birth day after day

i turned 24 last month, so wanted to get something out. scrape just a little.

Bare-backed and fuel in the lungs. That’s how you live sometimes, for a period of time. Maybe until you turn 25, and think, now it is time to get serious. Get a Big Daddy job and wear your own daddy’s shirts to work. Everybody thinks you are a freak. How can everybody be right about something that is none of their business? But they are. You are. A freak.

You walk in with your ill-fitted clothes, and you don’t know whom to talk to. You sit at your uncomfortable desk, and the lights blind you immediately. You wish to be back. Back in that smoke-filled room with drawings on the wall and books sprawled across. That room where you felt like an artist in the making. The room where you could spew any bullshit and be met with an equally challenging (and often vile) array of thoughts. Match each other’s brain waves until the electricity buzzes you both to sleep.

You go to the washroom and stare at your clean clothes and neat shoes. The toilet is clean. You are clean. You wonder if jumping out of the window will do something. It won’t. You will probably get hurt, and then people will see you get hurt. Then you will have to come into work the next day, and now you will be The Freak Who Jumps Out of Windows. What will that do, huh? The lights will still blind you, albeit not immediately anymore.

You plan on getting used to this work. You plan on cheating as much as possible – cigarette breaks that last longer than you in bed, in conversations. Eating alone, and slowly. Let people think you are shy, you have issues. Working slowly, but working nonetheless, because wasting time doing nothing is the biggest sin. Doing nothing as a way of living is a nuanced art, and it always requires a smoke-filled arena. Some liquid diet, some buzz in all the senses.

You suddenly grapple with the reality of life. There is rent to be paid. You have a place to sweep and maintain. People want to see you. There is nothing equivalent to heroin that can be mixed in your tea. The cats need to be fed and kept alive. Everything smells of cat piss sometimes, and you get disgusted. You could never father children, you piece of shit! You are disgusted by piss and shit and vomit. You piss and shit and vomit. Remember when you threw up all over the roof, all over the bed, all over skin? You can definitely never be a mother. You will end up resenting everything, in a way that is newer to how you resent everything right now. How is the Big Daddy life working out for you?

Right now, I am not 25. The job is quiet. The lights still hurt. Cigarette breaks don’t last as long as I do, and I last all night. There is still cat piss, but it means there are cats too. I don’t want to be a father or a mother. I wear ill-fitted clothes, but I don’t want to jump out of that window. I am not stupid, come on. The smoke-filled room has disappeared into that smoke. The walls remain. The dreams remain. Give me another plane, watch me vomit my ideas. Put me on a liquid diet, my teeth are always on the verge of falling out.

cover image is hirohiko araki… yes jojo’s bizarre adventure