Sometimes I wake up and wonder where I am. I look around and I’m in a nice apartment, I’ve got food in my stomach, my body is well and I’ve had a full night’s rest. I get up and go to my first job, make some sandwiches for overweight suburban housewives then I get off and go home. I fuck around the house for a little bit. You know, “normal person” shit like checking the mail, watching the news, and taking a shower. Then it’s off to my second job. I go to work and make more food, this time for the overweight, overworked, suburban head-of-household who hates his job, his family, and generally can’t make it through the day with good conscience without a few (maybe ten) vodka tonics. Every once and awhile I’ll make an attempt at hitting on a waitress, talk shit with some drunk guy, or maybe I’ll cheat a little and make some food for myself and watch a baseball game that I have no interest in. Around eleven o’clock is when I finally get home for the evening. I might have a few beers, maybe catch a little buzz, and go to bed.
The only thing I have to say is that this place is a death trap. It’s also a trap of understatements. When I say a few beers, I mean I drink enough whiskey that I wouldn’t think twice about running barefoot into traffic. When I say I try to find a female companion, I mean I usually can’t remember what I said to them, but it doesn’t seem to be working; and; the state I’m in as I write this probably entails me not remembering I ever sat down to write anything. I’m also pretty sure tomorrow I’ll show this piece of shit prose to someone and they’ll tell me how great it is and how I’m wasting my talent and then they’ll ask me if I’m okay.
I’ll say “Yeah, things are going great.”
It’ll be a lie, though. It’ll be boldface, through the teeth lie because the fact is I don’t want anyone to know anything about me.
I’m not creative anymore, if I ever was. Most of the time, if I have ideas, they appear in a split second at work, then I fuck up an order, someone bitches, and they’re out of my head faster than they came. Sometimes I sit down and try to write like it’s an obligation, the only talent anyone ever told me I had. I suppose someone once told me I was good at talking; deciphering words and stringing them together into sentences that make a point. Now I just slur.
When I said I have a nice apartment I mean the carpet is nice. It’s kind of bigger than a closet and has a stove and a refrigerator and an old microwave my roommate found somewhere. My room consists of four white walls that occasionally get covered in beer. Clothes strewn all over the floor like scattered puzzle pieces. They’ll never get picked up, though. I never did like the big picture.
I used to be interesting, I think. At one point, what seems like long ago, I actually put effort into relationships. I used to have healthy interactions with other human beings and maybe that will come back someday, but I sure as hell lost that ability in the meantime. As a matter of fact, if any of the people in my past ran into me again, I wouldn’t be conscious enough to recognize them, and if I did, the closest thing to a conversation I would have with them would be low mutters and mumblings under my breathe. It would probably end with me lighting a cigarette as an excuse to opt out of the exchange.

Sometimes I sit and think about Florida. Ben moved there. Thank God someone got out. Florida’s a pretty fucked up state. Horrible crime ridden, impoverished communities are surrounded by some of the richest, most privileged human beings on earth. Fat, aging bankers vacationing, golfing, drinking cocktails with women thirty years younger than them who are most likely not represented by the rings on their fingers. The cars are never big enough, computer-phones never small enough, and resorts never ritzy enough to satisfy their addiction to comfort and royalty.
My point, however, is not to point out the social injustice, or the polar opposite living conditions represented in the same twenty mile radius. I don’t have a point really, just a question. The state is known as the place to retire. When grandpa is tired of writing checks and fucking the poor out of everything they never owned in the first place, this is where he goes to die. I haven’t looked it up, I don’t fancy myself to be a researcher, but I wonder if the fact that this is the most popular place to croak has any affect on the other citizens of the Sunshine State.
It seems, by simple logic and common sense, that the death rate in the land of waves and beaches would be higher per capita, right? Again, I am just posing the question. If it does indeed raise this statistic, I keep asking myself whether people die faster, live more depressing lives, or resort to negative behaviors because they are surrounded by dying people. It’s a spiritual question, really, one that really will never have an answer, nor by any means should it. I’m sure the majority of normal people don’t even think of things like this, and even if some kind of phenomenon of the above stated was true, I doubt they would put down their cheeseburgers in amazement. It would probably be just thirty second filler on cable news. I however, find myself fascinated with odd questions such as this one.
It’s off the wall stupid fucking theories like this that make up most of my days now. Maybe my fascination with the anthropology of Florida is just random, but I think it might be more than that. These fat fucking bankers and dying grandpa’s are who I envy. Economically secure with nice family’s, that even though they hate, they don’t seem to have an especially bad time with. I want to drink margaritas by the beach all day and be a fool hitting on cocktail waitresses that are half my age. I want it all to be justified by the fact that I’m old, rich, and because of that I must have worked hard at some point in my life, so it’s okay.
I don’t know what normalcy is or what behaviors or lifestyle characteristics define normalcy, but I fucking want it. I want to be fat, old, and rich, because this young, skinny, poor life just isn’t working out. Spending an entire life against the norm, pushing the envelope of acceptable social behavior has now got me to a point where I wish for big televisions and nicer things as opposed to world justice and equality. Who knows, though, maybe it wouldn’t as great as I think it would. I think it would.
Whether I end up dying in Florida or not, something in the interim has to change. It won’t, though. I’ll continue being a drunken fool that talks too much and writes even more pointless stories.
Maybe next year.