This was a bizarre world. Well, maybe it wasn't unusual, it just was. This was a world that was. This was a world where people used each other -subconsciously maybe. They didn't know they were using each other, but that's because they didn't know anything. Anything at all. They didn't know themselves, or each other, or anything. They thought they knew, but they didn't -the detachment from their own lives prevented them from really knowing anything, really feeling anything- they didn't
really do anything.
Many kind of just cruised through their own lives: chillin'. Not really caring about anything, being comfortably numb, like the title for the song Comfortably Numb "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd. They felt like they were watching their own lives sitting cozily in front of a computer monitor, maybe on Netflix. It felt as if nothing really had any effect. Of course, it did, but no one could see that. The language they used no longer allowed them to articulately express their complex feelings with meaning, it wasn't suited for these times. It was a tired language. It had been building up, on its victories, its defeats, its virtues and its faults -like a stack of books that was piled up so high that more books could no longer be stacked on top, because no one could reach. This way, language became a burden.
People were great at making plans, but horrible at getting around to actually doing them. Words were no longer backed up by actions.
People talked. They would greet every morning, say: "Good morning, how's it going?", but they might as well have said: "Hey, do you want to have sex?". It felt as though speaking was a mere formality, before getting to have sex with someone. Not necessarily that you needed to speak to someone to have sex with them, just that it would be the only reason you would talk to them in the first place, and not because everyone was horny, just that an orgasm was one of the last or the last real feelings left -any human contact.
A lot of people didn't have anything. Alison was one of these people.
She realized she was one of these people in her communications class. The professor asked them to say a very important value they lived by. Many said hard work, others family and some happy ones said religion.
Alison felt mildly disappointed in the reasons the religious people gave for being religious. "Because it tells me how to live my life and what I should and should not do".
"What a waste of a life" Alison thought.
Then it happened. She realized she didn't have anything. These people so dearly held on to their families, their hard work, their religion. She didn't have anything to hold on to, only her Existentialism and Relativism. No family. She didn't care about hard work. Of course, she liked doing good in school and stuff, but it was nothing to live by. And no religion.
The professor constantly spoke of values and things like that, things that Alison only knew the definition of, but could not empathize with.
Sometimes people thought she was sad, when she spoke of not having anything. She was not sad. She knew that people who had things were happier, but also dumber. She wasn't happy either. She just was, things always just were, and she recognized this.
That weekend Alison went to a party in a hotel, it was a Ke$ha theme party, very trashy. People wore a lot of glitter and bright American Apparel leggings with bras only. For a while she was impressed, people were really embracing the theme of this party. Everyone seemed very in character. Then she realized that they weren't really trying, that was just how they were. She got a little depressed and began drinking.
She was drunk and kissed a guy. She texted with him often for the next week then they stopped talking. It was not the first time this had happened, or the second, or the third. Actually, most of the times she had kissed people were like this. She had a boyfriend once, they didn't really kiss a lot. He was shy, sexually awkward. Neither of them were really happy with the other, but they did have one thing in common: no will. A relationship of two people without will could last forever. No one would say anything.
Alison said she was fine this way, but really, she wanted something. She didn't know what it was that she wanted. She didn't know how to explain it. Her language didn't allow it. She was waiting for that person that would get her, really understand her. But the more she waited, the more she felt like she would wait forever. People were different and she seemed to know this, but it couldn't be that no one in the world was like her -got her-it just couldn't.
*****
Six months later, Alison was on summer vacation. She had been working on being more social, open to others, with little success.
After having the thoughts she had -you can't just forget them. If only she could.
She would spend sleepless nights just thinking about things. She didn't know how to not think all the time. She would think about her past, reliving significant moments of her past, like one time she kissed some boy or another time she kissed another boy. At some moment, her memories morphed into fantasies, escalated. What had began as reminiscing became a deep exploration of her longings. Many were sexual, but only on the surface. There was that something that she had once, and was still, yearning for buried in her fantasies, expressed in the desire for some passionate human contact. She had been touched before. She was touched often, but that wasn't the type of touch she needed.
Other times she would ponder on philosophical subjects; she knew she would arrive to no conclusion but still, the fact that she could reason within her own head -on her own, without any outside help- fascinated her and filled her with pride.
*****
Three months earlier she was gonna go out with her ex boyfriend. They were going to the movies. Her ex boyfriend's name was Allen. When they were together, Allen was a sci-fi aficionado, very avid videogame player -he owned a Japanese version of the yet-unreleased-in-America Nintendo DS- and he liked coffee. Allen smoked cigarettes. Alison also smoked cigarettes, but with Allen it was different. Alison still saw them as something like a drug or something you would get some sort of high out of. For Allen, they were more of a habit. Everything merited a cigarette: coffee, cigarette. Breakfast, cigarette. Class break, cigarette. Meal, cigarette. He felt he deserved a cigarette every time he did something, so he didn't really smoke for leisure.
Alison picked up Allen Tuesday around 7:30 p.m. Though neither of them had a strong sense of will, it had been Alison the one to make most decisions in their relationship. She sometimes felt as if she had to drag Allen to do whatever, beg him almost. She didn't like it, but she did it anyways.
Allen got in the car and told Alison he had ecstasy pills. Alison said "Sweet. I have some Jack Daniels to put in our sodas". Alison thought it was odd that he had drugs -ecstasy pills at that. He had never been the partying type according to her. When she thought "ecstasy", "party" always followed.
They parked around the corner of the theater, not in the parking lot, and neither of them did get out of the car. They had taken two pills each around fifteen minutes earlier.
"I didn't know you did ecstasy" said Alison.
"I didn't before, but now I do" Allen said. Alison noticed something different, in the way he talked, the way he didn't hesitate before talking. Maybe she was high. No, not yet.
They talked a little more about things and began walking towards the theater. They bought popcorn and two Pepsi's. They walked into the theater and it was almost empty. They sat right in the middle. They were gonna watch a movie about friends going on a road trip or something, they didn't really care.
Alison took out a small bottle of Jack Daniels from her purse and poured it into hers and Allen's soda cups. She put more in hers, maybe not on purpose.
Alison and Allen touched a lot during the movie. Alison rested her head on his shoulder and he played around with her hair and touched her face. They held hands and played around with their fingers. It was a very meticulous kind of courting, with a lot of patterns -mechanical almost. But this was new to Alison, she had been the one to make all the first moves before and she thought it was nice to have some reciprocity for once.
When the movie finished they went to Burger King. Allen ate a Steakhouse Burger. Alison ate a chicken sandwich. They smoked cigarettes after and walked back to Alison's car.
They were both still high so they said they would just sit in the car and listen to music. Allen was on the passenger's seat. They listened to the album Loveless by My Bloody Valentine in silence, then began to kiss. They kissed for around six minutes before Alison hopped on top of Allen in the passenger seat.
While they kissed she thought of how strange this all seemed. They started having sex. Allen almost never kissed her when they had been together, they maybe only kissed a couple of times, now they were on ecstasy, having sex in a car. Then she stopped thinking, and she felt. She felt Allen very close to her. Not only in a physical way, but in some other way -she didn't really know. She felt his body. He was thin and his arms and legs seemed longer than average. He looked a little bit like a spider, the ones with the long legs. She felt his face with her hands as they kissed and she thought she wanted to feel -touch- him forever; it seemed reassuring.
They finished having sex but stayed in the same position they were -facing each other in the front seat. They stared at each other for one minute, seemingly unable to catch their breath. Alison yelled loudly "Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!" in a sort of relieving, cathartic manner, but still, a positive feeling. Allen smiled because he knew what she felt. Then Alison smiled because she knew he knew.
They drove to Ed's Burgers and bought one strawberry milkshake, one banana milkshake and two orders of fries. Alison parked outside Allen's house and they ate in the car, then they smoked cigarettes, hugged, then Allen went home.
Alison got home and felt very tired. She showered and got in bed. She thought she was going to fall asleep but she didn't. She was thinking a lot about her day. She enjoyed it a lot, but Allen seemed so different -like a different person- and this kind of bothered her. Not because she missed the old Allen, but because he had changed. He had changed; it was possible -to change. She knew she wanted to change, to be happier, but didn't know what she wanted to change, or how changing in any way could make her happier. These thoughts would never leave her.
*****
Three months and one day later Alison hadn't changed. She tried, she really did but it felt like she hadn't because there was not one thing she figured she needed to change. She felt like she was not. She felt nowhere. She questioned her need to feel like she was, to feel somewhere. Why should she? She could never find an answer.
*****
Two months and one day earlier Alison was home alone. Her parents had gone out of town and had taken her two little sisters. Alison instinctively texted Allen and told him to come. He said he would go in like two hours because he was doing something right now. Alison thought he was playing videogames. She kept watching things on Netflix then showered.
Allen got to her house at around five. He called her when he was outside but she didn't answer -she was still in the shower. He checked if the door was locked and it wasn't, so he walked in. He brought a pepperoni pizza for them to eat and watch movies. He knew Alison liked to eat. He waited for Alison to get out of the shower. He wanted to go in the shower with her as she was showering but he didn't, he didn't know if it'd be weird -but then he knew he should've. Alison came into her room and hugged Allen with a towel wrapped around her. Allen took the towel off and began to kiss her. He licked her neck and all around her.
Allen and Alison had sex. They napped after, then had sex again.
They ate pizza and smoked cigarettes and hugged for as long as they were together.
*****
Two months and one day later it was Saturday and Alison didn't have to wake up early. She could never sleep, but when she did she would wake up really late. Alison was alone that whole day. She made a tuna melt and ate it by herself while watching Gypsy 83 on Netflix. The title reminded her of one of her favorite bands: M83, but she liked the movie a lot.
Later that night, she went to a party with her friends. She was drunk. She met a guy, named Jebb. He was also drunk. They tried to talk at the party but it was too loud. They went outside to smoke cigarettes. Jebb asked Alison if she wanted to go somewhere. She said yeah but she didn't know where. She remembered about Jefferson Park, a park nearby.
They drove to Jefferson Park. They walked across the park and sat on some bleachers. Alison told Jebb she wanted to go to the grass. They found some hill in the grass and sat there. They looked up at the sky, trying to look at the stars but there were no stars to be looked at -they saw some airplanes across the sky. Jebb lit a joint up. They finished the joint and kept looking at the sky. They began to kiss after. Alison wasn't thinking anything, she was just kissing. Jebb put on a condom and they began to have sex on the grass. Alison liked it a lot. She felt so free. She didn't care about anything. She was cold, but she didn't care -more like she didn't notice, that she was cold. When they finished they hugged, for what seemed a long time.
*****
Two months and two days later Alison was waiting for her class to start. She was reading 'The Romantic' by Poncho Peligroso. Many poems in the book reminded her of her own real life. Especially the poem titled you goddamn motherfucker i'll fucking murder you if you look at me with that fucking shitty look of throwaway momentary regret or disappointment or love or whatever it is that your face says when you look at me which is something along the lines of 'i wish you'd stop looking at me like that because it makes me want to look at you like that but i can't do that so instead i'm going to look surprised and say something funny before i start crying uncontrollably' you beautiful piece of shit boy who's too smart for his own good and extremely insecure and projects and unnatural swagger to overcompensate and seduce women routinely not as a matter of real attraction or sexual need but as a brief respite from the pain of being yourself (brought about by amplification of emotional pain from your past brought on by a combination of the aforementioned insecurity (in turn perhaps brought about by your mother's adrenal gland tumor which went undiagnosed until your late teens by which point she had already established a history of disproportionate and seemingly unjustified bursts of anger), rejection brought about by your mistakes, and your overanalytical nature (brought about by both of your parents being analysts)) which is a sharp and constant pain that you try to mitigate by not just detaching from reality but also by making abstractions and ideas your playthings and immersing yourself in the world of the mind (solely on an intellectual and academic level and not on an emotional level even though emotions are part of the mind as you well know because you pursue this largely to sublimate your feelings into systems that you feel you can order and justify) and the minds of others (processing their emotions on the same intellectual level as you do other abstract concepts in a way that frequently results in you seeming to treat other human beings as gatherings of concepts or extremely complex algorithms (which you seem to see as subroutines of a kind within the extremely complex teleological arguments you make for the audience of yourself in a bid to convince yourself that some greater abstract meaning excuses your behavior) instead of human beings with independent agency that are ends in and of themselves instead of means to an end) as an attempt to escape yourself because you are terrified of intimacy, hate yourself, and are unwilling to get close to people you really care about for fear of hurting them the same way you have to the few people you've ever been really, really close to (which is funny because you've said out loud "I totally am [a closeted homosexual]" and "I'll [have sex with men] but not men I like because it ruins relationships, it's just a fact. I won't have sex with my friends. Unless they're girls." demonstrating an inability to understand that it is not sex that ruins relationships, but being selfish, anti-empathetic asshole (inextricable concepts for you)) and it's hard to see you a lot of the time not just for how you act towards myself and others but for how you as 'you' by coming into every conversation with your guard up and ready to attack just so you don't have to demonstrate your (massive, character-defining) weakness (which (has been exacerbated since i met you because i know you value your intellect above all else but have been feeling weaker ever since your unexplained five-hour grand mal seizure in the summer of 2008 that has had a noticeable effect on your cognitive ability and shattered your sense of adolescent invincibility and thus increased your baseline levels of The Fear and thus your abrasive overcompensation) is the only part of you that has ever seemed to result in honesty (in a few beautiful moments where you gave up and sat in wide-eyed shock and i watched those wide eyes then fill with tears as you began to scream (and i began to scream and we looked each other in the eyes and we were looking in each other's eyes and were both screaming)) so suck my dick because you don't realize that telling someone you love them isn't an apology but can instead make something hurt worse when said immediately after performing an action that seems to be how one would treat someone you do not love but are indifferent to and. She like that title a lot. It seemed to describe her uniquely. It also seemed to describe every other person her age. So why did she feel alone? Why did she feel misunderstood? She felt very stupid, not being able to control anything.
After class, Alison bought a burger and ate it at school sitting on a bench. A guy approached her and asked if she could sit next to her. She said yeah. The guy asked "How's it going?", she said "good".
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