Tuesday: Writing

Oh...just some angst-y sensational entitled privileged young-person writing....

Right now I am reading The Soft Machine by William Burroughs - obviously.

I - 24 in 2009 - of the "Lost Generation" - those of us dumped out of college into a toiling mud of unemployment. In Los Angeles, I have turned a few of the typical tricks, and again, life has presented a new fork in the road, both paths leading to shrouded forests of uncertainty.

And what will this Lost Generation have to say? They - we - will say that we learned adaptability, that we learned frugality, that we learned how to have a good time with something as free and as abundant as sunshine (Have you ever just taken a walk to the park, high on pot, and just sat in the grass and talked and listened and watched the world fret?). Our parents, they ask us why we aren't strapped to careers and we tell them, "There are no rockets taking off for the moon today." They say, "When I was your age!" It's not like we aren't trying.

We can't afford cable. Hell, we can't even afford televisions. I told this to an old man once and he said, "What, you that poor?" I ride my bicycle because I cannot afford to drive my car...which I could not afford if my parents did not help me out. Come on, Mom and Dad, your Mom and Dad bailed you out of some pretty tight green spots - admit it.

My Mama and my Papa, they were married three years by the time they were my age. Me, I still call myself a Kid, and I live in a studio apartment in West Hollywood where sometimes I go to the Target on Santa Monica and La Brea and watch the Mamas and the Papas spend $$$$$$$$ on things that make me say, "Thirty dollar pants? Man, they must be rich!" Me, I'm just high with my pal Rubin, and we're looking at the cheap $12 sunglasses in the mirror, trying them on, and then wistfully putting them back on the shelf. Rubin says, "You can get these same exact glasses in the Fashion District in downtown LA for one dollar." One whoooooole dollar. We buy some matching skeleton gloves from the kids' section, our thirst for consumerism is satiated.

But you know what? I got something better than money. I have these good times. I have these small treasures. I have a cup of Starbucks maybe once a month when I can dish the five dollars for soy milk. I'm skinny (Because I'm hungry), I'm fit (Because I have no insurance to be ill), I'm full of sunshine and air and good health, and a sneaking sense of smug satisfaction about it all, watching my Mama and my Papa get fat in suburbia in their little chalk-colored house. I've got the rest of my life to be miserable like they are...sure things are rough now, but at least I ain't got no worries, no responsibilities (Coudln't even keep a goldfish if I wanted to), ain't got no loyalties except to me, myself, and I. No wife, no kids, no boss.

Shit, I even have a college diploma which I've actually never seen. I have a degree which I earned with blackout nights, stoned morning art history classes, and so much cinematic bullshit you'd puke (Look up "Drew Casper" and keep a bucket nearby). Why didn't anyone grab me by the nose - when I was eighteen and idealistic - and say to me, "Look, reality blows."

When I did blow for the first time it was four in the morning and we were sitting in my friend's car. The club had already stripped itself of its lights and its cameras and its actions, and we were just sitting there, doing blow, just talking. I actually didn't know how to feel - I don't think I like coke - but at one point, my friend said to me, "How do you feel?"

And maybe before I'd been scared. And maybe before I'd been anxious. Not just about possibly sending myself to the emergency room with a burst brain and bleeding, but about life, which felt simultaneously hopeless and hopeful, right there, at that point, when I was 24 and it was Summer '09. And maybe it was the drugs talking, but I said, "I feel excellent."

They laughed cause I'd told them it was My First Time.

Writing Oct 14 2009