Acela to the End of the Line — 3
Adapted from fiction I wrote when I was 18 (that I randomly found recently)
Click Here for Part 2
For most people I encountered in my life, memories resembled the ribcage of a freshly-branded cow. “Where were you on 9/11”, “Where were you when Michael Jackson died”, “Where were you during the 2016 election”. “Where were you when Kanye West grabbed the mike from Taylor Swift, and who did you think had more in common with the Hitler Youth”. (At Montessori school, stealing beers with my friends out of a fridge in Omaha, Nebraska, running around the morgue that was Manhattan, watching football at my friend Sam’s house up the cul-de-sac, and I had Kanye even then, respectively.) Most of life passed by for them, forgotten but for the branded imprints in the folds of their brain.
For me, memory worked as sort of a key-search. I couldn’t tell you what the capital of New Mexico is or when my uncle’s birth-date was of the top of my head. But if I saw a pack of Crest whitening strips in the checkout line at Costco, all of a sudden, memories flooded back of who I saw that last used them, what they used to do, and all sorts of anecdotes in-between. Minutes-long expositions followed about my research into the statistically invalid efficiency of flossing, whether cavities are a scam, and what 9 out of 10 dentists cannot possibly agree upon. Early on in my career, I remember that, instead of bonuses, our desk head brought in a box of Dunkin Donuts as congratulations for a quarter well done (the donut hole was supposed to represent the $0 our work had made over our revenue target.) 3 minutes later, I was telling the story about my first date in Manhattan, which started when I accidentally ran into her 2 hours prior to when we were supposed to meet up at the Union Square subway station. Figuring it was too early for drinks (not that that would stop me normally), we ran over to a coffee shop on Irving Place, in what would be the first and last coffee date I would ever go on:
On the way back to Washington Square Park from the coffee shop, after talking for a couple hours, we walked by a homeless man in a sleeping bag outside of Dunkin Donuts who was clearly masturbating. He stopped when we walked by, looked my date dead in the eye, and then restarted his activities. Naturally, she ran off, and I would learn the term “cock-blocking” as a result later that evening when talking to my next-door neighbor.
Heading back to my apartment after resulted in another night spent trying to write that turned into plying myself with alcohol, to the point where even verbalizing the thoughts I was frantically typing into my MacBook would have been impossible. For the average person, this would be incapacitating, but I was not a regular person. I was so fed up with my inability to figure out anything, from what would make me happy to the partial differentiation problems I was putting off. It was such a struggle figuring out if my true talent lied in the realm of sharing experiences with readers or figuring out why algebra worked or if there was even any talent at all. It ended up being that my writing frame of mind was when I wasn’t sober, and my math frame of mind being when I relatively was. Some people told me I was an alcoholic, that I couldn’t be productive in a sober state of mind, that it was a “warning sign”. I agreed with them to some extent, but I never acted upon it; the phrase “warning sign” became meaningless to me. What did they know about how I utilized my alcohol-influenced mindset? In my construction of reality, drunkenness wasn’t an undesirable state, but rather an alternative mindset to create in. Inhibitions were lowered. Clarity seemed higher. It seemed like an alright place to be for a majority of the day where I wasn’t working on technical material. I opened up my email account and slammed out a letter to a current crush, who I was hoping would turn into a future-ex down the line.
New Message: Sunday
< 3:20 AM> “Why don’t you see us together?? It just makes so much sense to me. I’m sure you notice how much time we spend together. At the very least, this makes you my statistically significant other, with regards to time. Shouldn’t we take the next step?”
What was the point of writing if you were perfectly content with your life? It seemed as if writing was a way to deal with some sort of issue with your own self, whether it be depression, dissatisfaction with yourself, or even (especially) the world itself. Writing, nay, art in general, couldn’t be borne from satisfaction or contentment. One needed some sort of reason, whether it be attempting to fix a problem within society or a problem with oneself, to justify the narcissistic feeling of one’s thoughts being applicable to society, and the even more narcissistic concept that people should seek out and follow those thoughts. I struggled with this notion greatly — how could I be in touch with today’s society if I spent so much time alone, trying to figure out how to right the wrongs of today’s world, trying to introduce depth, as I conceived it, to the social majority while trying to handle my own work? Why did I feel I had to do this while under the influence of substances, be it prescription psychotropics or ethyl alcohol? All my efforts did in an attempt to change the world was reinforce the fatalistic reality that I would really end up doing nothing meaningful at all.
Shortly after sending the email, I took a quick nap — surely missing brunch at Barbounia with my friends at 11 would have been suboptimal.
New Incoming Message: Sunday
<7:45 AM>
After I woke up and saw the notification, I put it out of my mind and went through my morning ritual — a shave, a shower, a spritz of Jazz Club cologne, combing my hair with Gatsby’s Moving Rubber, and applying aftershave with little to no alcohol (as it dries your skin out.) It certainly wouldn’t do to emotionally spiral before my first 4 mimosas. I made my way over to the Gramercy-area restaurant, surreptitiously avoiding the route that passed by the coffee place from the night prior. After reluctantly ordering my mandatory entree and settling into my drinks, I took a look at the message she had sent me earlier that morning, probably before she went to fucking SoulCycle or something.
“Hey. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said last night. The thing is, I’m really worried that our friendship will change, and it’s like none I’ve ever had and I’m afraid it’s gonna get really weird or something. I’m so afraid of it changing. I know it really sucks to say this but I’m too happy and grateful for how things are rather than pushing it to see where it’ll go… You have no idea how bad I feel saying this, because I know it probably took so much for you to send that email, but I just don’t know yet and I think it’s better to be honest about it even thought it’s hard and uncomfortable.
After all, love isn’t practical… Why do you think every single thing in your life needs to follow a logical, statistically concrete outcome in some way? Life isn’t predictable because the concept of “life” is all about the unpredictability. You can’t sit in your room, get drunk, work out what’s going to happen as a result of your actions, and pretend you understand people’s emotions. You need to stop drinking and grow up.”
All in all, not a bad outcome from popping off after half a fifth of Smirnoff shittily mixed with lukewarm Mountain Dew at 3 in the morning. (This was before my banking days, where the “model” was excel and the “bottle” was what I could buy from the Indian liquor store owner who wouldn’t check my ID too closely.) Tuning out from the conversation about how far up the ladder you had to be before you could wear pinstripe suits or Ferragamo loafers (VP and MD are the correct answers, btw), I sat down and typed out a response before blocking the address from emailing me again:
What I’m struggling to accept is that, in some ways, I remain startlingly childlike, perpetuating the “only child” stereotype, perhaps, miserably walling up my own traits in my head because such a characteristic could be deemed unattractive. When I truly attempt to understand what you mean when you tell me to grow up, and force myself to refrain from marking it down to another cliché rejection, I still maintain that, yes, you made the wrong call, but wrong isn’t absolute. It’s a fair point in that it’s not a lack of intelligence that keeps me behind; it’s my tendency to compare myself to everyone but myself. Does the heroin addict ever see himself as such, or is he just concerned with getting to the next needle? Likewise, could I have ever seen myself as a failure when what I am really is just me? I don’t know where I can go with this, but this failure is hopefully the beginning of an acceptance that disagreement is not an insult to my intelligence but rather an outsider’s way of building me up, that could only be thought of as the first step to happiness.
After hearing all of this, my MD decided to start paying me bonuses to not show up at team bonding events. Sometimes stories do have happy endings.