sit. I am in my cubicle. I want to spin around in my chair out of sheer boredom but I cannot. That is considered inappropriate for the workplace. I want to decorate, but I cannot. That is considered overly personable. I need some sense of home in this place where I spend half my life but there’s no sense of home if the heater is always on to conserve energy and I swear I always sweat. There’s no sense of home if everyone looks like they are undead, if my boss screams at us because we’re not living creatures, we are merely toys for him to order around and demand to work. I am getting paid, I should not complain, but throughout my life I will hate this job. I will hate my career and any other career I could possibly get.
My name is Jason. My mother thought I would do something adventurous and daring if I had a name that sounded charming. I got a lovely wife and then settled down. I’ve done nothing daring with my life because to actually live demands some sense of stability and hatred for one’s life. There is no possible way to live comfortably and have no sacrifice. I feel as though I’ve sacrificed so much.
I begin to remember my mother and father again. They were loving people, really. They were interesting and fun and intelligent. My father was a chef of his own restaurant and my mother was a nurse at the local hospital. They both liked their jobs, I think. They didn’t love them, but they paid the bills and allowed free time for their hobbies. I wish I could learn from their memories, from the way they would enjoy their lives outside of work and celebrate every day as if stability and comfort didn’t matter. I want to remember them, but it’s too painful, really, to know I’ve let my mother down. I was supposed to make something of myself, I was supposed to do more than find a nice little cubicle-like ditch to bury myself in.
I drive home, find my wife in our bedroom watching American Idol or Dancing with the Stars or something like that. She smiles at me, asks about my day. She tells me again that she appreciates that I work so hard so she can stay at home and clean and cook. This makes me smile a little bit inside and I try to force my exterior to smile, but I think all I manage is a slight upturn of one corner of my mouth. She walks up to me and wraps her arms around my waist and smiles into my shirt. She pushes her blue eyes up to mine and then lays her head on my shoulder. She utters that she loves me. I say it back. I pull her into my arms even tighter and we fall down on the bed. We just lay there, her all tangled up in me, and I watch her silly show that only women enjoy. I feel something inside me, and it’s as if I could be happy in that moment. I almost let myself be. She asks me what I want for dinner, I say, “anything, it doesn’t matter.” and she smiles and gets up, leaves the room. Then, I’m alone like I always am. I try to remember how we met, but I can’t. Not right now. My mind won’t let me be happy.
I open my eyes. I slam my hand down on the alarm clock and sit up. I push my fingers into my eyes and press against my face as if the tension in it would fade if I just pushed a little harder. I get up and I walk into the bathroom. I look at the mirror and I want to smash it, but then I remember that it’s not the right thing to do, smashing, and I merely turn the water a little hotter in my shower. I walk out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and push my bedroom door open. She’s still asleep. I dress quietly, and leave for work. I could have tangled her in my arms again. I could have.
My boss looks angry. I hover over my keyboard a little more diligently, type a little faster than I normally would. He storms into my cubicle and slams his palm against the wall in some passive-aggressive nature. I finish what I’m typing and look up nonchalantly. He stares me down as if I’m the devil and begins to ramble about some papers that I never got to him or something to that effect. I wasn’t exactly listening and I’m sure I mumbled some excuse to him that wasn’t entirely valid. It’s not like I really cared at all anyway. I didn’t care about much anymore.
I get home, finally, and I find my wife in tears in front of the television. She looks up at me and begins her routine. She stands up and walks over to me, wraps her arms around my waist and smiles very slightly into my shirt. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses me and I barely kiss back and she starts crying harder. She starts talking about things like she thinks I’m not interested in her anymore and she starts asking if there’s someone else in my life she needs to know about. I laugh a little bit and I say no, of course not. There’s no one else. I look at her with these eyes, begging eyes, pleading with her to just understand that this is not who I usually am, that she just needs to stay with me and let me know that she’s here for me. She looks up into these eyes and smiles a little bit. She pulls me down onto the bed and cuddles against me until she gets up to make dinner.
She comes back in a silk pink robe, and I want to tell her she’s beautiful but I can’t. She holds out a bowl of spaghetti for me to take and I do, I smile because it’s my favorite food and she knows that. She leans her head against my shoulder occasionally as we eat, and we watch the television in silence, understanding silence. When we finish, she takes the bowls and comes back, sits in my lap and kisses me playfully. I have no sexual desire but I wish I did, because she’s beautiful and she has a beautiful body but I can’t bring myself to touch her like she deserves to be touched. I want to, but all I can manage is to lightly touch her hips, begging her to understand. She does. She kisses me all over and we fall over, both of us laughing (although I barely am) and we bunch ourselves under the covers, curling up into each other against the cold of the fan.
I open my eyes. I’m sure I have lipstick stains all over my face because I looked over to my wife and her lipstick is so, so smeared. I halfway smile and make my way to the bathroom. I shower, look in the mirror, cringe at the sight of myself, and dress. I walk out to the sound of breakfast. Look at my wife – her lipstick is gone and her hair is slightly crazy but she looks at me and she smiles as if I just made her morning. I walk up to her and wrap my arms around her waist. I smile a little bit as I smell her shampoo. I eat and leave.
My mood depletes. I look at my pile of work and I feel a twinge of anger. There’s always so much. I work so hard and there’s still more to every day than I can manage. I sigh and start working. I am defeated. I am a man of defeat.
I come home and I fall into bed. My wife curls up to me, confused and upset. I fall asleep. She sighs and gets up to make a single dinner. She comes back, curls her legs underneath her, she watches TV on the bed as she eats. Salad. She takes such good care of herself. She gets up, washes the dishes. She showers. When she comes back, I can smell her shampoo. I wake up slightly and turn over to drape my arm over her waist. I maybe dream of my favorite show as a kid, Conan the Barbarian. I think about the new movie they made. I wish I were her warrior, I wish I were strong enough to pull her into my arms and rip her away from our mediocre life. Maybe one day I would be.
It’s Sunday. I wake up, carry on with my typical routine. I get in the car. I change my mind and get out of the car. I walk to the bedroom. I sit on the bed and pull at my wife’s hair playfully. She wakes up and grins at me. She asks me what I’m doing and I say that I’m waking her up so she can come see my parents with me. She smiles a kind of sad smile and wakes up. She’s ready and beautiful in five minutes. I never understood that. We get in the car and I turn on the ignition. We’re off.
It’s a thirty-minute drive. My parents liked places that were out of the way and so we buried them somewhere in a forest-covered cemetery. She makes jokes the whole way out there. I hate it when she tries to do this, because her jokes are so stupid. It’s almost charming typically, but right now it’s just annoying. I look at her and try to humor her but I feel like I’m failing so I just stare at the road as if deep in thought. She doesn’t care that her jokes are bad. She just sits up and laughs at herself. I can’t help but smile a little bit. She’s an amazing person.
I park. I stumble out of the car, caught on my despair and the seatbelt. I help my wife out of the car. She smiles at me. We trudge through the pine-straw. I grab her hand. We make it to their graves. It’s like I can feel them smiling through the earth. I grab a handful of it. I squeeze it in my hands and let it fall between my fingers. I wish they were back. I could ask them how they made their lives work and how they managed to love their lives. I could ask Dad how to be a better husband to my wife. I could ask Mom what she’d want to hear. I could finally make her happy. That’s all I wanted at this point, I guess.