Essays on Modern Society

the term modern does not denote exclusivity

A short spout of the pen, for your discretion, whether it be pleasure, pain, or just in vain... p.s. no apologies      I left Frenchman and meandered down to R bar on Royal to escape the heat. A sporadically ideal spot for me, the R bar grew on me as somewhere I could lay under the radar and virtually disappear to avoid the random rat runners and insanity of my daily unwarranted thoughts which tactfully stained my psyche. I dawdled apathetically onto a stray stool like a mermaid laid out on a sun stained rock, and ordered the daily special. A shot of Jameson and a piss warm high life, I couldn’t imagine myself any less than content. The thick syrupy taste of Jameson reminded me of my hangover from last night, but that constant reminder is just what I needed to smile at the shittier things in life. I never had the need to give myself the same cliché rundown of how you can't have pleasure without pain; somehow I just innately understood how hangovers are a good thing. They served as an everyday flag that I still feel. This had somehow became a rare occurrence, and a pivotal reason why I constantly found myself doing things I thought only manics were capable of.
When I was in high school I obsessively read books on serial killers and idiot savant artists, this being where I discovered the myriad number of similarities between the two. It may seem strange, or even unsettling, but for me there has always been something bittersweet and romantic about serial killers. I think for the most part they are misdiagnosed as geniuses, for being able to think and act so methodically as well as successfully dodge the law, at least for longer periods of time than your average felon. Adversely the truth is they simply lack specific emotional capacities which typically lead to the demise of normal functioning human beings who commit heinous crimes. From what I understand there is nothing pleasant about being a genius. Whether plagued by their own afflictions, suffering from seeing too far, or pathetically socially inept, it seems these people dubbed as “special” are just that, and not in the in the way that your mom tells you before your first day of kindergarten. Then of course there exists the so called "genius" who doesn’t exist on a logically incomprehensible level, but rather just smarter by virtue of hard work, i.e. the majority of ivy league schoolers, who outcast themselves by being smug, condescending, and precocious. As far as they are concerned, their suffering, which usually isn't apparent until their twilight years, is something I take no sympathy in. In fact, as sinister as this may sound, it can and often does make us lazier less driven individuals sleep easier at night, or at least lie sleepless in bed with a slightly heightened sense of satisfaction.
     After my first beer, I was considering heading back home to see if my neighbor was home, who usually made for good mid afternoon conversation, mindless enough to keep me entertained, and barely enthralling enough to keep my mind off the fact that I eventually had to get a real job until the sun went down and I could start drinking heavily again guilt free. Nonetheless in this town it was rare to find yourself feeling guilty about drinking. There was always somewhere to go and someone to drink with, regardless of the hour, your state of mind, or most importantly, your familiarity with the environment. New Orleans has an eerily comforting way of making you feel like you’re at home, whether you were in a college bar watching women's softball on ESPN 2 with sexually insecure frat boys, or smoking crack under a bridge below the poverty line. That being said, it was a no brainer for me to order another beer and chat with the junky sitting next to me at the bar. I could immediately peg him as a junk fiend as he was uncomfortably slugging doubles of ten high whiskey, and awkwardly waiting for an opportune moment to start harassing me. Nonetheless, he looked interesting enough so I indulged him.
     "Where's dem cute little babies always be hanging on you?" Awkwardly leaning close to me as he asked.
     "Who me? Nah, ya crazy, man. I know a couple of girls, but they ain't nothing cute about 'em." I knew he was talking about me, but considering I haven't exactly been known to keep my composure when I'm out, particularly when women are present, I preferred to remain anonymous. And although he was nothing but a junky, for some inexplicable reason I never wanted him or anyone else to know who I really was. In the bigger scheme my problem with women is I get nervous about scaring them off with my random psychotic hypothetical and delusional constant questions, so my attempts to drink those delusions away result in my extreme intoxication, which eventually does send them off. Or I end up purposely scaring them off by my own accord, not wanting a girl around who is stupid enough to be intrigued by my outlandish and socially unacceptable approach to casual late night conversation. This part is easy, and can often be quite fun, my signature move being my talk about the aesthetics of knifes penetrating the skin, or better yet how grotesquely obese my daughter is, and how beautiful she is because of that. Anyway, I decided to chat it up with the raspy walking corpse next to me and have another drink, with the hopes that he had something fun in his pocket which was more appropriate to fit my needs. I knew he didn't have any dope, otherwise he wouldn't be here harassing randoms like me, and I knew he wasn't walking around empty handed; otherwise he would be out on the streets scrounging for something. So knowing I had nothing to lose asking an obvious fiend what he had to share, I initiated what he really wanted to talk about in the first place.
     "So where's the fun around here?" My inquiry made his eyes light up immediately, not expecting the topic to come up so abruptly. I knew I had to have a reason why he would share with me, but the last thing I wanted to do is lead him to believe that I had any kind of connections, otherwise I would have a stray dog on my hands, following me around until I inevitably had to kick him in the gut so he wouldn't knew where I lived. Before he responded, he looked around, as any true junky would, not even considering where we were, and that there wasn't a chance in hell anyone we would have to worry about would be at R bar at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday. He leaned in again,
     "I got a bit a codeine, but nothing strong, who got the brown?"
     "Aw man, I can't fuck with that brown anymore, I lost custody of my son because of that shit, but what you want for a couple of those codeines?" I was well versed in dealing with true crack heads, thanks to my fucking dead best friend from high school, who took a dive well off the deep end not longer than a year before. You had to prove your knowledge, instill their trust, and not let them think you were capable of getting what they really wanted, all while convincing them to share with you. In this case I was lucky because he was jonesing, and too antsy to sit there scratching his dried up neck and chest with no one to talk to, so he sold me eight pills for eight bucks. Knowing my tolerance, and my desire to be content doing absolutely nothing, I took all eight at once, and invited Mickey to join me while I dumped five bucks into a video poker machine.
It wasn’t but forty-five minutes later I found myself back on the street, walking back home, not agitated, but bored, once again accompanied with that void of feeling. Passing a stoop jutting out into the sidewalk I noticed a screwdriver, with a small handle, but abnormally long shaft. I couldn’t tell you why now but I nabbed it as if were an arbitrary branch from a tree and began scraping it against random weathered brick walls as I walked. I started thinking about serial killers again. What exactly would you say with your dying breath? I continued to scrape the screwdriver, periodically blowing on the tip, noticing the bright glare reflecting from the sun. Approaching my house, I could see my neighbor on his porch, drinking ice tea and smoking a cigarette. Still scraping and honing my new screwdriver, I noticed it was now pretty fucking sharp.
     “Look at that son of a bitch,” I told myself aloud. I wondered what he might say with his last dying breath, I doubt it would be anything very interesting.