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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

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December 2018, Age 26. Ice Cold.

Saturday, Afternoon

“Alright guys, take a look at my inside ski,-” I said enthusiastically from behind my ski goggles reflecting a deep black image of the mountain, “-and watch what happens. Tell me what I can do to alleviate what’s happening to it,” I said as I dragged my downhill edge.

It was a blue bird day. The snow was soft, the sun was out and my students seemed to be shedding another layer every time we got to the bottom of the run before we took the chair lift once again. I felt the positive energy coursing throughout the mountain as I guided my students down the slopes. I felt at ease. The only thing I had on my mind was sharing my love of this sport with my students. Helping them feel at ease. Welcoming them to the sport, the culture, the lifestyle.

I skied about 10 feet, applying pressure to my inside ski by stiffening my knees hyperbolically, causing my downhill edge to catch. I made exaggerated pumps with my arms, “hnnnghhh,” pretending like I was trying to rotate my inside ski but I couldn’t.

I looked up at my three giggling students, two middle aged women and a young man in his mid twenties and asked again, “What’s going on?”

“Your leg,” The woman in red chimed in.

“What about it?”

“It’s not turning.”

“Right! Why?”

*silence*

I continued, “Remember this morning when I talked about the flattening of our skis in order to rotate them?”

She immediately realized and spoke up “It’s not flat, it needs to be flat so you can um, turn the ski.”

“To rotate the ski, it needs to be flat! Correct! But is it easy to rotate it if I’m back here?” I asked as I bent my knees and hovered over my butt over the back of my skis while shaking my head, “No way Jose, I need to be,” I spoke as I extended my knees and brought my body up, “forward!”, I then demonstrated a rotation of my inside ski, “Ahhh, so easy! Let’s give it a try!” I said excitedly as I slid my skis down the mountain another 30 feet before spinning around and giving my pole a whirl in the air.

What looked like a baby deer on skis earlier in the morning turned into a young man for the first time in his life making parallel turns on his skis as he focused so carefully on flattening his inside ski in order to turn back and forth gracefully across the slope.

“YES! YES BRO!” I yelled as he approached me. Riding on the high of my praise, he tried to hockey stop both of his skis right in front of me unsuccessfully, then picked his head up with the biggest, goofiest grin on his face making sure I was watching. Damn right I was watching.

“That was AMAZING CHRIS!” I gave him a pole tap and spoke from behind my closed teeth, “Freakin awesome. See how efficient you are? How in control you are? How’d that feel?”

“Dude. So good. Like, dude. Awesome.”

A few runs later and we’re practicing hockey stops down a green slope named Powerline.

“OW OWWW,” the sheer volume and fervor of my cries were enough to garner the attention of the those above us as we skied under the lift line, rotating our skis at the same rate, skiing in a beautiful parallel, spraying snow left and right. As the period of their hockey stops shortened, I could tell they were more confident. More excited. They wanted it. They wanted more. They wanted to try it again and again. To get that rush. To get that high. I was getting the high vicariously through them.

“Woo!” Chris yelped testing the waters of how it felt to yell while skiing. To show everyone how his heart was pumping and shining at the same time. Before I knew it, we were all laughing and screaming all the way down. Amazing. My heart was full.

At the end of our lesson, I gave a debrief on the day to my smiling and accomplished students.

“Guys, thank you so much for skiing with me. But more importantly, you should be thanking yourselves. I didn’t make you do anything, you came out. You showed up. You pushed yourselves. And how do you guys feel now after day one?” I asked excitedly and proud.

“In control!” The woman in red replied, five hours after she disclosed that the reason she was taking a lesson was because she tried skiing one time and “felt completely out of control”. I proceeded that morning to explain to her Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, in that in order to have fun, be safe, and have a good time, we need to first and foremost, be safe. In order to be safe, we have to be in control. The fact that she now felt that way made me feel so fulfilled, in that I was blessed with the ability to to help her accomplish her necessary prerequisite of feeling secure so that she could love and enjoy this sport as much as me.

I asked Chris if he wanted to go get a warm white chocolate chip cookie from the hotel with me.

The lesson was over and we were sitting by the fire eating our cookies, he was drinking tea, I was drinking coffee.

“I can’t thank you enough man. I mean, yesterday morning when I tried to ski on my own and ended up eating shit all the way down the mountain, I thought ‘done, not doing this’, but my girlfriend talked me into a lesson and I’m so happy she did. Otherwise I would’ve just drank beer in the hot tub all day.”

“Damn sounds like a good idea.”

We both laughed and he kept going, “but I wanted so badly to learn to ski and you turned me around 180 degrees. You gave me so much confidence.”

“Bro, that confidence is inside of you. You knew you could do it, I just gave you the fundamentals and was your personal cheerleader all day because I knew for a fucking fact that you’d pick it up. I knew it and I just needed you to know it.”

“Well,” he chuckled, “I know it now! I feel so good brother. But hey I’ve gotta get going to meet up with my girlfriend and her parents for dinner, thanks again so much man I can’t say it enough.”

“Dude,” I smiled, “thanks for skiing with me today. I’m happy to get you where you wanted to be so you can love this sport as much as I do.”

He got up and gave me a fist bump, “You, will forever be the man, who taught me how to ski.”

I kind of wanted to cry. Something that has given me so much meaning in my life, so much excitement and stoke, I’ve managed to transcend unto another human being. Then what if he teaches someone else? And what if they get even more stoked than I get when I ski? I might’ve just increased the universal level of stoke by levels of magnitude.

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Sunday Afternoon

I sat in the passenger seat of her Mini Cooper as we drove down Airport Road. I was cross legged talking enthusiastically about my ski student that day.

“Can we be exclusive?” Dara asked abruptly.

I went quiet. 180 degrees. I looked out the window.

Air filled my lungs slowly, then exited like lingering party guests. I didn’t say anything.

“I mean, you said last night you aren’t interested in anyone else,” she continued, “so can we just say we’re exclusive?”

“I’m not interested in anyone else,” I then went quiet.

She brushed her blonde hair back then put her hand on my knee, “I know, but why don’t you want to just say we’re exclusively dating? What’s stopping you?”

“I just don’t like commitment. You know me. We hang out every day, obviously I’m not hanging out with anyone else.”

“I just...I don’t know. I didn’t expect to meet anyone like you out here and it’s kind of hard for me to feel this way for you but have you not reciprocate this simple request.”

I stayed quiet.

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Monday Night

We stood under the bridge in the frigid cold atop a frozen creek. I didn’t expect to spend much time there, but we did. My arm was propped up against the lower scaffolding of the bridge as she stood on a rock, bringing her eyes just above mine. She shivered.

“Maybe if you wore regular pants you wouldn’t be so chilly cold,” I joked as I moved my body closer to hers and rested my hand on her shoulder under her brunette hair.

“Oh my gosh I told you, I don’t even own regular pants. Yoga pants and leggings are my pants,” she replied as I admired her thin legs, “why are we here anyways?” she asked flirtacious and knowingly, “I feel like you brought me here for a reason.”

“Mmmm, nope, just wanted figured this would be a great spot to stand and be freezing for a while,” I said, the grin never leaving my face, “but I kind of like the tension.”

“The tension?”

“Yeah because you obviously want me to kiss you,” I said.

“What!? No! Hah! Me?! I mean, maybe you want that, but..no no. Not me.”

‘Ok,” I said tilting my head back which had previously been about four inches from her face, “good thing we settled that.”

“Oh well I mean, it could always be up for debate.”

This went on for about 15 minutes. As the night grew darker and the wind began chipping away at our bones, we found our selves in an embrace, of course only to stay warm.

“I’m cold and I feel like we’re not going to leave until we kiss,” Ciara said with a dainty indignation in her voice.

“Hm yeah I suppose that’s probably true. We’ll have to make it quick so we can just go then, huh?”

With no further words, after 15 minutes of building our first kiss, she grabbed my neck and pulled me close which I immediately reciprocated by clasping each side of her face with my freezing hands. We kissed hard, then let up. I pulled my face back, looked into her eyes, then kissed her again. This time longer. The first time you kiss someone, it’s kind of like being really drunk for about ten seconds. Like, eight shots of vodka drunk. Nothing else matters. Nothing. I forgot I was cold. I forgot we were under a bridge. I forgot about work the next day. I forgot about everything except for her lips and my hands which were now around her hips.

As we climbed back over the snow bank lining the frozen creek which winded its way all the way through our little ski town, I grabbed her hand to help her up but I didn’t let go this time, as I did when I helped her down.

“I feel ok with actually holding your hand now,” I said turning my face all the way toward hers. She looked at me, smiled and kissed my cheek.

I parked next to her Honda Pilot. I kissed her again as she left my car and walked into her apartment. She pulled her phone out as she sat on her bed,

“You can come over now if you want. I have whiskey ;)” she texted him.

I walked through my front door and said to my roommate, “I think just fell for a girl hard.”

“What about Dara?” he asked, concerned.

“Bro old news. This new girl is so hot I can’t believe it.”

“Damn dog, you’re savage.”

I went to bed that night with the most shallow sense of pride.

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Tuesday Morning

“Are you teaching today?” Dara asked me over the phone as I road the gondola alone to work. My breath fogged the hard plastic with each breath.

“Yeah. I have some returns. Also, I’m seeing someone else now.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to be exclusive. I’m still down to hang out and ski, but I just don’t want to be intimate anymore.”

“I understand.”

She didn’t have much to say and nor did I. I could tell I took the breath out of her excitement which was so apparent only moments ago when she called me to say good morning and ask what I had in store for the day.

I was cold.

“I need to go, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye..”

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Tuesday Night

Ciara and I were in my car on our way to my 20 miles south of town, “It’s not a bad drive. During the day it’s gorgeous. Like you.”

“Ohmygoshstooooop,” she said blushing.

I smiled big and wrapped my hand around her thigh, “Seriously. I can’t believe how beautiful you are. You know I wrote down a few months ago exactly what my type is and it pretty much describes you down to your eyebrows.”

“My eyebrows? Oh gosh..”

“Thick eyebrows.”

“Thick? Really? I kind of hate them. I was thinking about getting them thinned out.”

“Oh God no, keep them the way they are. They’re,”

Ed Sheeran on the radio took the words out of my mouth, “perfect...”

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Late Tuesday Night

She peaked out naked from my behind my bedroom door to see if my roommate was in the living room, then ran quickly to the bathroom across the hall because she didn’t want to put clothes on.

While she was in there, I laid in bed staring at the ceiling with a sense of pride deeper than I could recall ever having. I landed such an awesome girl. She’s so quick, witty, funny, beautiful. I couldn’t believe it.

She came back into the room and crawled into bed, still naked. She nestled into me and I wrapped my long arms around her. She was so thin that I had to put my left arm under her neck so she’d be comfortable, then my right arm wrapped tightly around her chest. She held my hands with her cold fingers. Our body heat warmed us quickly and we drifted off. We slept so well that night.

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Friday Night

We sat in my car, making out long enough to fog up the windows. All the better, now we had some privacy.

“Do you want to be exclusive?” I asked her nervous and excited. Probably a 40-60 split between the two emotions. She did that adorable thing with her face, which was in reality, always adorable. But when she did this she was extra adorable. Her thick eyebrows raised high, her mouth opened wide, her nostrils flared just a little bit. She smiled a bit with her mouth still open, ready to start talking. Then she stopped. She looked away, her shoulders moved toward the passenger window and her excited face turned into a mousey one. She puckered her lips and looked down.

“I...think I would like that,” she said uncertain.

“You think?” I asked laughing.

“I just have to be really honest with you,” she replied taking a deep breath, “because I’ve gotten into relationships before when I wasn’t honest and it didn’t end well and I’m like...well I’m just done with that!” she ended with a great fervor.

“Ciara, you can tell me anything,” I responded lovingly, “I’m falling for you so hard and I want to be able to be there for you for anything,” I said like a classic sucker.

“You know Wednesday night when I went night skiing with my friend from high school?”

“Yeah..?”

“We had sex afterwards.”

Her words didn’t have any meaning at first. It was as if she was acting. A joke. It wasn’t real.

“But we were really drunk! I still had a half a bottle of whiskey and we ended up drinking the...whole thing,” she said, slowing her words with a deep seeded shame.

It hit me. Then, my heart sunk. Deep into my stomach. The butterflies I had just moments ago were squashed by a massive brick that ripped its way through my insides, tearing up everything with zero regard for damage.

“Wait, really?”

“Yes.”

There was a long silence. We both sat in the car. The windows still fogged. I breathed deeply. Her breaths were shallow.

“We had sex on Tuesday night,” I said, “then we had sex last night too. After we went night skiing. You’re telling me you had sex with someone else in between? Is this an accurate statement?” I spoke coldly, as if interrogating a criminal.

“We used protection!” she defended herself.

“Is,” I asked again, “this an accurate statement?”

“Just, you and I weren’t exclusive and I’d been kind of seeing him before but I’m totally over him and-”

I cut her off and asked for a third time, “is this an accurate statement?”

“Yes.”

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Late Friday Night

“Fucking Summit County trash bro. Fucking trash,” I raged while I paced back and forth in my kitchen, one hour later and 20 miles south of where my heart was ripped out with a corkscrew.

“Bro, you’re so much better than her anyways. My man, you know how many of these hot mamas in this town are eyeing you? She’s a little sardine in this sea of big ole’ trout naw’m sayin player?” My roommate comforted me.

“Trout aren’t even in the ocean...are they? Whatever, Ciara’s a fucking whore.” I kept saying, over and over.

“The player got played,” he said.

“What?” I responded quizzically.

He laughed and lightened the mood, “You had Dara wrapped around your finger bro, she was so into you and you dropped that lil’ mama the second you saw a new piece of ass. How you think she was feelin’? Probably a whole lot like you right now playa,”

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Saturday, around noon

I held the two knives cockeyed. They looked on with morbid interested. “So as you can see, if I turn them this way,” I displayed on my model slope made out of a trail map and a glass of water, “I’ll catch my edges and, WHOOP! I’ll fall down the mountain. So instead,” I continued, edging the knives the other way, “If I use my uphill edges while I’m making my rotations, I’ll be able to hold myself up, pushing snow and moving against gravity.”

My students and I were at lunch as I explained with two butter knife skis why weight shifting is so important while making turns.

“I’m going to step outside and meet with the rest of the gang since we’re running a few minutes behind. I’ll see you homies outside!” I said with a mask on.

Upon getting outside, I saw the other students in the class weren’t there yet, so I took the opportunity to pull my phone out and text Sophia.

“Hey, just wanted to say sorry about how shitty I was a few years ago. What I did to you just happened to me. It sucks. I hope you’re well.”

Then I texted Dara, “Hey, want to go to Mi Casa tonight?”

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Saturday, Happy Hour

“That’s why I’m kind of just...” I said with slight hesitation, “wanting to be exclusive now. I realized how special you are,” I then took a gulp of PBR.

“I’m happy that you feel that way because I think that you’re incredibly special as well, but I’m really just looking for good friends right now,” she said confidently.

I knew there was no going back. I regretted it.

“As I said before, I wasn’t expecting to meet someone like you out here,” she said tenderly nibbling on a chip which I would’ve eaten in one bite, along with six others, “but these past few days made me realize how important it is I focus on myself. I think you’re an amazing person Paul, and I don’t want to lose your friendship.”

I took another gulp of PBR.

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

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November, 2017. Age 25. Giving Back.

Only about half of them were paying attention. Two boys in the back were giggling at something under the desk, one girl had her head down, then the rest of the other half were staring blankly into space. “I’m going to talk about achieving a natural high,” I said to 19 middle schoolers. Saying the word high got their attention, especially the boys in the back.

“Who can tell me the difference between a natural high and an artificial high?” I asked the students. A few moments passed then a shy hand raised, “Yes?”

“Umm...like a natural high is from a natural drug and an artificial high is from something made in a factory or a laboratory,” the red haired kid answered bravely.

“Mmmm, not quite. You’re partially right though! That’s a great thought that an artificial high comes from a mind altering substance, but it doesn’t have to be made by man. An artificial high can come from plants too. Marijuana is natural isn’t it?”

“Well, there’s like, fake marijuana,” a boy in the back chimed in, now engaged in the conversation. The kids nodded their heads.

“Correct, there’re drugs that are meant to mimic the psychedelic effects of marijuana, but whether it’s created synthetically or not, an artificial high is using a substance to alter your mind, typically either smoking, eating, or drinking it. But what about natural highs? Who can tell me how to achieve a natural high?”

The kids were quiet.

“Who here likes to ski?”

About half of the students raised their hands.

“Snowboard!” said the blonde boy in the back.

“Snowboarding counts too.”

A few more kids raised their hands and joined their snow sport loving compatriots.

“What about sledding?” another girl chimed in.

“Ok, how about this,” I replied, “raise your hand if you like to slide on snow on either skis or a snowboard, or a sled.”

Upon asking this question, most of the students in the class had their hand up.

“Perfect, now someone tell me how you feel when you ski. Or snowboard. Or sled.”

“I get STOKED!” exclaimed the snowboarding blonde boy.

“It feels pretty good, huh? What are you thinking about when you snowboard, dude?” I could see his excitement just thinking about snowboarding.

“I don’t know, I just think about the mountains and the snow and how fast I’m going,” he paused, then spoke quickly “Oh, and when I’m in the park I’m always thinking about what my next trick is going to be.”

“Do you worry about school a whole lot when you board?”

“Never, it’s the last thing on my mind.”

“So do you tend to worry about anything really when you’re out there?”

“I mean, besides things that have to do with snowboarding, not really.”

“Interesting,” I turned my attention back to the entire class, “why do people drink? Or smoke weed?”

Answers started blurting out from across the room.

“To feel good!” one kid yells.

“But doesn’t snowboarding feel good?” I asked the student I was previously speaking with. He shrugged and nodded his head in agreement.

“Alright so that’s one goal that people try to achieve with artificial highs that we could also do with natural highs....what else?”

The skinny kid wearing all black near the front spoke up satirically, “to forget about all my problems”, he said with a twinge of realism.

“Hm, fair,” I replied, “but remember what he was saying,” I continued, pointing out the snowboarder, “about how he doesn’t worry about day to day problems when he’s boarding?”

He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head in a “I guess so” kind of movement.

“I want you guys to know how great I think you are. Every one of you,” I saw a few cracked smiled as I continued, “I mean, you’re all amazing! There’s not a single person in this room that doesn’t have phenomenal talents, which is why I want you guys to brag about them. What do you do that gets you high naturally? Skiing? Playing guitar? Drawing? Cooking? This is our next project. You get to come in and brag to your classmates about what gets you high naturally and how great you are at it. It’s a show and tell. You can show us a video, play us a song on your guitar, cook us your specialty, anything you want. I want you to show us why you don’t need artificial highs.”

The kids began chattering to each other about what they wanted to do for their show and tell.

“So,” I reintroduced them back into the discussion, “drinking is something that people do. So is smoking cannabis. It’s legal and if you’re 21 years old or older, you can buy it in the stores and consume it. Does that mean it’s a good thing to do a lot?”

The class responded with a few different versions of “no”.

“When is it ok to drink?” I asked, daring them to step out of their comfort zone of the 90’s based “Say No To Drugs Always” propaganda.

“My mom likes to drink wine with her friends. But she only drinks a little bit.”

“Great example,” I praised her, “it sounds like she drinks in moderation. Is there anyone here who celebrates a religious holiday that involves alcohol?”

One boy raised his hand. I asked him, “Do you celebrate Passover?”

“Yeah, the adults drink wine as we read through the story of Passover at certain times.”

“Another great example of when it’s ok to use alcohol,” I said. You see guys, cannabis, alcohol...these are things that are a big part of our culture. But you guys are way too awesome to waste your talents on abusing them. So next week we’ll be in the computer lab working on our presentations. The rubrics are on Google Classroom, I uploaded them during lunch just now. Then on Friday, we’re having our show and tell. I’m so excited to see what gets you guys stoked.

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I spoke to my mom on the way to my delivery job after school. Even though I was working full time as a teacher, I kept my evening delivery job. I had so much energy and I didn’t dare squander it. I’ve always been a busy bee and not utilizing my obsessive motivation to work, no matter the position, simply was not an option.

I am a humble man. I always have been. I don’t strive for riches. I don’t strive for power. I strive for connection. I strive for love.

My incessant work ethic mixed with my humble belonging has guided me to the position I found myself, lifting weights in the mornings to pump me up, teaching at a high school in the Rocky Mountains during the day to fill my heart, delivering food at night to keep my mind at bay and end the day on a relaxing note. This dichotomy of work led to a greater understanding of relativity and a deeper sense of self. I explained on the phone to my mom;

“I make more money when I deliver pizzas, but not much more. Maybe $10 an hour more.”

“But is $10 an hour worth not giving your everything?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have so much to give, honey. Frankly, anyone can deliver pizzas and make $25 an hour, you have so much talent to give. So much love. At the end of the day would you rather have a full heart or a slightly fuller wallet, which only might make you happier later?

“I mean, I want to make a difference, which is why I only deliver at night and put my priority on teaching.”

“I would love for you to keep putting priority on teaching. Say you won the lottery...”

“I would never play the lottery.” I said indignantly,

“Say I bought you a lottery ticket and you won. You never need to work for money again. I know you like to deliver pizzas, it’s relaxing for you, but pretend you don’t need money any more. Would you want spend your life delivering pizzas or doing what fills your heart?”

“I’d probably ski all the time.”

“You love to work though. You’ll never stop working, I know this about you. So if you won the lottery, would you rather hang out in your car delivering pizzas, or do something like...I don’t know...teach people how to ski?!”

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

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October 2017. Age 25. Journal Entry.

Tuesday, October 10th, 2017

“The fact that I'm having a hard time sitting down to write about what makes me happy is itself indicative of what makes me happy. I have this desire to extend my inner happiness into the physical world in an attempt to create an unchanging and unlimited source of happiness. This is impossible, but I incessantly try anyways.

As I make more money, try to stay into excellent shape, constantly move from place to place and change jobs, sleep with random girls, it's all an attempt to create a source of happiness from outside of myself.

I don't like the idea of finding happiness only from within, because the human brain simply doesn't work that way. If we’re living in miserable conditions, our bodies are hardwired to want to be in a different state. If we’re too cold or too hot, we strive to reach a temperature that is comfortable. Our biology simply doesn’t allow such fine tuned machines to work under too extreme of conditions. If we’re hungry, our stomachs will hurt and we will become irritable. As the phrase goes, “society is only three square meals away from anarchy”. This states that we are human animals whether we like it or not, and we must conform in some way to society in order to create livable conditions for ourselves.

The capitalist society that we live in creates desire; which I find inherently dangerous. However, we as humans will always have a strong sense of desire for things that can advance our genes because it’s necessary for our survival. When our primate ancestors saw a fertile mate, or a companion with a piece of fruit in their hand, you can bet that they had a strong desire for what they saw, or else they didn’t survive.

In our modern age, we still have a desire for what we see, that’s why capitalism is still works. Except we don’t beat our friends over the head for their apple, we just think about wanting it then probably go buy our own later. Even though we don’t act immediately on our desires as much any more, the desires remain as we are still human animals. We are imperfect beings, in realizing this, we have learned about our biology and instincts and have exploited them via capitalism through incessant consumerism and gearing our marketing toward our biological needs that sometimes we don’t even realize are there. Commercials play our emotions, we use bright colored signs, we give free samples in stores to stimulate our appetite to make us want to buy more food.

So instead of turning away completely from capitalism and shaking your fist at the CEO’s of the world, I say we embrace it with a healthy dose of skepticism. Emphasis on the term healthy. Allowing ourselves to feel our feelings and act on our needs and desires is not only healthy, it's necessary. Our goal should be to find a way to release our urges and act as our bodies want to act while at the same time, living in line with capitalism to the point that we have financial freedom.

People aren’t evil, excessive capitalism is evil.

Capitalism facilitates hyperbolized human tendencies which quickly turn into what we consider the 7 Deadly Sins. When you have the opportunity to make $500,000 a year, it’s really hard to say no to that, even if you’re cognizant that the wage could feed 15 less fortunate families but you’re going to use it to go on exotic vacations. Greed happens not because humans are evil, but because capitalism allows it.

Those less fortunate families would more likely than not fall victim to the same faults and hoard money if given the opportunity.

Again, capitalism as a system isn’t inherently evil. It is an imperfect means of societal progression which leads to the exploitation the primal urges of us imperfect humans.

Once we get to the point that we can make enough money to live the life we want to live within capitalism (since cash is king and a near sure fire way to create the objective life we want), we can then attempt to feel true freedom and feel the feelings we have, acting as true and authentic beings. As Maslow’s hierarchy of needs dictates, we must take care of our basic needs that we as humans need, then our goals above that are subjective, i.e. self actualization and who we want to associate with.

You need food water shelter to make yourself happy. This is because you’re a biological organism, therein requiring certain objective fuel sources. But once this has been settled, we can achieve happiness in any way our cerebral cortices deem fit. You need a certain level of happiness within before externalities can make you happy. You need an edifice to build on top of. If you’re starving in a giant beautiful house, you can’t appreciate the house. If you have a million dollars but you’re homeless, that money is good for nothing. If you didn’t sleep last night, it doesn’t matter how many people are around you that you love; all you want to do is sleep. Thus, we must care for our human needs and urges before we can approach the next level of validation. The top level of validation is human actualization.

Everyone is somewhere along the capitalism acceptance scale. Some are fully within the throes of a capitalist lifestyle of earning and spending, creating unneeded waste in order to fulfill their shallow desires. Others do only what they need to do to care for themselves, then they choose to ignore the chasing of money for the rest of their available time for it does not appeal to them; they have different metrics for satisfaction. Say John makes $100,000 a year but really only needs $30,000 to live the lifestyle that makes him happy, so he does so. However, Don also makes $100,000 but digs himself into crippling debt by living a life of opulence outside of his means. They make the same amount of money, yet John is likely to be much happier because he lives within his means. His lifestyle doesn’t require the spending of more money than he has, putting himself in debt to others, yet he’s happier.

I can see the hierarchy at play in the moment to moment in myself as I can allow my mind to wonder pleasantly insofar as I'm with others, waiting for something, or getting something done. I'd much rather sit in a coffee shop and allow my mind to wander and write if I'm with someone I know, satisfying the social need immediately before allowing myself to self actualize. Writing for me is an act that leads to self actualization, yet I have a fear of writing if writing is all I’m doing. I feel like I’m missing something, like I should be doing something else, like I don’t deserve to be sitting here and just writing. I know that I deserve the capability to write whenever and however much I want, yet my fear of being alone outweighs my desire to write. Thus, I tend to write only when something else is happening that validates myself in the present.

If I am teaching a class and I have 20 minutes of down time, I feel comfortable writing.

If I’m waiting for a friend to show up somewhere, I feel comfortable writing.

If I’m on a plane and have no where to go, I feel comfortable writing.

If I’m sitting in the living room with my significant other, her working, I feel comfortable writing.

It’s a belief that writing should be on the back burner, something to fill time, no matter how meaningful it may be or how much it leads to satisfaction when I have a finished a piece.

I thrive on chaos. Insofar as the chaos isn’t stress inducing, so I guess I could say that I thrive on having a lot of things going on all at once, because the more going on, the less I’m thinking about myself and more about the world around me.

When I’m by myself, I start over thinking. A thought goes into a spider web of this then this and maybe that, but also that and if this and this makes that then it also creates this and that and maybe these too! Thoughts don’t stop when alone, but quickly and consistently reacting to a chaotic environment is the antidote. Having to respond to my environment puts the thoughts on the back burner. I’m not worried about whether I could be doing better, whether that guy is making more money than me, whether I could be doing something better with my life. I think this applies to an extreme many of facets of life, in that the less you think about things, the happier you are. Ignorance in bliss, and if I’m busy with something all day and allocating all of my mental resources towards that, I don’t have time to worry. A busy person is usually a happy person.

Occupying your mind with anything that isn't negative is ideal. It's better to piss away your time with simple happiness than to have worry over take you. I’m better off delivering pizzas, a seemingly simple task, rather than worrying about myself.

General sadness isn't necessarily what we’re trying to avoid. Because when we think of being sad, at least I tend to have a grossly oversimplified idea of what it is, without really objectifying it. What we’re trying to actually avoid is bad decisions, which are predated typically by worry, fear, anxiety, or melancholy. When we’re in fear, anxious, or upset, we make poor decisions. We regress, or overeat, or drink too much, or don’t aim for anything positive. Thus, having simple yet positive tasks to occupy our time is better than engaging in negative activities like watching TV, over eating, playing video games, or doing drugs.

Looking back at our ancestors; their primitive lifestyle and what they needed to do to survive, it makes sense to somewhat mimic that in our own lives. Create our own quests and whatnot. They didn’t have time to be worried or anxious about the unknown, because they were preoccupied with the task at hand, which in essence was always working towards something.

In addition to the actions that we take, we must always take into consideration the inaction that is just as important. This is manifested in the act of selective ignorance. We can experience a lack of motivation due to the sheer amount of pain in the world, or all of the things that we know we’ll never be able to overcome or accomplish or change. We must ignore it, selectively of course, so as to not pass that threshold of ignorance to a fault. I could spend all day ruminating on the lack of food in 3rd world countries, or the evil disproportion of wealth in capitalist countries, or that fact that I’m crummy at understanding computer code, but what’s the point? How will that assist the human? It won’t, unless it is acted upon in a positive way to solve the problem.

I once read about a man who made a lot of money at a very young age. It was a combination of luck and skill. I was jealous of him. What did he have that I didn’t? Why him? Why me? Then I found out he died. That's all of our ends. I immediately felt more fortunate than him, because I live in this moment. I have what he doesn’t. It’s a manifestation of my primal urges to have what others don’t, to be the leader, to be the alpha. I shouldn’t feel that way, but I do.

Anger is often manifested as putting too much emotional stock in others. Any time I’m angry, I can almost always relate it to someone else’s actions, or the fact that I’m upset that I’m not as good as someone else. Thus I’m putting to much emotional stock in others.

That’s all for now.

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

Text

July 2017. Age 25. Second Shot.

There was enough alcohol in our systems at this point that if a mosquito sucked either one of our blood, it’d probably die from alcohol poisoning. And being back in Florida, I wouldn’t doubt a few mosquito bites anyways. The night was getting old and the four pack of cheap beers she brought combined with the raspberry flavored vodka we were mixing with cranberry juice was a perfect prerequisite to give in to our ids. My brother had gone to bed only a few minutes prior, so I was half expecting him to walk back out to go to the bathroom or get a glass of water, but that just helped make the next 20 minutes so much more exhilarating.

I was home for a few weeks and I figured I’d come visit my little brother at his college apartment in Tampa. Sophia and I were once again, in that more of an “off” position so that gave me the all clear to sack up and invite a girl who I had a crush on back when I lived in Florida over to hang with us. We were just eating Domino’s pizza and watching hockey anyways, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring a little estrogen in the apartment. So I texted her and to my surprise, she immediately accepted the invitation and was on her way over within 30 minutes of me inviting her. Three hours later, and it was just the two of us, sitting on the couch racing a turtle and a princess.

“Shit Sally, I was so fucking into you,” I slurred out of the blue.

“Like that red shell that just pummeled my asshole?” she responded, referring to Mario Kart. We had decided to start playing drunk Mario Kart, where you have to finish an entire drink before you finish the race.

“No, I mean in high school and in college and honestly middle school too I just always wanted to ask you out but I was Major Puss Wagon McGee and never did it.”

“Well, here’s your chance,” she said finishing her glass of vodka with a splash of cranberry juice I had made for her.

“Wanna go out?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool what do you want to do?”

“Play Mario Kart.”

“What about drunk Mario Kart?”

“Ok fair but only if you get drunk enough to tell me that you liked me in high school.”

“Ok fair but only if you get drunk enough to tell me you liked me too in high school.”

“Ok I liked you in high school.”

“Ok I liked you too in high school.”

“So what are you trying to do about it?”

I was too drunk to pause the game. My head felt constricted, I had tunnel vision and I wasn’t totally sure that the next day even existed. The first part of my body to touch her were my lips to hers. She immediately pushed me back and leaned into my lap, her head up. After a few minutes of swapping spit she pushed my head back.

“This was a long time coming,” she said.

“You can say that again,” I responded, pushing my face back into hers. You’d think I’d be more proud of myself, but I didn’t really think about any of what led up to this moment. Someone who I’d eyed throughout my formative years, longing after her for ages, and here I had her in my arms. I was having a hard time making my mind go forward or backward any more than about twenty seconds. I wasn’t able to make my mind go much further below my knees or much higher than my belly button either. Nor it seemed could she.

“Where’s this bed you were talking about again?” she asked looking at the clock reading 12:30 A.M.

“It’s the back bedroom, my brother’s roommate just moved out. There are no sheets on it though,” I said disappointedly, hoping it wouldn’t ruin my chances of sleeping with her.

“Well there’s a blanket right here,” she said throwing the blanket she had wrapped around her over my head and grabbing my crotch. I liked her style.

We walked back and shut the door. Before I knew it her clothes were half off. I pushed her onto the bed which was even more naked than she was.

“Do you have a condom?”

“Oh fuck, um..no. Maybe my brother does?”

“Whatever, I’m on birth control. Are you clean?”

“Yeah, are you?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Alright let’s fuck.”

----------

My forehead pounded. It was light out. She was topless. I woke up quickly.

“I kind of want to fuck you again,” I said, wanting this whole thing to be a bit more real.

“Not a chance,” she moaned and rolled back the other way.

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

Text

July 2016. Age 24. Induced Happiness.

The lightning must’ve struck within a stone’s throw from my car because it shook with a piercing sound and lit up a brilliant white all at once.

I felt an eerie sensation that night. The sensation didn’t come from anything or anyone in particular, but rather from an all encompassing feeling like things weren’t set right. Like wearing your shoes on the wrong feet; you can still get around just fine, but it’s just not right.

“Can you call me when you get off?”

I didn’t respond immediately. Responding immediately would’ve showed that I cared. I didn’t care.

I like when I’m comfortable with not responding to texts and calls immediately. It justifies my current actions. Especially with Sophia, I liked to not respond immediately as a passive way of telling her I was doing other things. It was my way of saying “I don’t need you like you need me.” I needed to do things like this to prove to myself that I didn’t need her because I knew how easy it was to take her back.

Sophia and I met online and started dating when I moved to Boulder alone, then I realized I was underwhelmed, so after a few months I told her we should stop seeing each other. Easy enough, right?

Well, two bored transplants in their early twenties in a new city who sort of find each other attractive don’t just “stop hooking up”.

We decided to give it another shot about a week after breaking up, then decided to end it again soon after.

Again, the hooking up didn’t stop.

Then we resolved to date again with a different, more companionate relationship in mind. That’s when she talked me into getting off my antidepressants. I began to feel my feelings again and that shit shook me to my core. Sophia became my new antidepressant. It wasn’t really her in particular, inasmuch as just having a human relationship to replace the Serotonin re-uptake inhibitors.

Fast forward a few more months and our relationship got fucked up once again when a new girl moved in down the hall in my apartment building and I started hooking up with her instead. The new girl told me that getting off my antidepressants for Sophia was “retarded”. I liked this girl in the same masochistic way that you blow your ear drums out at a concert; she was just another way of drowning out the void with no foresight into the repercussions. Like I said, it wasn’t Sophia in particular who kept me happy. Rather it was having someone there. And how much easier does it get when they live down the hall? I ghosted Sophia. We weren’t really dating at the time anyways.

Then my lease ended, I moved into a new apartment, and Sophia and I started talking again.

I know that all sounds like a giant emotional rollercoaster, but it wasn’t. At least not for me. I didn’t give half a shit through all the ups and downs, except for the hot second I wasn’t taking my antidepressants. Of course once I got back on them, it was back to the same old apathetic piece of shit I’d been for the past year or so, which is what typically led me to telling her I didn’t care enough to date her. I didn’t care about her, I didn’t care about myself, I didn’t care about us, I just wanted to go home and drink. And for that, I thank my antidepressants.

I’ve always strived for sustainability. Not in an environmental way but in an emotional way. I’ve learned that while happiness will always fade, apathy is always there, lurking under whatever is distracting you on the surface. Thus I find myself always falling back toward that center line between sadness and happiness at the ever so indifferent equilibrium that is apathy. It’s a beautiful and sad thing.

In order to maintain my sanity while wearing my insipid apathy badge everywhere I go, I work incessantly delivering pizzas, long days and weeks, then picking up odd jobs on my off days.

I do almost anything to achieve a mind engulfed with the feeling of nothingness. Whether that be running long distances in the morning, working until I can’t think about anything besides going to sleep, or getting plastered alone at night in my apartment then binge eating until I pass out so hard that I don’t wake up until the next day’s agenda of keeping myself busy until I can fall asleep again. You might look at this as a sad way of going through life, and hell, I agree with you. Luckily, apathy has a funny way of keeping me from caring. There’s a fuzzy little light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m slugging my way there. One drunken step at a time.

This all led me to driving in my car in an intense summer lightning storm during a night delivery shift I picked up on my day off. I couldn’t stand not working on a night that I had nothing going on and work numbed my mind, helping me to achieve that wonderful and comforting feeling of impassivity.

The 10 minute drive back to the pizza shop was just long enough for the sky to clear and paint the dingy alley behind the shop a brilliant gold. After all the time that I’d spent kicking a soccer ball around in that alley and taking hits off my coworker’s bowl after work, I’d never seen it look the way it did that night.

That eerie vibe I was getting earlier overcame me again as I got out of my car. I stood there staring at the sky vomiting a pale gold color all over the city of Boulder. It didn’t feel real, nor did anything. It was about 7 PM, about an hour and a half before dark since it was summer time. It was slightly warm and humid from the passing storms and if I was out in a corn field somewhere or in the mountains, it would’ve felt positively dreamy. But I wasn’t in either of those places. I was standing in the alley that smelled like mold and piss behind the pizza shop staring into the sky, getting paid $5 an hour. I took a deep breath to remind myself of my existence and walked inside.

I thought of calling Sophia back on my next delivery, but I decided to push it off a bit longer. I figured it’d help assert even further my lack of enthusiasm toward any type of relationship with her.

I walked through the back door to find Jackson, the general manager posted up against the sinks, hiding in the dish pit and taking a swig out of a handle of rum. We made eye contact as he lowered the bottle. I immediately wanted to disappear. It looked like he was going to choke on the alcohol going down his throat as he looked panicked to get words out.

“Hey bud”, he said nonchalantly. I realized he wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he was drinking at work, and the dish pit just so happened to be the most convenient place to drink, out of the eye of the customers. I work in a pizza shop so half the guys are high almost all the time, but drinking has been something we typically reserved for the end of the night when we’re closed and just cleaning up.

“Um... hey Jack,” I said as I walked by him toward the front to get my next delivery. I paid little attention to the chaos surrounding me in the shop. The bright florescent lights seemed to make the hip hop music even louder as underpaid college students scurried around enthusiastically answering phones and throwing sloppy pizzas into the oven. They were all as baked as the pizzas coming out of the oven, so they were probably too tunnel visioned to notice the four people standing at the counter. All I was focused on was getting the hell out of there and back into the dark, quiet serenity of my car. I looked at the orders that were ready, took the oldest ones, packed up the pies, and was headed out the back door within a few minutes.

As I walked by Jack who was now sitting in the computer chair, now in plain sight of customers, he held the bottle out to me.

“One for the road?”, he offered, smiling with glossy red eyes.

“Sure thanks!” I said grabbing it and pretending to drink some.

“The fuck bro, you didn’t even drink any”, he said as I handed it back to him. I laughed and took a few steps away. When I looked back at him again, I realized he was serious.

“I’m a driver, remember?”

He stared at me blankly.

I spoke again, “I cannot drink alcohol when I drive. That’s illegal and dangerous.”

That’s when it hit me just how plastered he was. I looked into his eyes and on the surface he was staring back too, only right through my head and into oblivion. He was g-o-n-e GONE.

I turned around and walked out the back door into the golden alley which was slowly darkening. I put the pizza bag in my car and double checked the time on my order receipt. It was only 20 minutes old so I had a few minutes to spare.

I hopped out of my car, through the back door of the shop again, and past Jack sitting in the computer chair. He had his head limply hanging back, staring blankly at the ceiling.

“Forgot a soda”, I said to him in passing, though I probably could’ve said “I’m going to take a shit in the cooler before my run” and he wouldn’t have batted an eye.

I looked at the screen which was filled with orders and only Carly and Donald on the prep line barely keeping up.

I had to yell over the loud rap music and N-words getting thrown out left and right, even though we were a shop full of white kids in Boulder, Colorado, statistically one of the whitest towns in America.

“Hey, um, guys?”

Carly lifted her head up from furiously topping a pizza, looking like she was about to start tearing up. I wasn’t sure if she was upset or stressed or both, so I just kept talking.

“Yeah Jackson is like, super drunk.”

“No fucking shit.” Donald snapped back as he slid the pizza into the oven so violently that half of the sausage balls rolled off.

“When did this happen? Why did—“

“Because his girl broke up with him an hour ago.” Donald interrupted me and continued, “She came into the shop with a box of his shit and left.” He topped another pizza and just as violently as the first, threw it into the oven, clearly displaying his ill-directed sense of urgency.

Carly spoke up, “That’s a $150 bottle of Rum he’s downing back there. It was in the box she brought.”

“Jesus tap dancing Christ,” I said shaking my head, “Well are you guys good in here? Or do you need help when I get back from this run?” I couldn’t believe I was actually offering to do a favor for someone.

“We’re fine,” Donald responded, “Just go, we got this.” I was so relieved.

He turned around and saw the pizzas piling up at the exit of the oven, “Shit!”, he exclaimed and grabbed the giant spatula, pulling the pizzas out and boxing them. I swiftly left through the back door, walking past Jack once again, this time with his head down on the desk in his folded arms. He didn’t notice that I didn’t have a soda.

As I got in my car and took off west toward the mountains basking in the golden sun slides, my phone rang again. Sophia was calling.

“Ah fuck”, I muttered and answered it.

“Hey.”

“Hi….are you off yet?”

“No.”

“Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Not really, I’m going to be at my delivery in two minutes.”

“Ok well I just wanted someone to talk to. I’m just feeling really sad and my stomach hurts I think from crying and-“

“Look can we talk later I gotta go.”

“Yeah.”

And I hung up the phone. I didn’t care about listening to her sob stories about nothing. There was never any substance or reason to why she was always sad, she just was. She was depressed. She was the goddamn poster child for a classic case of depression.

She would always cry for no reason. She worked maybe 15 hours a week, and the rest of the time she spent being sad about herself in her room. She’d ask me to come over which inevitably led me to lying in her bed as she stroked my head while desperately looking out the window as if waiting for an owl to fly in from Hogwarts with a letter explaining how to fix her life. She reminded me of the sad woman on the antidepressant commercial staring out the window with the rain pitter-pattering against the glass. Only she refused antidepressants. “They’re not natural” she’d say. She tried to cure it with weed because it’s “natural”.

“You know what else is natural? Arsenic. Just take a few drops of that and that’ll cure you real quick”, I’d say sarcastically.

I should’ve been more empathetic though. I knew what it’s like to be depressed. But I wasn’t empathetic, I wasn’t even sympathetic, I was apathetic. As I was towards everything in the world all the time. I was apathetic and uncaring toward someone that had played such a large role in my life for the past year, who was battling in depression. Someone who loved me. Who had spent more time doing things for me than me. The best way I knew how to thank her was a big “fuck you” when things weren’t great for her.

We weren’t really dating at this point. We were just kind of around each other a lot and actively not dating other people. Is that dating? We didn’t want to call it that. We knew once we said we were dating then we’d break up again and it’d be back to the same old cycle again. So we just hovered in the gray area.

I rolled up to the house, handed it off, and once again was back in my car. Clock work. I got a 40% tip on the $50 delivery but I didn’t care. I accepted it as part of the ups and downs of the service industry, knowing that it’ll just cover me for the inevitable stiffs I’ll get from the shit head college students I’ll be visiting later that night. I had about seven minutes before I got back to the shop to call Sophia but I didn’t bother.

The stainless silver prep line tray was sitting in the garbage can which was filled with the bathroom garbage I had emptied earlier that day. I stood there and stared at it for a moment, examining it for cracks. The dirty homeless kid Jack hired to be a night driver a few weeks previous walked by me.

“Hey..” I said to him without taking my eyes off the garbage can.

“Sup bud, I’m headin’ out on a run”, he stepped toward the back doorway.

“Why is this in the garbage? Is it broken?”

“Oh no, I just needed to clean it and I didn’t get the chance to scrape it yet so I put it there so I wouldn’t forget before I left,” he responded with no severance of understanding of wrongdoing. “By the way, I just filled the sink with clean water if you wanna start any dishes.”

I stood there with my eyes wide open, mouth half open, staring at the prep tray sitting in the trash, a used bandaid resting against the same stainless steel that holds the food that we put on pizzas. Sometimes salads too.

I walked to the front to find only Donald now on the prep line. That’s when I realized I didn’t see Jackson or Carly anywhere.

“Can you grab the oven bro!?” Donald yelled at me after looking up briefly from his pizza making.

“Yeah yeah”, I said grabbing the spatula and pulling out some sloppy looking shit pies.

“Where’s Carly and Jackson?”

“I don’t know, she went to the back to talk to him a few minutes ago. You didn’t see them back there?”

“No, just the prep tray in the garbage,” I replied bluntly.

“The fuck?”

“Jody.”

“Fucking Jody.”

A few minutes later I was standing there next to the bathroom waiting for the sink to refill. I was refilling the “clean” water that homeless Jody said he just filled the sink with. He did fill it with clean water, but he then proceeded to dump a pile of dirty dishes into it immediately afterwards. I had to wash it all before I left, so better to do them while I had spare time during my shift than extend my shift 30 minutes at the end getting paid $5 an hour to do dishes while I could spend that precious time getting shit faced at my apartment with Sophia. I knew that even though I’d been ignoring her my entire shift, she’d be over the second I invited her.

“Ungh”, the closed bathroom door said.

“LET IT GO, LET IT GO,”, I sung over the music so whoever was taking a shit could hear me. I laughed at my own joke.

I was expecting them to yell something back to me but there was only silence.

Five minutes later, Jackson walked out, being sure to close the door closely behind him.

“Yeah keep it shut for the sake of everyone else here,” I said drying off my hands. He looked up at me wide and glossy eyed and didn’t say a word. He proceeded to stumble out the propped open back door and vomit all over the dark alley.

Then the bathroom door opened again. Carly walked out wiping off her bleeding eyeliner with a wad of wet toilet paper.

“Were you just. In the. With. Um.”

She looked at me and started bawling. Head down, she shuffled towards me and shoved her head into my chest. I instinctually put my arms around her.

I was pretty sure they were banging in the bathroom. What the fuck. I didn’t know for sure and I didn’t care. I just stood there, fluid leaking from Carly’s eyeballs onto my flour laden shirt. I thought how if I added yeast then we could make little tear pizza crusts as I stared forward wondering when she would walk away. I just wanted to take my delivery so I could clock out and go home.

It seemed like I always wanted to get blacked out because I was running from a feeling of nothingness toward a feeling of even more intense nothingness, while Jackson was running from the soul crushing despair which was inflicted by his girlfriend dumping him mid shift toward the intense comfort of an alcohol induced stupor, lack of sexual inhibition and the ability to take advantage of a young girl who was into fucking her bosses.

I hadn’t eaten all day, which was half on purpose and half because I just couldn’t bring myself to do so. I ate so much the previous night when I was drunk, like I almost always do, that I’ve gotten to the point that I can barely eat sober. Each night after a day long stagnant feeling of okayness, I end up binge drinking to feel something before I go to sleep. It’s the feeling of not feeling. It’s kind of great. Then inevitably once I’m drunk, I feel the need to eat as much as I can fit inside of me since I hadn’t eaten all day. I did the same goddamn thing the night before and I knew I’d be doing the same thing the next night. The only thing that breaks it is when Sophia comes over and instead of eating 3000 calories in the span of 60 minutes, we just fuck.

---------

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

Text

November 2015. Age 23. Inside the Womb of Apathy

My older brother was in town looking for a job in Denver, so he was staying with me in Boulder during the search. He was just as clueless as me in regards to what he was trying to do with his life, which was kind of nice. Misery, or rather, cluelessness loves company. Kind of like in a folie a deux, no matter what you’re doing, if you have another person doing it with you, it makes whatever you’re doing just a little bit better.

He used to work at a local brewery so we all decided to go grab a few drinks there one night so he could catch up with some old chums. My roommate, Freezerp, and I were incredibly cheap. In fact, thinking back on it now, it was laughable. So naturally when my brother said we’d probably get hooked up with free beers if we gave him a ride over, we were up and out.

We were a couple of bohemians when it came to craft brews, so we stood there and stared at the rotating tap for a few minutes before my brother and his old coworker came by and asked us what we wanted. We grabbed a “Weeeeeeee!” which is a dark scottish ale and he grabbed a “North Star” which is a very high ABV porter that was just about to run out, so he jumped on it. It was “Geeks Who Drink” trivia night so it was packed, but we found a nice spot in the sitting area where we settled in next to a cute girl drinking alone.

“I’ve been at a Yoga seminar all day, and it’s been all about health, so I just want to do something that’s unhealthy and have a nice beer. I’m not from here so I just typed in ‘brewery’ to google and I found this place.” She said with yoga pants on that were actually being utilized.

“Oh yeah, I mean.” I said slightly slurring, “Twisted Pine is just like the OG place to go around here.”

It’s amazing how easy it is to just strike up conversations with a girl, or anyone really, when you’ve both had a drink or two. We talked about species of bananas, my buddy’s rap project, jokes about me being a substitute teacher. She left after just a few drinks, and I never even caught her name.

I remembered that I had to drive home so I wanted to sober up a bit before driving home. We had a swear jar at home which was a joke in itself, but in addition to it being a joke, we decided to use all of the money in the swear jar to buy beer with, which we wouldn’t count swears that we said while drinking the beers we bought with the swear jar. Perfect right? I know it’s perfect, thanks.

Anyways, we realized that we had probably $15 or so in the swear jar, so Freezerp and I decided to walk to the liquor store to buy some more beer. We figured that we’d sober up enough before having to drive home, but just enough to drive, then when we got home we could keep on drinking. We went to the liquor store and in our usual goofy stupor to fill up a “You-Pick-6”. We searched and arrogantly yet superfluously judged the beers based on the labels and ABV.

“The guy on this bottle has a fuckin’ attitude and I like it.”

“Look at those muscles too. He does, in fact, lift bro”, Freezerp replied. He stopped the conversation and looked around, dropped and did 20 push ups, then popped back up again. We continued as if nothing happened.

“He probably just drinks eggs for breakfast.”

“Paleo. Just like this beer. We’re getting one.”

We ended up with the same shit we probably would’ve bought if we were completely sober, with the exception of the $5 stout from Fort Collins because we wanted to see whether it was 3.5 times better than the other beers.

On our way back to the brewery, Freezy yelled “LAST ONE THERE LOSES” and when I’m drunk and I’m sucker for challenges, so I started sprinting, even though I was carrying a 6-pack of beer. I realized that I probably looked like I was stealing the beer, but I didn’t even give a shit because I was too busy laughing so hard and running as fast as I could that I literally couldn’t focus on anything else except for how absolutely hilarious it was and how incredibly tired I was, even though I’m a long distance runner.

I texted Sophia when we got to the bar. “Hey giiiirrrlrlllll wanna come over?”

She usually didn’t respond quickly, but when it came to sleeping in my bed with me, she was all over it.

“Yes! When?”

“I’m at the Twisted Pine but were about to leave. Meet me in funbarrel at 10?”

“K :))”

Allow me to explain, I don’t live in a town called Funbarrel. It’s actually Gunbarrel, but we call it Funbarrel because we’re just a couple of kooky crazy kids.

“Woo!” I exclaimed and did a little jig as my phone vibrated in my pocket on the way to my car.

“Do I bring beer?” Sophia texted me again.

“We just got more beer after the bar but if you want to bring more I will never say never.”

“Ok biebs. Sweaty Betty it is.”

Sweaty Betty is our favorite craft beer.

I started dating Sophia a few weeks prior and thus far it’d been pretty great. She wasn’t the prettiest girl, nor the smartest, nor had the greatest aspirations, but she was who she was and I appreciated her for who she was. We vibed in a way that I had never vibed with anyone before, and that was good enough for me. I knew I could’ve probably found someone better if I tried, but I was too tempted to stay with her because of that good knob slobbin. Ew that’s gross sorry you just had to read that. But anyways, we pretty much just got together every night, got drunk and had sex. It was casual as fuck, and sure it was probably super unsustainable and we knew we were gonna crash and burn, but fuck it, I was gonna ride that shit out as long as I could because for the time being, it fuckin rocked. Plus, since I was on Lexapro, I wasn’t freaking out about the constant sex all the time.

My first girlfriend panicked any time our gonads were even semi close, calling me a few days after hooking up when I had gone back to Orlando for the week for class, absolutely sure that she was pregnant, even though we never even had sex. It was absurd and kind of scarred me to the point that I started freaking out every time I had sex with anyone afterwards. Kind of like when you’re a little kid and your mom tells you that if you stop making that face it’ll stay that way. Somehow I let some constantly freaked out girl convince me of how easy it was to get someone pregnant (subcutaneous semen absorption I guess?). But Lexapro fixed it all. It seemed like this little white miracle pill let me have sex all the time and not worry about pregnancy. I mean, come on, I pulled out and used a condom anyways. Ok enough with the detailing my sexcapades, I promise.

----------

I was chilling pretty hard at that time in my life. I kept thinking about what I wanted to do and accomplish and whatnot, whether I wanted to go back to graduate school or not, but it always ended up with the same conclusion.

“Fuck it”

I did whatever the hell I wanted, I had a job that, yeah it wasn’t glamorous, but I looked forward to going every day. Not everyone can say that and I felt blessed. My brother was talking about some courier job he saw in the newspaper that night before Sophia came over.

“That’d be the perfect job because you’re just doing normal things.” He said describing the courier job.

That’s how I felt about the delivery job I had: I drove around town bumping tunes, then when I’m back in the shop I’m usually just working with a few other people. Plus I never had to be at work until 10:30 A.M., so I could drink any night of the week and be fine by the time I had to be at work. In addition to that, it wasn’t like I had to use a whole lot of brain power at work anyways.

Goddamn, things were pretty alright. Right as I finished my 2nd beer after getting back home, I heard a knock on the door.

“GET THE FUCK OUT” I yelled.

Sophia daintily walked in with her typical awkwardness that she hid so well behind a veil of confidence. Her silly half smile made me want to take her to bed immediately, but I knew we couldn’t for at least another hour or so until everyone else started settling down too.

I got up and gave her a foot-lifting-off-the-ground-hug. Our hips pressed together hard and I looked into her eyes devilishly. I put her down and walked toward the fridge while she put her stuffed backpack which whatever the hell she kept in there in my bedroom.

“PORTER OR IPA”, I yelled across the apartment.

“Ummmm, I don’t care whatever you have more of”, her soft voice struggled to carry from the bedroom into my kitchen.

I had more porters than IPA’s, but the IPA’s were 7.5% and the porters only 5.2% and frankly I wanted us both to get drunk quicker. I cracked open an IPA and brought it directly to her.

We were both two beers in within 20 minutes. We cracked into the Sweaty Bettys, going in for number three with no hesitation. My little brother who had just turned 21 started pouring shots for him, Freezy, my older brother, me, and Sophia. I looked at Sophia and gave her a quick double eyebrow raise.

At this point, it wasn’t a question of whether we were going to hook up that night. In fact, it was virtually never a question of whether we were going to hook up when she came over to stay the night. The only question was how ok I was going to be with it while we fucked. The more drunk I was, the more I was able to pretend like there was love, instead of two directionless early twenty-year-olds attempting to fill the void with shallow dopamine.

-------------

I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her towards me. As she did an assisted sit up, she lifted her arms up for me to lift her shirt off. No bra. Perfect. I remembered she didn’t shave her arm pits but luckily I had successfully drank myself to the point of benevolence toward anything that wasn’t perfect, which was everything.

We don’t have to fall in love, in love, in love

We don’t have to feel the touch, the touch, the touch

We can do it for the rush, the rush, the rush

I’m waiting for you

Breathe Carolina sang out of my phone on my bedside table

I took my shirt off as well and pushed her back down; as I did she grabbed me and took me with her. The teasing hip thrust I gave her the moment she walked into my door came back ten fold. I pushed into her crotch with mine, both of our pants still on, taunting her because I knew she wanted me more than I wanted her. Holding my breath followed by audible exhales accompanied my thrusts as I was getting off just from knowing how full of lust she was. It didn’t take long for us to be completely naked and send ourselves into a hermaphroditic entanglement, but I’m not sure what happened from there because that’s when I blacked out.

-------------

A few nights later and we were sitting on the couch watching Samurai Gourmet on Netflix. I was eating a sweet potato and drinking malt liquor. She was knitting.

“I’m going on a date with a girl from Bumble tomorrow,” I said nonchalantly.

Sophia’s eyebrows furrowed, “What?”

“I told you, we’re not exclusive,” I said not looking up from the conversation on my phone with the little 21-year-old blonde girl.

“But, like...that’s just, like..shitty,” she said starting to cry.

I ate the last bit of sweet potato, “Oookay, I’m going to bed.”

She slept on the couch that night and I didn’t care.

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

Text

March 2015. Age 22. Walking

“Jay and Winding Trail”

I like to think of my loneliness in a plethora of positive ways. It’s not loneliness in the general sense that I experience, but rather a mellow contentment with only myself on purpose. Relying on only yourself is kind of like the ultimate back up plan for happiness. On the flip side, it’s ok to to try to seek happiness through frivolous social interaction, such as going out for drinks with friends or going on dates. After all, we’re social beings and thrive on social interaction.

We never would’ve gotten to where we are as a species if it wasn’t for our social instincts. However, I think that we’ve come to the point that our need for social interaction can be substituted with our capability of cognitive synthesis. We can idealize, hope and dream, long for the perfect life, whether we’re experiencing it or not. And whether or not we have a good thing happening at the moment, there’s always tomorrow. Today will make a good story regardless.

“Jay and Juhles”

I remember reading somewhere about the concept losing and gaining the same amount of something being equal objectively, but not always subjectively.

In other words, the act of losing something hurts more than having gained it.

In other other words, it feels worse to lose $100 than it feels good to gain $100.

In even more other words, say that your happiness can be measured on a scale of -100 to 100 happiness points. Losing $100 brings you to -75 points but gaining $100 only brings you to +35 points. It’s easier to become more sad by losing something than to become more happy by gaining that same amount. So what’s the point of trying? It’s the same with people. Don’t risk the loss of people, whether it be via platonic or romantic relationships. It’s so easy to be happy alone, that why even put forth the effort if everyone’s going to be gone out of your life at some point anyways? This is why I was alone that day.

“28th and Walnut”

I pulled on the wire.

“Stop Requested”

The LED sign at the front of the bus flash between “28TH AND WALNUT” and “STOP REQUESTED”.

It came to a halt and I walked out without making eye contact with anyone. “Thank you have a nice day,”

The bus driver gave a head nod and two finger wag/wave as I walked out. It was about 50 degrees in Boulder and the blue sky set a beautiful backdrop in every direction I looked. Only a slight breeze, not even enough to pierce to my cotton jacket, let alone my flannel underneath. All I wanted to do was walk that day.

I love walking in general. It’s so human, so natural. I have a body and legs, so by god I’m gonna use them. That’s my one of the only reasons for why I like walking so much.

I liken it to the way that a monk named Ben that I met while working at a summer camp would look at running. I always ran for the “normal” reasons: getting and staying in shape, anxiety relief, letting loose my anger. Running has always been cathartic. I remember one morning at camp seeing Ben at breakfast and asking how he was doing. He beamed at me and said “I’m well. I ran this morning.”

I asked him, “How far?” to which he looked slightly puzzled as to why I asked such a question and replied, “I don’t know, maybe 2 or 3 miles?”

I, on the other hand was curious why he didn’t pay attention to how far he ran.

I wore my Smart Watch religiously to keep track of how far I’d ran, how fast I was running, altitude differentials, the list goes on. But the way he described it to me made me feel like I’d been running the wrong way my entire life. It seems challenging to run the “wrong way”. It’s not like I was running with my shoes on my hands. No, it wasn’t the physical difference that made me feeling like I was running incorrectly, but rather the lack of connection I had with the synthesis between my body and the world. I have a body that can run and no matter how I think about it, whether my higher level cognition actively turns it into a game of goals and achievements, all my body actually wants to do is run and doesn’t care if I run a 7:33 pace or a 7:32 pace.

He ran for none of the reasons I ran. He ran because he had legs and by god he was going to use them. He ran because his body wanted to run. He wanted to experience what his body was capable of doing and embrace it. He ran for no other reason than to run and to feel himself run. It’s so simple, and creates such a feeling of exhilaration when you ignore everything but the feeling of your body.

So I walk. I still like to run, but when the opportunity arises, I walk. I walk even if I have a car, even if it’s slower, even if it’s slightly less convenient.

It was needless to try to convince anyone how beautiful that day was, so I walked. I watched the bus chug on ahead, letting people off all the way down the road every few blocks until it was out of sight. I could’ve got off at any of those stops, but I chose to get off earlier. No particular reason why, I just could.

My backpack light on my back, I cut through some residential streets to the Boulder creek path then turned west. There was a sense of peace and gratefulness among everybody out that day, happy to take advantage of one of the first few warm days sprinkled into the beginnings of spring. I saw a family riding their bikes together, a mom, dad, and daughter of probably seven. A woman lay under an aspen. A crew of college students playing ultimate frisbee on the high school soccer field. A homeless man had his backpack emptied, presumably to air out, as he sat next to the creek, looking into the constantly moving water reflectively.

I saw all these people as I meandered along the concrete path, the icy cold stream humming along to my left, the evergreens sticking out like a sore thumb among the bare deciduous trees. Many of the people I saw were spending time with friends and family. I could’ve felt a l negative loneliness as I walked alone. I could’ve felt a sadness that I didn’t have anyone to walk with, or anyone to meet up with later. But I didn’t I was walking and experiencing my body just like everyone else was doing in their own way and I loved it.

I had no plans. I was planning on going home and winging some Indian curry. “Do I need anything else from the grocery store?” I wondered to myself as I walked comfortably alone. “tofu...green and red peppers....onion...I just bought curry powder....coconut milk...” my eyes perked up, “Oh right, I want to add kale,” I thought as I looked for the next turn north so I could walk to Sprouts to buy some greens to add to that night’s dinner.

Spending time with people is nice. I enjoy it. But I’ve found that I’m just such great company for myself that I hand’t had a desire recently to make an effort to spend more time socializing. My pizza delivery job gives me plenty of connection to people. I can chit chat with my coworkers while we make pizzas and joke about unruly customers, “oh god, toe sock guy with his cat...plug your nose when he opens his door!” we joked like brothers.

When I was a kid, my brothers and I would turn the volume all the way down on the TV and make the voices for the characters. It was funniest when my older brother did it, he’d make the old lady talk about how she was so old and nobody loves her and all the little children would yell mean things at her. I laughed so hard I remember not being able to breath, then wanting to do it myself but it just wasn’t as funny. He was a lot better at it than I was.

I got a lot of practice doing this while I worked my delivery job, and I started doing it during my walks too. Maybe my brothers would’t find it funny but I cracked myself up with it. I pretended I could read their minds and think about the absurd stuff that they’re thinking and hiding. I’d make funny voices for them, exaggerating their characteristics and quirks.

Recently, it seemed like as soon as sad thoughts tried to enter my head, the bouncer didn’t let them in. My brain was like a club and the thoughts inside were having a good time. They could look outside and see the sad thoughts try to enter but the bouncer stood firm. They left. The everlasting party casually carried on.

“Things are pretty alright right now”, I thought to myself, quietly mumbling the words under my breath. I thought of all the personal problems I’d encountered since moving to Colorado.

Depression. Anxiety. Longing for home. Loneliness.

These are things that could've been going on in my head, but they weren’t there. I saw those thoughts, and they flew away out of my periphery like a magpie. I whistled as I walked. No one was there to tell me to stop whistling. It wasn’t bothering anyone.

None of those so-called problems seemed to matter any more. I was overcome with a sense of peace. Not of jubilation, not of stoke, not even really happiness. It was just a quiet calming. It was as if I could look at these things that wrapped tightly around my brain and my lungs only a few months ago that seeped into my neuronal pathways like an infection, and now I could look at them objectively like items on a table. One quick swipe of my hand and they all went crashing to the floor. This was how I felt ever sense I started taking Lexapro. Lexapro was the bouncer and my consciousness was the club. All of these extreme feelings that sent me sinking into my bed at 2 in the afternoon all of the sudden turned into birds and just flew away.

I did meet a beautiful girl recently. I’m not giving her too much concern, but I think I might invite her over for dinner.

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

Text

February, 2014. Age 21. Alone.

“I worked with him for a year and a half. I lived here at the lodge before I could close on my house here in Hangtop so I got to know him pretty well. After his girlfriend left him he needed someone to give him a hand cleaning rooms and running the front desk. He was lonely as shit. Not the kind of loneliness that you get when you eat lunch in a cafe by yourself or when you don’t have anyone to hang with on a Saturday afternoon. This place has a strangling loneliness that’s hard to shake at night. You have to keep yourself happy, because there’s no one else to do it for you. At first it’s not that bad, the peacefulness is welcomed. But then months start passing, winter comes. It becomes all encompassing.”

I paused for a moment then walked around from the front desk, “Follow me.” Steps and Shalah gave each other a mimicked, slightly quizzical look and followed me a few steps out the front door into the bitter cold. The moon provided a not-so-generous helping of dim light which the snow that blanketed every horizontal surface as far as the eye could see reflected as best it could. The snow cooled the wind to such a frigid temperature it felt like it was blowing straight through my body, chilling me to my bones. I stood there looking out into the darkness, hands in my coat-pockets, the wind blowing my blonde hair straight back. My eyes were slightly squinted, then I turned to Steps and Shalah, opening my eyes hyperbolically wide.

“You guys hear that?”

“The sound of the mountains. They’re calling. They’re crying.” Steps said with her eyes closed.

I rolled my giant eyeballs and responded, “No. I’m talking about the sound of nothing. Nothin’ but the wind,” I began yelling as I spoke, “THERE’S NO ONE HERE! I CAN YELL ANYTHING I WANT AND NO ONE WILL HEAR ME! FUCK SHIT CUNT! MOTHER FUUUCKERRRRR!” I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. I felt a small rush of a new emotion I had recently begun to feel for the first time in my life, of inner primordial freedom. It wasn’t necessarily good or bad, just something new.

I looked at them and smiled, lowering my voice. “You know why I don’t care about anyone hearing me?”, I screamed again, “BECAUSE THERE’S NO ONE FUCKING HERE!”

I looked at them again and smiled, “Ok, it’s cold. Let’s go back inside. I just wanted to make a point”.

I was pretty sure at this point that these guys staying at the lodge couldn’t decide whether they liked me or if I was a total weirdo. We returned to the warmth of the dingy little office and shut the door behind us, creating had an eery silencing effect on the howling wind outside.

“So yeah...” I continued as I leaned up against the desk, “...the mountains have a weird allure. They attract people who are looking for solitude. Somewhere to run away to. People come here wanting isolation, but often it ends up being too much. Sometimes all you need is one person, ya know? One person to make happy, one person to put all of your love in to. That’s all Richard needed. When he had his girlfriend, it didn’t matter if there was no one around for 100 miles. He had what he needed. But when she left...dude...his happiness left with her. When you live near your friends and family, or even just in an area with other people around for that matter, a break up doesn’t have that kind of intense effect on you. You have your people to fall back on, new girls to date, things to occupy your mind.”

I stopped speaking for a second, gathering my thoughts, and continued, “The problem was that he was missing a critical part of the human experience. He was alone. All alone. It’s like he lost his ability to experience deep connections with people. He shut down, tuned out, and withdrew. The only people he associated with were people hopped up on all sorts of hard drugs, which are plentiful here.”

“So he ended up just killing himself because of loneliness?” Shalah interrupted.

“Well...” I made a wincing face and bobbed my head side to side, “...not quite. You see, there are so many goddamn transients blowing through this area. There’s a big hippie culture of homeless people who call themselves the Rainbows. They claim that they’re all about living off of the land, bartering, trading with whatever type of currency they can muster up, and loving all creatures equally. They talk people like Richard into giving them a place to stay in return for..” I put little air quotations and said with great sarcasm in a voice mimicking the most brain-dead of transients, “...doin a lil’ bit of work around here”.

“That sounds like such a great way to do things though!” Steps chimed in, “It sounds so freeing. That’s the way that things were done for so long, I feel like they’d be so in tune with nature and each other.”

“It’s all fuckin’ bullshit.” I replied in a cold tone, cutting her off.

Shalah laughed and I continued, better understanding these sibling’s relationship,

“It sounds like all dandelions and unicorns, but there’s a reason the locals call them Drainbows. They creep into town and steal from local businesses because they’re hungry and poor, then they turn around and use the little money they do have to buy drugs to get fucked up in the forest. Some of them just stick to weed and hard liquor, but some of them get hopped up on speed and it leads to stabbings, sometimes in the forest right here behind the lodge.”

“Are they around now?” Shalah asked.

“The Drainbows?”

“Yeah”

“No, it’s too cold now. They’d die. They all go to Cali for the winter.”

Shalah stopped my story temporarily to tell me that he had found a guy sleeping in the event center earlier that morning.

“Yeah, that’s a problem we have in the winter; homeless people sleeping up there. The lock doesn’t work, even though it turns and looks like it’s locked,” I laughed, “What were you doing up there anyways?”

“Exploring, sorry if I wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“Oh no dude that’s cool. I actually need to head up there soon. I need to do some cleaning and I forgot some, uh, candy.”

Shalah’s eyes widened like he had done something wrong, but I continued.

“So yeah, the drainbows. There was this one hippie couple, I just called them Pink and Blue because they had their hair dyed, well, pink and blue. Their names were actually Deja and Michael, but their names were Pink and Blue as far as I was concerned. I was down in Boulder one night running some errands for the lodge with Richard and I got a call from some California number, I had to leave my number on the office door since Richard didn’t pay his cell phone bill. Typical Richard. Anyways, it was this hippie couple complaining how they were really cold, had no money, needed a place to stay, and they were standing outside the office door. I told them to kindly take a hike and hung up. But damn, Richard had a heart of gold. He asked me who it was and I told him. He demanded my phone and called them right back, telling them that we’d be back in an hour or so and that he’d put them up for the night.”

I let a quick rush of air out of my nose in a half laugh. “That was such a terrible decision, but hey, what was new with Richard, right? Sure enough, when we got back, there were these two raggedy ass kids with dirty ripped up clothes about my age with their pit bull wrapped in a goddamn potato sack and two cats, each of them with one on their shoulders. They looked straight up like a couple of 1950’s cartoon hobos. There they were standing next to the locked office door, under the only artificial light for miles. How they even found the place I have no idea. They were probably hitch hiking and whoever was driving them just dropped ‘em off wherever he could leave ‘em. Sure enough, Richard gave them the key to Room 7 and said he’d talk to them the next day about work. They were so thankful, so grateful. I wish I could say I could see right through their façade of thank you’s at the time, but they were so sincere, and seeing them in person like that made me actually feel like we might’ve been doing the right thing.”

Shalah spoke up, “It’s a human instinct to want to help each other out, man. Seems like Richard was just more eager than you. I mean, not to say that you’re a cold hearted person or anything, but, I mean..” He tried to dig himself out of the awkward situation of questioning my character, but I cut him off. I knew I was a cold hearted bastard. One winter in Hangtop was all it took.

“Dude, you’re right. Frankly, I didn’t give a shit about these transients and I still don’t, but Richard did. Simple enough.” I stopped talking, getting lost in realizing my own shittiness.

Steps broke the silence, “So what ended up happening with them?” she asked in a concerned voice.

“These guys stayed and worked for the first few days and it looked like they might’ve been a real nice couple of kids, living the true Rainbow lifestyle like it’s meant to be. They were doing all the shit jobs that Richard and I kept putting off. They hauled all the dead logs from the side of the mountain to the road, they replaced the toilet in Room 12. But there’s a reason that these kids were in the position they were. They stopped working soon enough.”

Steps had a look of defeat on her face like she was really cheering for these dumb hippies, so I continued to disappoint her. I kind of enjoyed it since she looked like one of them anyways, just a little bit cleaner, like she’s showered in the past week.

“I remember one day I came over to work and Pink and Blue were supposed to help me grout the tiles in all the bathrooms. I went into the office where they said they’d be ready at 8 A.M., but it was empty. I went into Richard’s apartment”, I said pointing to the door connecting the office to his apartment, “and he was sitting on his couch with his cat. They were both watching the weather channel which he seemed to watch borderline obsessively. I asked him where those assholes were and he just shrugged his shoulders absentmindedly without taking his eyes off that old shitty tv. So I took matters into my own hands and knocked on the door of Room 7, where they had been staying for the past week. No answer. I stood there for about 30 seconds and knocked on the door again, still no fuckin’ answer. I immediately thought “these lazy fucks.” and was tempted to get the key from the office and just go in and wake their asses up the hard way, but I relented and just started doing the work myself. A few hours later, I heard car doors slamming in the parking lot and I saw them mozying out and waving at some dude who I guess had just given them a ride. I asked them where the fuck they’d been and they said (I did my over the top hippie impression again) ‘oh hey man, sorry! We were just down at Nikki’s for a morning session and got caught up. Let’s get it done!’. Nikki’s is the pot shop in town.”

“Nikki’s Nook?” Steps asked. “Isn’t that the cute little bottle shop in town?”

“That’s their front. It’s a pot shop. Just go in and ask for their menu, they sell bud for $10 a gram, which is halfway decent for getting it from a reputable source like them.. But I didn’t want a couple of stoned losers helping me, I didn’t want them f-.. sorry I’ve been swearing a lot. Screwing up the grouting, so I just told them I’d do it myself and they didn’t give a fuck, er..goddamnit... I mean, they didn’t care at all. And so went the next few weeks. They lived here at the lodge and lazed around and lived off of Richard.

“Why didn’t you guys kick them out?” Shalah asked hopping up onto the table covered with tourist pamphlets.

“Dude you have no idea. I tried so hard to get Richard to get them to leave, but like I said, he was lonely. So damn lonely. I provided a little bit of social interaction for him, but I was only there maybe 20 or so hours a week working. He wanted people around so badly, and Pink and Blue are people, dirty hippies or not.”

Every time I referred to hippies in a derogatory manner, I could tell that Steps felt a little offended and showed it. I could also see that Shalah noticed, but didn’t care. I continued on..

“I wouldn’t have cared if they stuck around if they were clean and fed themselves, but they didn’t. They made a disgusting mess out of their room, burned through Richard’s paycheck every two weeks by eating his food, drinking his booze, and buying weed with the money he lent them.”

Then I started remembering them in a slightly better light, “Honestly though they were a nice couple of kids, I can’t deny that. They were polite in every day interactions and were funny as hell. I swear, I’ve never met a homeless person who couldn’t have made it as a comedian.”

I dove into one of the few good memories I had with them,

“I remember this one time, it was me, Richard, Pink, Blue, and my dog Rachel. Rachel was probably the cleanest and smelled the nicest out of all of them. We all went down to Home Depot together in my old Suburban to pick up with sheets of plywood to redo the floors in a few of the rooms. We had little lanterns hanging up in the car and it had bad brakes at the time so it squealed like a pig getting slaughtered at the slightest bit of pressure. Richard had a full fledged winter beard going on that looked like Helen Keller had shaved off Shrek’s pubes and hot glued them all over his face. He wore a giant goofy beanie that looked like an ugly Christmas sweater that one of the guests left behind, and he was wearing his dirty-ass torn-up sweat pants he had used for painting the day before. Pink and Blue were looking...well...like Pink and Blue usually looked. Rachel had this stupid neon green Warheads bandanna on that I got for free at a music festival. Not to mention they all smelled like they never showered, probably because they never showered. When we rolled up to Home Depot, I realized that we were probably the most ragtag lookin’ group of motherfuckers that had ever disgraced Boulder.”

“And Boulder is filled with damn weirdies,” Shalah said in a 1950’s old man southern draw.

We laughed together and I kept rambling, “I realized how fuckin’ stupid we must’ve looked. Three scraggly homeless lookin’ people, a dog with a bandanna and a rope around her neck since we forgot her leash, and me. I just gave up on trying to uphold my reputation for a bit and had fun with them. We ended up joking the whole way home about starting a gay fraternity called Gamma Alpha Psy, which would look like GAY when spelled out with Greek lettering, and how the socials would just be a bunch of super gay dudes falling over each other from apple martini after apple martini.”

I talked with a limp hand, a lisp, and stumbled around while recalling Blue’s impressions, “Blue would be like ‘Jezuzzz Chrizzzz, these Apple Martini’s have got me so drunk, I might just go home with ANYbody tonight!’”

We bursted into laughter while Steps didn’t look very amused.

“Aw yeah.. good times. Too bad these kids were total pieces of shit.”

The tone took a serious turn as I switched back to bashing them, “I told Richard to kick those guys out so many times, but he never did. I guess for him, having someone around all the time, no matter how terrible of influences they were, was worth him having all his money blown and never getting any work done. Eventually, this other guy showed up, his name was Ian or something.”

I shook my head upon remembering Ian, “I won’t go too much into this guy, but he was just...weird. I could never quite put my finger on it, but there was something just....off. He was about my age, clean shaven, dressed nicely, and carried a Jansport backpack that was stuffed to the rafters with God knows what. He showed up looking for a job one day. I told him we were fine and didn’t need any help, but of course Richard started shooting the shit with him. I walked out of the office to clean a few rooms and saw his ride sitting in the parking lot, car still running. I came out an hour or so later to see the car gone, but when I walked into Richard’s apartment, they were sitting on the couch playing guitar. Thus began this guy’s era. He joined Richard, Pink, and Blue’s little hippie clan. He would try to sell me his food stamps and gave me seductive looks when we were all hanging around in Richard’s apartment at night. Luckily, this guy was rather short lived since the cops came and picked him after about a week or so of crashing in Room 12.”

Steps’ and Shalah’s eyes perked open a bit.

“The cops picked him up? Was he like, wanted?” Shalah asked with a sparked interest that I could tell had started to dull.

“No idea man, no idea. We all went up to the grow house on the hill one afternoon to hang with someone who Richard said he was friends with and supposedly wanted to play music with us. No one answered the door but they let their Pit Bulls out. It scared the shit out of me, but I’m pretty sure that every transient hippie is a Pit whisperer, because they just walked right up to these snarling dogs and started playing with them. After they had their fun with the dogs, I’m sure to the dismay of whoever let them out to sick us, we casually walked back down the hill to the lodge parking lot to find three cop cars. Richard and I were walking ahead and were approached by one of the town cops asking if we knew where Ian was. We were both as confused as the other, but we said yeah and that he was with us. A minute or so later, Pink, Blue, and Ian walked down and two more cops assisted the cop that had talked to us as they swarmed Ian. I’ll never forget the look on that kid’s face when all the cops swarmed him. So....un-phased. Like a cow in a field when a buzzing swarm of flies invades her personal space. He didn’t try to run, he didn’t try to protest, he just talked to them like I talk to my brother at the dinner table. Soon he was in the back of the cop car, and the cops were interviewing Richard about what he knew about this kid. When Richard came back to the office where Pink and Blue and I were waiting for him, I saw the cop cars driving away, Ian in tow. We asked him what the fuck just happened. Richard told us how Ian was living in a group home and he said that they said they ‘just needed to check up on him and make sure he was alright and taking his meds’.”

Shalah made a face of disbelief, “Three cop cars to pick up a kid who just needed to be checked in on? That doesn’t sound right to me.”

“It didn’t to me either, I knew there was something seriously up with that kid, but I never found out what. Apparently the cops said that he’d be back soon after he checked in with his group home down in Boulder and the hippie brigade all seemed content with that answer. He never showed up again, I never saw him again, and they all just brushed it off with the occasional ‘Hm, I wonder what ever happened to Ian, he was such a nice guy,’ It baffled me. I would say to them ‘Guys, there’s a reason three fuckin’ cops picked him up. He must have been involved in some serious shit,’ But they’d be like ‘No wayyyy man! He was too cool. They just needed to check in on him,’ You guys get the point.”

“So how did all this lead to Richard, um.”

“Killing himself? Wow sorry, once I get started on these stories I get carried away.” I replied as I walked around the counter to the computer desk and leaned back with my hands behind my head. “You guys get the point. The transients aren’t the best bunch to hang with, but for Richard, that was all he had. He wasn’t really able to leave since he was the only person working besides me. When you have a basic human need taken from you, like socialization, you do anything you can to get it back. He had what he had and ran with it. It all led up to Viki and Polly.”

I shook with disgust and continued. “Don’t ever stick your dick in crazy. Richard could’ve taken that to heart. Hanging out with these loser homeless fucks was one thing, but when he began sleeping around with them, that’s when things got real bad. I remember one day he started telling me about this older girl. Her name was Viki, and he kept telling me how he couldn’t wait for me to meet her and how good looking she was. She wasn’t really homeless, but she hung out with all these hippie shits and lived off and on with her mom in a little cabin over in the town of Eldora.”

“There’s a town too?” Shalah asked, only apparently knowing about the ski resort by the same name.

“Yeah if you keep going past the turn off to the resort, there’s a little tiny town. No amenities, just houses and little cabins. Viki lived there, she probably still does. She was bad fucking news. She had me bring her to her friend’s house to, (putting air quotes) pick up her cell phone. Whelp, that was a lie, which I learned a few months later after Richard and her broke up. Turns out I was assisting in a meth run. She was meth head number one.”

“Number one?! How many meth heads were there?” Steps asked.

“Eh, only her and Polly. But that’s two meth heads too many. When Richard started dating Viki, that was when things got truly bad for that guy. She told me she was on probation for turning in fake W-4’s to get tax returns, so I drove her down to the City of Boulder Judicial Building for her probation hearings a few times because I thought she had just screwed up and needed a helping hand. That taught me to trust someone like that. Turns out she was a total junkie, almost always had needles on her. She pulled Richard into that shit so hard and so fast it was like a whirlwind. Once they started seeing each other, I’d go days without getting a call to come in and work, so I’d call and ask if he needed help and he’d reply with a short ‘nope, all good here with me and Viki!’ They were just turning guests away then going back to the apartment and doing meth.”

I said pointing into his old apartment, where nobody was living now. “When I took over as the lodge manager, the owner offered me to live in the apartment but I don’t dare go in there after the shit that went down in there, for my mental and physical health. Eventually Viki left after some big fight in front of a bunch of people eating at the restaurant next door. Yelling some bullshit about how he fucks his cat and throwing shit around. It was a mess.”

Shalah spoke up skeptically, “What I don’t understand is how he got away with all this. Where was the owner? And why didn’t he just hang out with the people at the restaurant?”

“The owner is some old big shot who doesn’t give a shit about the lodge. He lives in Denver and owns more property than he knows what to do with. As long as the year end profits come in, he doesn’t give a shit what goes on around here. If worst comes to worst, he sells this place and makes a little profit. No sweat off his back. And for the restaurant, Richard hates them.”

Steps broke in, “But they’re so nice at the cafe! Heidi, I think that’s her name? The owner? Me and her had a great time the other night talking until it must’ve been midnight.”

“She hated Richard. They were like enemies and I never quite got it. Richard would tell me that Heidi hated him because he stole his girlfriend from them since they all used to be friends, but then she only hung out with Richard when they started dating. But then again, Heidi is well versed in all of his drunken and drug fueled calamities, so I try my best to stay out of all of it. They hated each other and Richard refused to go in there, and that’s all I knew for certain. Where was I...”

I glanced at my watch and realized how late it was. “Dang, almost time for me to close the office. I’ll finish up quick. Anyways, long story short, Viki got him into hard drugs then left. He finally confessed to me about everything: that drug run I took her on, the drugs they were doing, etcetera etcetera. A few weeks after him and Viki broke up, we were in Boulder on running errands as usual and he called Viki against my advice to ask her what some restaurant was that they had talked about before. She apparently was hopped up on drugs at the time and started yelling at him over the phone about how she just found out that she was HIV positive and...Jesus, this chilled me to the bone man. I remember hearing her shrieking voice through his phone say ‘Haha! You have AIDS now!’”

The siblings looked visibly concerned and what I said next only made it worse. “That was terrifying. I told him he needed to get checked ASAP, and you know what he said to me? He said ‘Bro, I’m a Christian. I have the blood of Jesus in me, that kind of thing doesn’t effect me,’”

I shook my head while leaning forward from my previously reclined stature. “The guy was delusional. Then this girl Polly comes around. She was the last straw. She was way into weed and speed oddly enough. I don’t even know how they met, she just kind of...showed up once day. He started dating her and once again, he stopped calling me in to work.”

“This...” I said scratching my head, “Was when it started going downhill so fast my head spun. Late one night, he calls me saying how Polly had gone on a rampage and smashed a window. He said that he had to leave and that I needed to watch the lodge and make sure Polly doesn’t break anything else. I replied that was crossing the line and was not part of my duties as an employee. He said that I had no choice and that he was my boss, so I told him I was done working there. He hung up on me and unbeknownst to me, he called my little brother Levi, telling him the same story. Levi, strapped for cash, took him up on the offer for $50 and headed over to the lodge. I got another call about a half hour after Richard had called me. This time it was Levi. He sounded like he was about to have a panic attack. He just told me to come to the lodge immediately and when I asked him why he said ‘Just please come over. Please just come over. Just come over please.’ Like he was scared to tell me what was wrong. I didn’t even know he was there in the first place. I was absolutely livid with Richard that he’d coaxed my own brother into getting wrapped up in his cluster-fuck.”

“What did Polly do?” Steps asked, genuinely concerned.

“The answer was actually what Polly didn’t do. I got there to see Levi pacing outside the front office door. He saw my car and the look on his face was so relieved, like I came with the antidote for a deadly snake bite. He said that Polly was lying on the floor and wasn’t responding. So I went in and sure enough found Polly laying face down, skirt hiked up over her ass. Richard’s apartment was in the nastiest condition I’d ever seen it. Needles, cigarettes, and booze bottles everywhere. I kneeled down and patted her on the back and said ‘Polly? Polly are you ok?’. No answer. I patted her a bit harder and asked the same thing to no answer. So I carefully leaned in and put my ear next to her mouth and listened for breath. She was breathing normally, so I figured she had just passed out. I walked out and called Richard and asked him why the fuck Polly was lying on the floor. He said that she was just doing it for attention and that I should tell her that I’d call an ambulance if she didn’t get up. So I went back in and told her that I’d call an ambulance, if she didn’t let me know she was ok. She replied with a super muffled ‘imOK..’ without moving a muscle. So I left her alone. I told Levi that he was on his own with this mess and left. It was late by that time, close to midnight. I went home, put my phone on silent, and went to bed. I woke up the next morning around 9:30 A.M. to at least a dozen missed calls from Levi and about as many frantic text messages. Instead of bothering to read the texts or listen to the voicemails, I just got in the car and headed over. I arrived to cop cars in the parking lot and Polly calmly carrying things from the office to around the back of Room 1.”

“It seems like cop cars are a common occurrence at this lodge?” Shalah sarcastically responded.

“Yep. That was the last time the cops were there as far as I know, because that’s when Richard got fired. It was the last straw for Heidi, the restaurant owner, so she called the owner and told him everything. About the cops being there all the time, Viki’s drug fueled break up, the hippies living there free of charge, the list goes on.”

“So who called the cops on Polly? What happened that night?” Steps asked.

“Oh yeah. Ok, so apparently Levi and his buddy Joseph went and stayed in Room 5 that night. He would get calls from Richard every hour or so throughout the night asking him to go knock on the door and tell Polly to leave. So he complied and every time he went and knocked on the door to no answer, he’d try to open it but it was locked. We were locked out of our own business by a strung out drug addict. 5 A.M. rolls around, and Levi goes once again to try to get in. This time, Polly was up, cleaning and vacuuming. She answered the door like a house wife answers the door for her friend at two in the afternoon. Levi told her that Richard was on the phone and wanted to talk to her; she went insane. ‘Hang up. Hang up right now. I’m not talking to him. HANG UP. LEAVE.’ That was enough to spook Levi and he scrammed out of there. That’s when he managed to talk Richard into letting him call the cops to get her out of there. The cops got her out but then had to wait for her to get all of her things out of there, which is why they were still there when I rolled up around 10 A.M. She was out of there for good by 11 or so, and it wasn’t even 20 minutes later when some straggly ass hippie guy came out of the woods telling me that Polly tried to join their little hippie clan in the forest, but she had bad vibes and they didn’t want her around. He said he just wanted me to know that she took off towards town.”

“Even the Rainbows didn’t want her around? She must have been bad news.” Steps replied, frowning.

“She wasn’t wanted anywhere and I actually haven’t seen her since. But yeah anyways, that’s when Richard finally got fired....To be honest, I’m surprised that he lasted as long as his did with all his antics. When he showed up later that day, the owner was there after being called by Heidi and he fired him on the spot.”

“Where did he go? Did he have family around? Friends?”

“He had his group of hippie losers. He also had an entire family of doctors and lawyers back in California, but he couldn’t face them for some reason or another. He stayed here in the rockies. One of his hippie buddies had a rinky-dink shack out in the gambling town 20 minutes west where he stayed for a while. That’s the last time I heard directly from him about his whereabouts. Everything from then on, I learned from his brother in a phone call after he killed himself.”

“Rough...” Shalah said staring blankly at the floor.

“Rough is right. I’ve never had such an intimate conversation with a stranger over the phone in my life. It was such a surreal experience.”

I continued on in a lower, more serious tone, “Apparently after living with the hippies, he moved down to Boulder and lived in a hotel for a while. After that, that’s when things got crazy. He hopped on a flight to Mexico. He settled into some city on the Pacific coast, but called his brother, the guy I talked to on the phone, panicking. After a run in with some criminals and learning that the justice system doesn’t quite work the same down there as they do up here in the states, he begged his brother to fly him back up to Cali. I guess it took his life being in danger before he faced his family, for whatever reason he had. Upon arriving in Cali, Richard’s brother let him move in with him and his family with only one rule: he had to be either looking for a job or have a job. So he did it, he picked up a job really quick at a Marriott as a front desk clerk and was on a fast track to management since he had been a lodge manager. Things were looking up for him, he even signed up to do some medical study where he’d take some medication, stay at a laboratory for a few days, and get paid $2,000. That was around the same time that I heard his voice for the very last time. He called me out of the blue while I was at work one day and started talking to me like we never skipped a beat, even though it had been several months since we had spoken. He enthusiastically telling me about the medical study he was doing, but I told him that I’d call him back after work, which I did, but he didn’t answer. We didn’t speak for a few more months, then I got the call from his brother.”

I stopped talking for a minute, my eyes glued to an arbitrary spot on the wall past both Steps and Shalah. I could tell looking at them that they both wanted closure to the story, but I kind of needed the silence to linger for a minute more. The two of them stood on one side of the wooden counter while I sat on the other side behind it. It only had a few things on it: a stack of business cards, some local trail maps, a framed picture of a bear sitting on a log, and a landline phone. I spoke up after about thirty seconds of silence, which didn’t feel awkward because they knew I needed it.

“I got the call while on a train ride through the mountains. My girlfriend and I had split up a week before that, so when my mom saw me crying a few seats down, she thought it was because of the break up. She gave me a sad face and got up to comfort me. I got so angry. I can’t really describe it. I just said with a raised voice ‘Richard killed himself,’ across the moving train filled with strangers. The look of horror on her face and those around me somehow gave me a feeling of satisfaction, like ‘I hurt so bad right now, that I want all these other people to hurt too. Bad.’

I redirected my blank gaze right into Shalah’s eyes, then to Steps’. They felt it too, I could tell, and once again, I kind of liked it. Just telling them about it spread my feeling of hurt outwards in a masochistic satisfactory way.

“Here in Hangtop while I worked at the lodge, Richard was really my only friend. I was an online student, so I didn’t have too much of a social life. Within the span of about a week, I lost my two best friends that I had over the past two years. All my friends before that, I had sort of fallen away from...goddamn, I was so alone. I’m ok with loneliness, in fact, I enjoy it. But when you’ve had such an intense connection with someone for so long, then they’re just....gone, it leaves a hole inside of you; I could physically feel it. I could literally feel an emptiness inside me and I felt it in everything I did. When you don’t have that connection with anyone to begin with, loneliness can be a joy, a freedom if you will. But fuck, there’s something about connecting with someone then having that connection torn away from you that you can’t quite explain.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what finally led to Richard’s death?” Shalah asked. He looked like he was getting slightly impatient and sleepy.

“Remember that medical study he signed up for? He got denied apparently. This is all coming from his brother now. Apparently he got denied from the study for a reason that he didn’t tell anyone. Soon after that, a few days I think, he no-call no-showed to work for a whole week. They fired him and he left his brother’s house and moved in with his buddy who lived in a high rise loft on the south side of Los Angeles. He stuck around there for a few weeks I guess, just bumming around jobless until he got a call from a private detective in Boulder. Remember how I said he was living in that hotel in Boulder for a while?”

Steps and shalah nodded their heads.

“While he was there, he had sex with a girl who later claimed that he raped her. Whether or not there was any truth to that statement, I have no idea. But the private detective said that he could either turn himself in where he was or come back to Boulder to turn himself in. Those were his two choices. Now I’m getting into speculation here, but I believe that the reason why he was denied from the medical study was that he contracted HIV from Viki. If the girl that he had sex with in the hotel contracted it from him and he knew that he had it, then he could be tried for attempted murder.”

I looked at my watch and laughed, “Sorry I’m the worst when it comes to stories. I look at it this way, if he did have HIV, he had a fatal illness, he was a severe alcoholic, and was facing charges that could eventually lead to him going to jail for life. He would talk to me about some really profound stuff sometimes. He’d talk about how he was 34, and all he wanted to do was help people. He didn’t care anymore about being selfish or taking from the world; all he wanted to do was do things for others. And I saw that in him, he had a heart of gold, just not the best set of decision making skills to go with it. I think that once he considered his life as he knew it to be over, he decided to not bother with it anymore. A few days after getting the call from the private detective, the guy Richard was living with found him passed out on the couch with a huge Coke stain on the carpet and a big mess in the kitchen. This was enough to make him wake Richard up and tell him that he’d put him up in a hotel that night but that he was done letting him bum around his home. Richard woke up disheveled and said that was fine and that he was going out to the balcony to have a smoke. His buddy went back to the bedroom to get ready for work, then when he came back out, Richard wasn’t on the balcony anymore.”

“Did he jump?” Shalah asked.

“He jumped. He jumped from the 8th floor. And that was the end.”

There was another bout of silence as the two of them took in the words that hit them like a brick to the chest, knocking all of the air out of their lungs.

“So yeah...that’s Richard’s story. Fuckin’ shame. Really.. I had some good times with that guy, one of the funniest dudes I’ve ever met. He’d give his last shirt to a man he didn’t know. You just never know what’s lurking underneath a smile.”

“I assume you’ve seen him since?” Steps nervously asked.

“Excuse me?” I replied legitimately confused. Shalah shook his head and looked down in embarrassment. “Goddamnit Steps...” he said under his breath.

“His ghost.” Steps spoke with a slight apprehension in her voice, “Ghosts tend to try to make contact with their past friends and family, they go to places that made a big impact on their life. It seems to me that his time here at the lodge altered his life course drastically. It makes sense that he’d want to come back here for unfinished business, perhaps to make amends with someone, or maybe he wants to do what you said he wanted to do with his life and help people. He could be back with the intention to help more travelers on their way.”

I smiled condescendingly while Shalah shook his head and opened his mouth, “Steps, he doesn’t want to hear about your ghost nonsense. If he believed that shit, don’t you think he’d have mentioned it by now?” He looked to me, “Right?”

“I actually like hearing about it. I don’t believe it, but I enjoy hearing about people’s experiences with him here. This lodge is so old, it used to be used as army barracks in World War II for high altitude training. According to your theory that ghosts haunt places that played a big part in their lives, then I’d imagine that this building would be positively crawling with ghosts; this was the first place that some guys joining the army would be stationed, talk about life altering.”

“Wow! What have you heard about the war ghosts?!” Steps asked with excitement.

“Me? I’ve heard a bit from a few guests. I didn’t even know that this place was used as army barracks until I met an old manager a few months back. She said when she ran this place back in the 70’s when the Vietnam war was going on, people saw soldier ghosts all the time like clockwork. But now? No one even knows that it used to be army barracks. With the knowledge of its history vanishing, so do the relevant ghosts. Coincidence? I think not. The mind is a powerful thing. People claim to see Richard’s ghost here because they know about him and they’re looking for him, the same way it was with the ghost soldiers in the 70’s. The only people that talk about seeing his ghost are the ones that knew him or know of a ghost that’s supposedly here.”

I shook my head again and continued on, “That’s a whole different story though. I’ll just leave it at that. I need to close up shop. I have to be back here at 7:30 in the morning to start cleaning rooms.”

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

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March, 2013. Age 20. First Tracks.

I woke up to my own circadian rhythm. I felt rested and immediately energized as I remembered what I was getting up to do. The same thing I did every day for the past month. I didn’t shower, I just brushed my teeth and pulled my snow pants on. I put on a hoodie and walked into the kitchen to talk to my mom while I ate.

“Can I take your Jeep today?” I asked her as I fumbled through the dish washer for a spoon.

“When will you be back? I have tennis in Boulder at two today,” she responded from behind her iMac.

“Oh that’s perfect,” I said back, “I want to get first tracks then I’ll probably come home by noon, get some school work done, then I’ll come down with you so I can go running.”

“That’s fine, honey. I’m so happy you are feeling better,” she said.

I still had a little bit of cynicism toward everything in the back of my head and I wasn’t quite ready to admit I was coming out the five month episode of depression I had just endured, so I just muttered a small “thanks me too,” as I checked the snow report and allowed my actions to speak instead of beating the dead horse that weighed me down into my bed throughout the previous winter.

“There’s a foot of snow up there, holy shit,” I said, wondering whether my rental skis would hold up against the mounds of snow that awaited me.

“Seb, language,” she said as I ignored her and finished my cereal. I rushed back to my room, threw on my dad’s old ski jacket and grabbed my ski boots by the heater.

--------

My skiing was sloppy. Real sloppy. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t quite sure what good skiing even looked like anyway. I felt tense as I skied because I still got a little bit nervous going fast, in case I accidentally got into some bumps. I saw other people skiing the bumps but every time I went in it felt like my skis flew out from under me and I landed on my ass. So I’d get up and try again until I decided I’d had enough and boost my confidence by making turns on the groomed runs. I watched bump skiers from the lift. I watched their skis: tight together as they waded through the seas of moguls. Their upper body seemed to not move and they jabbed their poles into the snow in front of them and they whipped around the mounds of snow quickly and with grace. “I’m gonna get there,” I thought to myself, determined.

I watched other skiers as much as possible to figure out exactly how I should be doing this, but it seemed like everyone had a different style. It made me think about how they teach in the ski lessons. Since everyone seems to have a different style, are there different styles of skiing that are all right? Or just one type with variations? Or maybe almost everyone doesn’t ski the right way and there’s actually one right way? These thoughts went through my mind before I hopped off the chair and started sliding. That’s when they vanished and all that mattered was the me on the mountain.

Exhilaration coursed through my veins, making up for the lack of serotonin in my brain over the past winter as I withered away in my bed and stared at the wall for hours on end. I looked down at the snow as it rushed by at mach speed, but all it took was looking up to realize I wasn’t going nearly as fast as I thought. It was all relative. I looked at the trees in the distance slowing coming to, the unmoving clouds and mountains on the horizon. I felt so small and so big at the same time. My world so humbling. I felt part of it. Like it was waiting for me to join, to enjoy, to take hold of what was at my finger tips. The word happy didn’t do justice for the feelings I had as I swayed back and forth along the white corduroy. Ecstasy, jubilance, and awe fit the bill better. I started laughing out loud. The mountain was empty since it was a Tuesday, so I could yell and hoop and holler as much as I wanted without the fear of judgment. I felt alive and free, crisp cold air being sucked into my lungs. It felt so clean, I was being cleansed mentally and physically.

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

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January, 2013. Age 20. Port Blue.

I’ve been in my bed and staring at the ceiling. It’s been somewhere between three and four hours. It sounds hyperbolic, but this isn’t even the longest ceiling staring session I’ve had during the month of January.

I blame my mom for all of this. She brought me here. You might ask “you’re 20 years old, why don’t you just move back to Florida?”. Believe me, I ask myself the same thing every day. The second I start making moves toward relocating back home, anxiety grabs me by the fucking neck and throws me to the ground. I start panicking. The thought of living by myself in my own apartment. Getting up and no one else being there but me. The dishes I left on the table the night before are still there. Having no one to talk to about my day after class. These are normal life things, but they freak me the fuck out.

I haven’t even wanted to say swear words, because I get so scared of God becoming angry with me, but I’m so upset I can’t help it. I don’t even think he’s there. If he’s there why wouldn’t he bring me out of this hole of despair? He doesn’t hate me. No, he doesn’t hate me because he can’t because he doesn’t exist.

My life is a slow, boring story, turning page by page, with only a word or two on each page, but you can only turn each page every 10 minutes. Each page says something like, “microwave some popcorn,” or “think about buying a guitar,” or “sleep from seven to seven”. I wear the same track pants and heavy jacket every day, even though I barely leave my parents’ house, because it’s so goddamned cold here. I hate it here. I fucking hate this.

I have no friends. I have nothing going on. I was going to move to a house in Orlando, but I got there and hated it and came back. Right back to where I also hate it. I’m not even sure what it is that I hate. Is it my lack of motivation that I hate? Or my parents not living in Florida anymore? Maybe I just hate the idea of moving on. I think I definitely hate the town of Nederland. I also hate the state of Colorado. Boulder is okay I guess. But for the most part this state is cold and shitty and there’s no surfing. So fuck it. I think I just hate everything.

I feel like I have given up at this point. I feel like I have given up on caring about anything. I’ve been seeing a counselor and he told me to exercise. Go to Boulder, find a gym, and go there a few days a week. I used to exercise every day. I’d run in the morning, surf right afterwards, then either go to class or go to work. Or maybe read. I was in the sun, it was warm, it was life. It wasn’t even just life, it was the life. I had a falling out with a few friends who I considered my best friends, but it was ok because I had surfing. I had running. I had my mediocre job at the grocery store that I kind of liked, even though I only got paid minimum wage, because it was so chill. I had my classes I was taking online while living at my parents house. Life was good.

Now I’m in this snowy, shitty town with nothing going on. I’m taking two online classes because I came back after a week in Orlando and wasn’t able to get into anything else. I hate how slow and not busy my life is. I work maybe ten hours a week at this shitty lodge where the manager is a fucking drunk low life.

I was depressed all day yesterday, then I made a cover of You, Me, and Everyone We Know’s song “The Next 20 Minutes” around 7 P.M. and I snapped out of it for the rest of the night. Then I woke up again this morning and I immediately felt depressed again. I got up and did the dishes from dinner last night, then I took a shower. I got dressed, then remembered I had nowhere to go. So I laid back down in bed around 8 A.M. It’s almost noon now, so I’ll probably get up and make some popcorn for lunch and watch Parks And Recreation for a few hours. The day before yesterday I did literally all of the work for my two online classes that’s available at the moment so I have nothing to do for school. I might play Pokemon on the old Gameboy I found. I’m really just looking for anything to pass the time without having to actually expel energy because the second I start getting excited, (which tends to be a byproduct of expelling energy) I just remember that I hate everything and I lose interest in expelling energy. I think I’m gaining weight, but I haven’t weighed myself in a few months.

I think I’m having an existential crisis. I’ve come to the cold, yet comfortable reality that I truly have no one who is close to me. I have no one to talk to because no one quite understands where I’m coming from because of this weird simplex of depression, anxiety, and anger. This facilitates a feeling of isolation both physically and emotionally, which I think play off of each other anyways. I’ve been reading a lot of books about existentialism, humanism, and the innate tendency of humans to transcend their oneness, and I think that it all makes a lot of sense, but I’m stuck underwater. I know the air is there, but I’m stuck underwater and no matter how much I think about it, I can’t breath it. The air of life. The air of feeling normal again. I wonder if this is how I’ll always feel, or if this’ll be a distant memory. That’d be nice. I just got a glimpse of happiness in my chest when I wrote that.

I’ll just listen to an album by Port Blue. Just one. Then I’ll get up.

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commentaryonhowwelive · 5 years ago

Text

December, 2011. Age 19. (Fear of the Unknown)

Phase 1

I hadn’t spent any time with her all this semester. Not because I wasn’t available. In fact, I was home from college every weekend because I passionately hated living in Orlando. I hated being in my college apartment. I hated the lack of privacy, the compression on my mind. I think I just hate apartments in general. Maybe I’m just spoiled having grown up in a house by the beach.

Anyways, she was away at college up north and even though we had crushes on each other in high school (at least I thought we did) we didn’t talk much while she was gone.

I shot her a text.

“Hello Sallie, would you like to grace me with your presence?” I waited. She responded.

“Paul! How are you?! Yes. Want to longboard?”

I was at her house 10 minutes later. 10 minutes after that, we were cruising down Riverside Drive on our longboards talking about the past semester.

“I’ve hated it. I have to confess, I come back a lot to surf.”

“How can you hate Orlando so much? There’s so much to do there.”

I did a little move on my board to show off then replied, “Everything there costs money. I just want to surf and play drums and hang out beachside. I feel so trapped in Orlando. Everything’s fake. I can’t even skate without being scared of being hit by a car, there’s so much traffic,” I spoke as I took up the entirety of the empty beach side road.

“I’m just happy to get away from this town. I loved growing up here, don’t get me wrong, but it’s time to like..you know..I guess…move on?”

I opened my mouth to respond but felt guilty for confessing that I wasn’t ready to leave yet since it seemed like her ship has already sailed. I closed my mouth and pushed against the ground. She continued, “I like being here now though. It’s like a breath of fresh air.”

I rode her compliment on our hometown, “Exactly! That’s how I feel every time I come home from Orlando. The second I cross the causeway it’s just like ‘ahhhh’”.

Truth is, I didn’t come back just a lot. I came home every weekend, and sometimes during the week too for a day or so. If I didn’t, I felt like I’d go insane. I was terrified of living alone. I felt incompetent all the time, unable to justify any of my day to day actions. My family lived an hour away, but it might as well had been across the world. When I’m in Orlando, all I could think about is going home. The crowds, the flagrant uncaring attitude of so many students here, the facade in front of every interaction or sight. If you want to go to the pet store, you can’t go to the little mom & pop pet shop down the street, you have to go to TONY’S ANIMATORIUM EMPORIUM. Where’s the realness? Where’s the people just making it work without having to put on a name tag and a face every day? I’d see an old man riding his bike in Orlando and think DUI. I’d see an old man riding his bike beachside and I think happy and retired.

“Well, I have to bring things to goodwill and I want to get a Christmas tree. Want to join me for beachside adventures?” She asked turning back down her street.

“You bet your sweet booty I do.”

I was smooth with the ladies. Or at least I like to think I would be. I’ve never even kissed a girl. Maybe it’s the anxiety, but I imagine it’s more because I’m just looking for a relationship that means something before I make that connection with someone. Hook up culture drives me up a wall. Just like Orlando does. I hate it, it’s dirty. I want a girl that I care about, who cares about me.

We kept joking that we were like a newly wed couple and I secretly loved it. I loved the idea of getting a Christmas tree with a girl for our cute little Florida home. Stuffing it into our old beat up car, making it work. I hadn’t ever had a girlfriend so it was such a great feeling being out and about doing something like this. I felt like she was just so great, until our conversation on the way home with the Christmas tree top sticking out of the back window.

“Oh my gosh and we were at this party getting drunk and John brought some weed, so we went around the back and smoked it.”

I got a tingling sensation down my spine and wasn’t sure what to say. “Oh, you smoke now?”, was all I could think to say.

“I mean, not really. It’s not like I’m always like ‘hey all, let’s all go get high!’, but if someone has weed, I’ll smoke it. I mean, why not? Anyways, I just remember being in his neighbor’s yard afterwards and for some reason the lamp post with the wreath on it was so funny, we just could not stop laughing…” she trailed off into her story about being high at a party but I had lost any and all interest in the remainder of the story. She smoked pot and that was that. There was no going back. It was such a let down, I thought maybe we’d spark something when she texted me back a few hours ago, but at this point, I didn’t even care any more.

When she finished her story the car was silent for a minute until I got a text from Tyler.

“Whattup dude I just got off work, let’s rage”

“Hey Tyler just texted me, want him to come over too?” I asked hoping she’d say no, even though I wasn’t interested in her anymore now that I know she smokes weed.

“That sounds great! I haven’t seen him in forever. I think since Founders day in May? Wow it’s been too long. Yeah invite him over!”

“If by rage you mean coming over to Sallie’s house and maybe walking to the park or something, yes, let’s rage.” I responded.

---------

I was trying to brush off the fact that she started smoking and drinking, but it was so hard. I just couldn’t understand what any of that even leads to, how it can be any more ‘fun’ than anything else? I had so much fun surfing, and what do I get when it’s over? An excellent natural connection to the world, a great work out, and a clear head. What do you get when you’re done drinking and smoking weed? A hangover, less money, and the very real possibility of having made poor choices while you were under the influence. They call it dope for a reason. I want connections to be real, not hidden behind an inhibited prefrontal cortex thanks to alcohol. I wanted life to be real, genuine, authentic.

We set up the Christmas tree and jokingly took a picture of us holding hands in front of it. I got another tingling feeling when we held hands, similar to when she told me that she had smoked weed, but this one was a good tingling feeling. She didn’t have a lot of ornaments, so we put up what we had, then wrapped it with red streamer that we found in her mom’s room. As we were looking at the pictures on her phone, Tyler let himself in through the front door.

We sat on the couch for a few minutes while Tyler and Sallie caught up. We had all gone to a small high school together so she knew him well. He talked about how he hates community college, how he hates his job, and how he hates his parents who are cops. She talked about how she loves north Florida, loves her program, and loves weed now. I guess that was how she figured she could create a good middle ground between the two of them, talking about her love for weed right in front of me after I insinuated my disdain for it in the car without actually saying it out loud. Such is life.

After about a half hour and a few moments of silence that were slightly longer than comfortable, Tyler started complaining, “Dude I’m bored. Let’s go do something.”

“Oh my gosh, one time my friends and I were super high…” Sallie started, and I began to think that she smoked quite a bit more than she previously said, “…my friends and I went to the graveyard across the street from campus with an EVP reader we got from the lab and went ghost hunting. You guys want to go to the graveyard?”

Tyler jumped at the opportunity to wreak havoc in a public space at night. “Let’s do it!”, he bolted out the door without his keys.

“I guess I’m driving”, I said and walked out last.

“Tyler is talking right out of his ass right now”, I thought as he went on and on about how I never do anything fun and I just run and read like a “nerd”. I was trying to remember why I considered him my best friend as he started talking about all the crazy parties he goes to.

“Fireball is definitely my favorite. But that’s as far as I go into whiskeys. I much prefer just slamming an 18 pack of Miller with some bros,” Tyler bragged.

“Ugh, I had fireball one time at a party and I nearly gagged. I usually just mix rum with a LOT of coke so I don’t taste it,” She responded.

“If you don’t want to taste it, why do you even drink it?” I asked her.

Before she could answer, Tyler cut in “See, this is why I can’t talk about this kind of stuff openly with Paul, he just shoots me down all the time.”

“I don’t shoot you down all the time…wait, actually yeah I guess I do”, I fessed up.

“I already have one dad,” he started going off, “and then I’ve got Paul over here trying to be a second asshole father figure when I can make my own damn choices. If I want to split an 18 pack with my buddy then go drive around some back roads and pull some donuts, that’s my own damn business. I ain’t hurtin’ anyone am I?”

“Well if you’re driving drunk, then yes, you absolutely can hurt someone”, I shot back in a pompous manner.

“There he goes again. Jesus dude, you need to lighten up and have a beer or five.”

Sallie laughed and I felt embarrassed. Here I was trying to have a nice night with Sallie, then I offer to invite Tyler and he just comes in and shits all over me in front of her. I was getting really upset with him.

“Look man, I’m a camp counselor and I’m just trying to be a positive role model. I don’t see a reason not to be. Can we just drop it then?”

“Yes dad,” Tyler replied. I wasn’t amused.

We pulled into the graveyard but upon realizing how cold it was outside, especially for us Floridians, we decided to just drive around instead. I wanted to lighten up the situation a bit since it had gotten a bit tense driving over.

Speaking to Tyler, I said “hey, I dare you to run across the graveyard alone,” once we reached the far end of the two acre lot.

“What’s in it for me?”

“I don’t know. It’ll be funny and you’ll be cool,” I said laughing, though he seemed to take the statement at face value.

“Sure means a lot coming from you,” he shot back, “stop the car.”

I kicked the gear into neutral and applied the brake. He jumped out before the car even stopped rolling and started running towards the gates, slamming the door behind him, probably shaking the coffins six feet below us. We watched his dark figure flying between the graves, launching himself off of the small ones. I shook my head and started driving back towards the front.

“Sorry if I sound like a smug ass hole. It’s kind of hard to not sound like one with Tyler in this kind of mood.”

“Yeah, I don’t know…” Was all she had time to say before Tyler got back in.

I brought it up again in the car how I’m just trying to do the right thing, but I don’t mean to sound like a smug dick.

“Yeah, you are dude”, he said immediately, pouncing at the opportunity to cut me down. I didn’t know whether he was trying to impress Sallie that night, but I no longer wanted to be around anyone. I wanted to drop them off at Sallie’s house and go home. Just as I started to feel this way, he seemed to have a small tinge of guilt in his words.

“You know I just can’t help it, I’m a dick all the time too,”

I’ll take it.

He continued, “It’s like a perpetuating cycle. I’m a dick to people then they’re mean to me, then I have a reason to keep being a dick to them.” His little bit of self revelation didn’t really change my attitude about how I felt. I still wanted to go home.

Then his tone changed. “But really, I’m 19 years old. In the eyes of the law, I am a fucking adult. If I want to finish an 18-pack by myself, punch a dude in the face, and nail a random girl from the bar, who the fuck cares?”

I was cringing as he spoke, what he was saying didn’t even make chronological sense. How does one finish an 18-pack then go to a bar and pick up a girl when you’re only 19? He continued… “My parents think that just because they’re cops they can keep me on a leash goddamnit. They’re so annoying. I can’t wait to move out.

The rest of the car ride was filled with talk of the weather and classes we were all taking next semester. When we got back to the house, Tyler got out and went inside without saying a word, he walked by us as we approached the front door with his car keys and got into his car. He gave us a little salute and drove away.

“You outta here bro?” I asked, trying to deescalate the tension in their air before he left.

“Yeah. See ya.”

His music shook all the houses as he drove down the road and out of sight.

“What’s wrong with him?” Sallie asked uncomfortably as we walked inside and shut the door behind us. I could tell she wanted to be alone as much as I did after that little fiasco that I felt Tyler created out of thin air, so I just shrugged and said “No idea, I think I’m gonna head home though.”

I gave her a hug and went to walk out, but she stopped me at the door.

“Hey,”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t be a stranger. I’m here tomorrow morning before I leave to go back to school in the afternoon if you want to get together for coffee?”

“I have church,” I responded and walked out.

How was I supposed to respond? Do I just sit there and listen to him? I recognize him as my single best friend, but is a best friend supposed to just sit back and watch their best friend do all sorts of stupid shit and not say anything about it? Especially when he’s really only hurting himself. His grades could definitely be better, and I’d be hard pressed to believe that all his drinking is doing anything but hurting his school work. His parents are tight on him not because they’re cops, but because he can’t control himself. I said to him that night “be the change you want to see in the world” and he bombarded me with cynical remarks like “one person can’t change the fucking world”. I’ll say religious things to him and he just responds with things like “Jesus hasn’t helped me at all recently”. As fun as that kid is, I need better people in my life. I’m not learning ANYTHING from him besides how to not act. Jason, the pastor at the church I’ve been going to with my family, said that you need to surround yourself with people who are wiser than you or else you’ll never grow wiser yourself. I like to think that I’m the one that is wiser than Tyler and that I’m making a positive effect on his life even if he doesn’t acknowledge it. I try to show him the light of taking things easy, not getting so upset about things, and making better decisions, but he doesn’t seem to give a single care about wanting to learn any of that. Until he can figure that out though, I don’t think I want to hang out with him as much anymore.

I just feel like a smug prick when I surround myself with people who drink, smoke, have sex, and make poor decisions. Maybe I should find new friends, because I don’t want to sound like a smug prick, but it’s inevitable when I’m around these kinds of people. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone that I can be 100% myself and enjoy life with. I guess that’s what you’re supposed to look for in a wife.

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