Friday, March 5, 2010

Get Rich or Die Trying


So I sit down and start writing one night after watching a few movies. It's cold outside, I know because I went there to smoke a cigarette, only reason to leave a house am I right? Only other time I ever leave is to buy something to bring back home, food or a wireless internet connector, and other than that I spend my time drinking or hitting that cesspool of a city. Joining the rat race, wearing the right t-shirts, not overdoing things and keeping eyes out for girls. No wonder they don't dig you, or dig most guys, because where's the charm? Where's the difference? All these good-looking, quick-witted slang-heavy guys are total identical twins with the rest of the world. Considering you have 60 seconds or less to make an impression on a girl when you chat her up out of the blue, to sum up the innercore of your personality, drawing out the appealing aspects of yourself is astronomically difficult. And if it doesn't work, well, some might think you don't "click", while others think you're not worth the fuck. As in not worth the time talking to, getting to know, then heading around town searching for a double-sized bed. It's all so hopeless isn't it? How do you do it?

How I try to do it is this. Pick up a pen, start scribbling down, and get 150 pages done by the time I leave college. If I write the right shit, write the right words, maybe I can have my sex appeal trapped in paper and ink, sitting on a shelf for all kinds of girls to pick up. They can get to know me, they can get to fuck me, and I can get to fuck them. Even a relationship isn't such a terrible idea, as long as they don't leave me hanging and cut the life cord. That's been the case one too many times in the past perhaps; I've never been in love but I've had the taste of heartbreak, and the problem is I want more of it, more of those women, and more of getting to understand them to prevent this problem in the future. If I really wanted to prevent any sorta heartbreak I'd go stick my dick in a coffee grinder but oh no it's gotta be everything or nothing. It's this sorta attitude that's gonna get my head stuck in a fucking coffee grinder but as long as I got blood in my veins there isn't much I can do about it. Being a robot is more like it, made of metal and wires sending direct and neutral thoughts throughout your mind via electricity and protons. A monk is the closest thing I can get with my unavoidable destiny as a human being, but even they get embarrassed walking into the ladies bathroom by accident. I've seen it.

Look at a guy like Van Gogh. Cuts his ear off cause he's got no love, lives a life time being rejected for his paintings, and hundreds of years later, when everyone around him is six feet under, my work place gets filled by old tourists with coffee breath who complain about the tuna sandwich. You fucking ordered it, I think, and spend my day shrugging my shoulders so much that my arms are hanging loose like a sock filled with sand. At a cafe in a museum, you get two hipsters a day coming in for a Latte and a date, but as soon as Van Gogh's depression seeps the walls the old spiders come crawling in. These wrinkled fiends emerge from each dark corner in the shadows; suddenly they got something to do aside from playing bowl with rimmed hats and eating chips at the club. A heroin overdose at the ripe age of 50 will do me good if it means I'll end up like them, which is just right around the time my marriage gets sour and we stop having sex. Sex isn't even the problem, fine I'll be infertile if my wife can give me kicks, just hanging around cracking jokes and having a decent time, but if all we're gonna do is wake up go to sleep wake up then count me out motherfuckers I don't want it. And neither do most of us... The legal mortal age should be 50 at max, after that there's the choice of painless overdose or a concentration camp. That'd certainly clean things up.

Van Gogh gets respect now, but what's the damn point? Yeah wow, he left the world with so many masterpieces that will be treasured for years and years by millions of marveling and astonished audiences to come... While his skeletal figure gently weeps in the ground. Still it's true, something's better than nothing, but really, you gotta put it into perspective. If some girl you thought stood you up turned out to be crushed by a car on the way there would that make you feel any better? "Hey, at least my self-confidence was in no way affected! I was gonna buy a train to the otherside of the country but now my life doesn't need to be turned around!"

Woody Allen is an old man, almost completely bald with sprouts of white hair sticking out in spontaneous directions. He marries his step-daughter almost 40 years younger than him but Christ if the world doesn't love him. And if it doesn't, then my knuckledusters are getting a polishing tonight, cause if there's one autobiographical genius he's your man. Either way, some bum leaving down the street from you does the same thing and you'd go around terrorizing the guy. Wait till the teens find out, oh boy, I can almost see the toilet rolls and egg yolk running down his walls every day. Spraying "PEDOPHILE" in big fat letters with red spray paint just cause he's an unusual guy. True, that word may pop up, alongside something like INCEST, but you watch his films and how could you hate him? He plays himself, you know who he is, he's got charm he's got jokes he's got style. He knows what love is, and if he doesn't after making 50 flicks about it then he's blind, deaf and mute (surprise twist), so how can you blame him for marrying his 18 year old step-daughter?

See in this world, no matter what you say or what you want to believe or what you avoid; it's all about self-projection. It's all about the image you got, the show you put on, the lighting in the room and your trimmed fingernails. That's not to say you're in for good once you've captured the moment though; women are easily disappointed people. You gotta keep it up, keep the game going, and once you think the coast is clear start picking your nose and eating it. Not literally, although that's a great idea for an experiment; I meant more so on the "letting the beast out of it's cage" note, without the cliche. Open up and take your clothes off, to see if they like what they see. Conclusively, the easiest way to do that is to write an autobiographical book.

For these reasons I sit infront of a blank screen and wonder what to write. Normally I'm not the type to persevere or not lose my concentration after several one-digit seconds, but walking around town seeing people work is a horrible screamfest of what could be coming. You catch a bus downtown and hand the driver some cash, sit down and zone out and wait until you're out. But the driver, the bus driver, he sits in that same chair all day long. Where you were temporarily sitting killing time bored as hell, that was his goddamn workplace. The smells you smelt, the temperature of the air, the sights you saw on the way; all these timed by eight or nine hours and you get his shift. His day. He gets home, slaps his hat on the coat hanger and sits down to eat his dinner. Hits the showers, hits the hay, then the alarm blares all over again.

Ok, I getcha, there's better jobs than that, but are there really? Any job, any old job where there is no passion to it, no excitement, only the thrill on Saturday when you go down to the bar, eat dinner with your family, get your paycheck in the mail. Like the human race needs a reminder that we're all dying already, right from the get-go, from day one? Sitting in a chair all day long doing something that gives you no joy is going to lead you where? These people could look more alive lying in a coffin than when they're paying the bills, that's for sure. When they're walking the dog, when they're watering the garden, when they do their tie up to play online scrabble in an office block while the phone rings, glancing at your hand-watch for the next cigarette break. Ohhhhhh Jesus.

The thing is, we worry. I for example, worry. Double dose of prozac helps, yet only partially. I got chlamydia and need to get a blood test in three weeks to see if I got HIV. Symptoms include weight-loss, check, skin discolouration, check, and there's some weird lump in my neck that keeps popping up (cancer?). My shrink knows me better than my ex-girlfriends, I cry I puke I lie, and most of all I worry. But Christ if I've got the reasons for it. No chance of pursuing any career other than in the "literate industry", I break my fucking fingers on this keyboard trying to scrap together some concept of a future. It's true that no one knows what's coming, what the future looks like or how it would be, but in my mind it's closer to a blackhole than a cute little box of chocolates. I'm gonna get sucked up into that thing, man! Wouldn't you be shaking in your boots? Hell, I bet you are anyway, but at least your soles aren't cracked...

I sit infront of a finished piece of work... examining the messed up sludge-of-consciousnesses. Too much internal monologue, I think, and crumple up another piece of paper. Way too much internal monologue. What am I gonna do? Do you wanna be a character? I'll give you cool lines. Help me out here, I'm desperate.