INTERVIEW WITH A COMMUTER

He was just sitting there, obviously a little drunk, but with tears in his eyes, right there on the 5:52:

Everything’s ruined.  My whole life is in the toilet and I can’t do anything about it.  The sad part about it – aside from the fact that I ruined everything and, you know, it was me, myself, that did it (I did say that, right? – O.K., yes, yes I know I did.  I just needed to say it again because it’s, like, you know, right there in the front part of my brain [that is, of course, assuming that the front part of your brain is the part of your brain that does all the superficial and, you know, like caveman-level type thinking.  I’m assuming that it is because I don’t know for sure and I’m institutionally too lazy and way too drunk right now to look it up, so let’s just stipulate, for the sake of argument, that it is]) and aside from the fact that everybody I care about hates me – the really sad part is that I know exactly what I am going to try to do about it.  It’s not that I know what I’m going to try to do about it that’s sad or, for that matter, that I also know, in the very same instant, that what I intend to try to do will accomplish exactly nothing towards making anyone happy, including (and, well let’s face it, especially) me.  It’s what I’m going to do that’s sad, for it is this: I’m going to find (and I won’t have to look hard, you know) some bimbo (a regrettable word but there it is) – a 20 year old, say, with really big tits – and I’m going to (very) routinely fuck her silly for about a year until she gets too boring, and her little smells start to get too hard for me to ignore, and the secretive way she just flicks at her nostrils with the tips of her fingers, not really picking snot but not really not picking either all making it hard (or should I say difficult) for me to even get it up in any kind of meaningful way anymore (my apologies, in retrospect, for being so crass but you need to know and understand at the outset that this is me when I get drunk and it is at least true and real for lack of a better word(s), something which from me [and if you had ever spent any time actually living with me you would know] is a blessing and a relief.  For, as Billy Joel said, “honesty is such a lonely word,” and damned if it isn’t true.)  Anyway, what’s worse (much worse actually) is that I’ll have, like, exactly zero “real” conversation with her.  You know, because I’m so about “real” conversation.  And then after that (soon after that), I’m thinking that it will be time to get on with the “real”, and ultimately most fulfilling but paradoxically most painful and self (for a change)–destructive part of my life, which will be this: generally (and specifically too for that matter) hating myself quite deeply and profoundly—very much like all but one of my three kids (more about that later) and, of course, both my ex-wives.  Oh yes, I forgot.  I drink too.  Yes, I know I kind of alluded to that earlier, but the thing is that I actually really drink, if you know what I mean.  Maybe you don’t know what I mean or can’t know what I mean but I’m thinking that if I keep going on like this, you know this stream-of-drunkenness, that eventually it will become apparent what I’m talking about if not why what I’m talking about is actually happening (i.e. why the copious amounts of alcohol marinating my cerebral cortex is there to begin with.)

I already know her name—the 20 year old, I mean.  It’s Brandie—just like that, with the “ie” at the end.  Like that?  I know it’s a cliché, right?  O.K., fuck you, maybe you cut me some slack this one fucking time…maybe just a little?  But it’ll be like this:  I’ll be in the bar drinking.  Drinking what?  You guessed it!  Right, because I’m a drunk but I’m a college educated class-act kind of drunk—you know, the kind that drinks mid-class level (because of my mid-level job title) brandy while eruditely working literary quotes, paraphrases and/or obscure references into my on-going internal and ever-contemptuous assessment of the world around me while chuckling knowingly and condescendingly to my self with just a tinge of self-loathing.  So there’s me and my ever-present Remy-fucking-Martin and along comes Brandie, wearing one of those t-shirts, you know?  I don’t have to even tell you, it will just be right in that “special” kind of way.  Right…I know you know.  Wait, I take it back.  It won’t be the breasts that get me.  It will be something about her ass that connects with my ever-shifting, ever-evolving definition of what a quote-unquote great ass is.  That will start it.  Her pretty face will get me buying her the drink and then those juicy breasts will seal the deal.

Changing gears here, let me just say that, if you’ve found anything up to this point disgusting (or annoying or inspiring in you a desire to inflict physical violence on me if you could only find me) that it’s the box that is at fault.  The box is a killer, you know?  I’ll say it again but this time hoping to get some cathartic relief for my poisoned soul by yelling at the top of my lungs with a reckless disregard for whomever maybe listening and thinking that I’m one crazy motherfucker.  THE BOX IS THE GODDAMN, HOLY SHITTIN’, COCK-SUCKIN, MOTHER-FUCKING KILLER!!!!!  Nah, didn’t work.  

The box is the source of all pain and frustration.  It is in fact the very instrument of the devil, and he plays it like Pinchas fucking Zuckerman, and in this, I know of what I speak.  I know because I get in that box every day.  I willingly climb in and obligingly pull the top down over my head and I lay there, for about two or three minutes, until the walls start closing in.  Then, when I start to really feel the air getting thin and the cramps creeping into every muscle, the pounding beginning in my brain like a pile driver, slamming my skull, I come face to face with the pointlessness of it all.  And I’m entirely powerless, at an essence-sucking, muscle-atrophying level, to make the pain stop.  And the very fact of being incapable of any kind of control over my own destiny is like a knife in my heart, if you’ll excuse the mundane simile.  That’s as close as you’ll get to the real truth about me and I can’t see that there’s really any changing it at this late date is there?  Indeed not.  No trying really.  Well, there can be plenty of trying, I guess, but if I’m not on board at the very least who else is going to be?  

See, the thing is, I’ve been given every break.  I’ve had it great, I never really had any problems that I didn’t cause myself and truly, of all the people around me, I was always affected the least.  All my issues were issues, ultimately, for other people and I always made them more miserable than I ever was.  And I, for my part, would quickly find some kind of emotional closure and move on.  I’ve had it so easy.  So the box isn’t any kind of really big deal.  I can take anything.  I know I just went a little crazy back there and I’m sorry, I mean, I apologize.  I’ve come a long, long way in this life and I’ve got a few hard knocks coming I know.  I know that and it doesn’t really worry me, but I think I know the problem with that logic.  The problem is that I haven’t known any real hardship.  And I’m thinking that when it comes, the hardship that is, and it must surely be coming, I’m going to be totally unprepared for it—utterly even.  Although, I just now had another thought--maybe what will happen is what is natural to happen.  Maybe I’m one of the fortunate ones who have been able, though a trick of fate and luck, to put off tragedy and real hardship, to an age and time of life when I can handle it better.  Little by little life has drained its passion away and I’ve been left only with practicality.  I no longer have a sense of real deep excitement about life – you know the artist’s unbridled optimism?  All I have left is the sense that life is a series of obligations and commitments.  You find yourself in a position where people rely on you and you do what you have to do.  Maybe you have the odd spasm of passion and intensity--a small period where you indulge in a little transgression fueled by the artists’ sense that life is short and all that that expression means but most surely before you have any idea of what’s coming the fucking lion is upon you making “you” into his meal in a most undignified and, surprisingly, ungraceful way.  The lion is dignified and graceful but you, the one being eaten, with your little shrieks and gasps garbled by gobs of blood choking off your windpipe, most definitely not.