Movies Only Make Me Sad Wednesday, Nov 26 2008 

This is What I Settled For , , , , , nickjkirincic 03:27

It’s a little over five years ago, and I find myself in a Rockefeller Center green room, eating shitty Two Boots pizza, a stack of nine boxes on the table in front of me. On the couch across it, the White Stripes sit idly in between rehearsals, taking careful bites in mind of their pristine outfits. Even the mammoth bodyguard standing in the corner has the bowler hat and the whole red-and-black get-up. The rest of the civilian-clad mill around, jawing away at the rubbery, garlic-heavy slices while watching the rehearsal feed or making casual conversation. Maker’s Mark and Red Bull are making the rounds, but those drinking only seem to be doing so to pass away the boredom.

There is nothing particularly compelling about this event. The entire thing is constructed. They’re dressed for the part, having rehearsed the evening’s lines, and I’m pretending that their presence and rememberance of my name isn’t something I’m continually aware of. We eat pizza, and talk about the stern security guard who always makes you fish out your pass in the hallway, and get whisked away to this or that, but it’s merely a handful of detached people killing the time before work is over. All of it’s appeal lies in the sensationalism of taking part in an act the rest of the world envies. Sitting in a green room and talking with the White Stripes carries no more significance than the stunted conversations I have with the appealing blonde I impress with the recantation of this event. Jack White seems no more comfortable than her, putting on a show to anyone who will listen.

It sounds ridiculously trite and self-assuring, but off of the top of my head I can think of about a half dozen experiences in the last blurry, drunken, pain-addled year that blow that one and any other set of circumstances designated as cool or glamorous out of the water. Working a busy dinner rush with Nick; Valerie, the queen of smiles and positivity, hugging me in a rainy alley as I bawled away my pent up apathy; Seth revealing himself inch-by-inch over living room bowls and barroom beers; Kevin and I frittering away hours discussing philosophical ideals that are thinly veiled meatphors for our own lives; Amber confiding in me over paragraph-long drunken IM’s.

These things are more important, more enriching and, despite the eyes of the world, far more appealing. Because they are real. We give mere slivers of ourselves to the world – sometimes it’s pre-mediated, and sometimes it’s a slip-up. But that fearful, alienated, confused self – the one we mask from the world, the one that comes out after one too many beers or lonely nights – this is what’s worth one’s time. When someone gives themselves a piece of you, do not run from it, no matter how pitiful or hideous; we are all pitiful and hideous on the inside. To embrace and understand that is to hope to correct it.

Too often we place too much value in the made-up stars who are dressed to kill (literally or metaphorically). Tears are just as sexy as eyeliner. Uncertainty is as attractive as confidence. We need to shake the need to reach the desires laid out for us by our equally clueless peers and start taking inventory of what really matters to us. We avoid what makes us happy to please a world that’s simply mad. Jack White never held me in the rain. Meg White never called me out on my shortcomings. Our interaction was no different than one of a friend of a friend visiting for an extended weekend. But I mention them and I immediately become interesting.

If I tell someone that I’m disillusioned with the world, that I don’t believe in the machinations of our society and want to escape it, they shrink away in fear. If I tell them I used to occasionally drank with random celebrities, they immediately find themselves interested in my words. I’ve rolled out the meaningless celebrity antecdotes for years and years, until it’s long lost it’s interest to me, and hide so much of what truly matters and what really happened. And none of these words will stop myself or others from continuing on in the same manner.

We are all lost.

 

The Wisecracks Won’t Make You More Stable Sunday, Nov 16 2008 

Love and the Lack of It and This is What I Settled For , , , , , nickjkirincic 02:01

I awake to a combination of nausea and hunger in a room that appears to have been cultivated not from time or character, but rather from the single swipe of a credit card – a mash of silver and black sleekness prepacked to give one an aura of sophisticated adulthood. This has become a sacred moment for me, this initial groggy amnesia that prevents me from knowing exactly who or where I am and how I got there. Searching for evidence of the previous night, I only find the wrinkled clothes still on my body; there are no condom wrappers on the nightstand, no lifeless stranger next to me. I examine the black frames on the walls that encase what appear to be old college roommates, photos that will eventually find their way into a dusty tomb of a storage closet in a few years, provided that life works out. I barely recognize one of them, the one who appears in almost all of them, who I conclude must be the one watching the television I can faintly hear from outside the room.

She has chin length chestnut hair, framing a Roman nose studded with a zirconia most likely garnered on a whim. Two tattoos mark her creamy skin, a tired tribal armband on her left bicep and what appears to be an eagle/falcon on the other. I’d bet money I don’t have that there’s another one somewhere else, probably the first ink she got done, well hidden from authority. Things begin to return to me – Cleveland, Jack, whiskey, his ‘tasty redhead thing’ and her roommate, the one who languidly runs a finger through a river of hair as she sits on the couch before me.

“Where’s Jack?”

“He had to run,” she says, eyes fixed on Regis Philbin’s manic yet folksy ramblings, her elbow resting on an angled knee. “I told him I could give you a lift.”

“Wonderful.”

“Coffee’s next to the fridge, cream and sugar in the skinny cabinet above it,” she says with a droning familiarity. “Also…Jack wanted me to tell you to ‘keep your tool cool’.”

“Sounds about right,” I mutter as she gets up and trudges over to the kitchen table.

“Do you remember my name?”

“No,” I say, taking the first sip that singes my upper lip. “Sorry.”

“Julie. You drink your coffee black…impressive.”

“What the hell is so impressive about it outside of superficial indicators?”

“I dunno,” she says. There is something morbidly appealing about taking these sorts of women down a peg, the faux-punk type that pretend to be bitchy and carefree and something every man aspires to be with. I want to shake the false confidence out of the world around me. No one is buying your act. They’re merely keeping quiet to be polite.

“So…did we…”

“Noooo,” she says, darting her eyes to the floor and leaving her lips puckering in the pronouncement of the elongated ‘o’. “You didn’t seem particularly up to it.”

“Like lack of an erection or apathy?”

“We never got to the erection part…so I’d say the latter.”

“Right,” I say, nodding my head. “So…would we have?” She erupts in cackling laughter.

“You wish.”

“No, I don’t, really…just curious. I’ve been baffled lately as to why any self-respecting woman would take a drunken mess like me home…reinforces my beliefs on sex.”

“Which are?”

“We should either fuck everyone we see or fuck next to no one.”

“Nice belief system.” She curls her knees under her chin and rest her head on them. “I don’t think love and fucking should mix.”

“Why? Because someone broke your heart?”

“My heart can’t be broken…love is bullshit.” She says it sharply, the nerve having been properly hit.

I don’t want to be here, watching this poor, unsure stranger attempt to project her fantasy-self. There was a time when I would feel this way due to a desire to be in the presence of a different, more familiar stranger, one from the past or my mind, but now it just saddens me because while I don’t want to be here, I can’t think of anywhere else I want to be.

“Get real with yourself,” I say with a nose laugh. “We’re conditioned to want to believe otherwise. We pretend like we don’t because we want to give the illusion that we’re free and to shore ourselves up for failure.”

“You are just like Jack,” she says with a laugh. The comparison jolts me, and the thought occurs that perhaps I’m taking it out on her because I see myself.

“I’m just saying…no one who truly believes that love is bullshit watches Regis.”

“Coming from the unemployed guy who threw up on my walkway last night, I’ll take that as gospel.”

“Believe it, sister.” I raise my eyebrows and crack a smile. Dance, monkey, dance.

“You’re a lot wittier when you’re sober.”

“Direct result of being much more afraid.”

There’s all sorts of ways for our type to express biting and sarcastic views on our sorrow, and we often pat ourselves on the back for the clever but cowardly cat-and-mouse dialogue we construct. But right now I feel like I’d rather just cry into my coffee. That would seem much less sad than this.

“Would you like some breakfast?”

“I left the door with twenty bucks last night and I’m afraid it ended up on your walkway.”

“I can make it here.” She looks like the type who eats out constantly – hungover breakfasts, lunch plans and sushi dinners with suitors, gay friends, girlfriends, etc. I imagine the venture would probably end in porous smoke and burnt eggs, something that I would’ve found deliriously endearing four years ago.

“Think I’m going to have to pass,” I say, dumping the dregs of my coffeecup down the drain. “Whiskey doesn’t sit well with me…thank you, though.”

“Well, do you have plans? We could see a movie or wander around.” This is heartbreaking.

“Uh…to be honest I think I’ll just take you up on the ride home. It has nothing to do with you…I actually enjoy our conversation, and appreciate your hospitality. I just, uh…I’m not going to pretend that I have plans. I’m just in a place where I’d prefer being alone. I’m kind of a wreck.”

“Fair enough.” I’m not sure if her nodding is a sign of understanding or a concurrence that I’m likely insane. “Give me a few minutes to change and we can go.”

The ride home is mostly silent, and I want to apologize for who I am, but I merely nod my head with the beat of the music.

 

Hope is Just For Children Wednesday, Nov 12 2008 

This is What I Settled For , , , , , nickjkirincic 22:07

Jack pulls up in a silver Eclipse, wearing a pointy-collared black shirt unbuttoned enough to expose a loose leather necklace. His eyes are hidden behind sunglasses despite the overcast sky, a cigarette clenched between his grin. He’s let his Beatle mop grow from a circa 1964 to more of a ‘66, and a few faint lines have begun to creep into his peach face.

“Jesus, you look like hell,” he says with a laugh as I climb into the passenger seat, running his hand over my hair and shoving the side of my head. “What’s new, asshole?”

“New York, New Jersey, New Mexico,” I mutter, Jack chiming in with me on ‘New Mexico’. He whips the car out of the driveway with more flash than necessary and peels down the street, slinking down into his seat, cigarette pointed upwards, slapping the steering wheel along with Wilco.

“So what’s been up, man?” he asks, flicking the half-smoked cigarette out the window and fishing a joint from the center console without looking off the road. “Last I saw you were knocking back mimosas with garish fags and picking up lit girls.” I wonder how much time he put into crafting that line on the way here.

“Not much…living in Kentucky.”

“The fuck’s in Kentucky?”

“Couple of friends…oblivion.”

“How long you back in town for?” This is why I called Jack. Some would ignore my response, some would laugh it off, and some would press further, all out of the feeling of confusion and discomfort. Jack understands exactly what I mean.

“A few days.”

Jack sparks the joint with a dull fizzle and sucks the initial puff of smoke back into his throat, bobbing his head with the rapid drumbeat as he exhales. The car engine roars as he needlessly kicks it up about ten m.p.h.

“I’ve got a tasty redhead thing going on…I could bestow a friend upon you if you’re free tonight.”

“I’m in no shape to chase tail.”

“Well, I can see that,” he quips, giving pause for appreciation, desperate for a camera to be on him. “You look like a refugee.”

“And you look like a thirty year old desperate for pussy.”

We cruise an aimless square of back roads, choking down the citrus-tinged joint while Jack tells stories from his band’s latest tour. Each line has been meticulously crafted, honed to pitch perfection after several nights out and attempts to get laid. I can never tell whether he thinks I buy the act or that he just can’t break from character.

We end up in a frigid sports bar with a high ceiling, empty save for a handful of midday drunks and a few suits finishing up lunch. Jack buys a round of whiskey without consultation, raising his eyebrows towards one of the suits as if to taunt him for his misfortune or remind him of what he’s foregone.

“To fuck ups like us,” he says, loud enough to be heard. Our glasses clink and I curl my toes to absorb the sting of the whiskey. Without the sunglasses, I can see the fear and doubt in his eyes. He suppresses a wince and breathes out before sipping his beer, nodding to himself as if ready to go onstage.

“C’mon, man, let me get you laid,” he says, slapping my shoulder and motioning for us to grab a table.  “The band’s doing real well and you look like you could use it.”

“No more than I could use this,” I mutter, tapping the empty shot glass against the bar. We grab our beers and step away from the zombies lined up like ducks in a row watching the same Brett Favre highlights they gazed at twenty minutes go.

“Break up with a girl or something?” he asks as we slide into a corner booth.

“Nah…just general despondency.”

“And you plan to remedy that with abstinence?”

“I’m just not in the mood to try to manipulate a stranger.”

“They’re all strangers. Guys like us, man…we’re not built for any sustaining relationships…we’re too lost in our own heads for that. Shit, it’s lonely, and it’s empty…but it’s going to be that way for guys like us. Always. It’s lonely either way…might as well get fucked up, quote some Milton or talk about the Shins, do whatever it is you do to get your dick wet.”

“That sounds comforting.”

“Comfort is for the naïve.” This is why I called Jack. I want someone to snap me out of this, but I want that person to also recognize that everything is chaos and meaningless.

“This must be one hell of a bender,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Almost a year now…barely remember half of it anymore.”

“Just booze?”

“Mostly.”

“You need help?”

“Probably.”

“Yeah,” he whispers wearily, running his fingers through his hair. “Me, too.”

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others,” I offer up after a lengthy silence.

“You still believe that?”

“I think so…pretty sure you do, too.”

“Then why do we find ourselves here…two arrogant pricks sitting around getting loaded on a Tuesday?”

“Because I don’t think we trust the others…or we think they’re oblivious.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Mahatma,” he says, grabbing a cigarette from his breast pocket as he rises from his seat. “I’m going to grab a smoke, knock back another beer or two and then go manipulate a pretty face dumb enough to fall for my stumbling act. You’re more than welcome to join me. It’s not going to make you feel any better, but neither is any of this.”

This is why I called Jack.

 

Nobody Wants to Be No One’s Lover Thursday, Nov 6 2008 

Captain's and This is What I Settled For , , , , nickjkirincic 02:43

Her thighs constrict around me, both of us panting like dogs, and she runs her fingers along the sides of my head, leaving me looking like Einstein, but does not seem to notice. Her eyes are closed, elsewhere, nowhere if I’m doing this right. But I remain here. Nothing takes me away from here. This, right here, is the end sum. This is the basis of it all – the happy ending to love stories, the reason we went out to the bar, why we got jobs and houses and spouses, the reason we put up with awkwardness and odd smells and feverish annoyances and missed opportunities. This -hips grooving to an animal-like rhythm, eyes rolled back and faces contorted - is what we structured the rest of it around. This is supposed to mean something to me – love, fun, acceptance, ego – but it does not. It’s merely a porterhouse steak when starving, although one must spend much more time, money, thought and soul on this simple pleasure.

Whether in heat or in love, the whole appeal to this act is that it removes one completely from anything else but the sensations presently before them. When this Mount Olympus of pleasureable distraction has failed me, what remains? None of it seems to appeal any longer, at least not under the pretenses one must agree to. Half the time I’m lucky if I can coax myself into the mood.

Normally I’m willing to put up with the numerous conflicts of interest, but that was before this act became nothing more than a primal way to feel more lament. When I look up at this girl, I am thinking of the books read by another girl four years in my past. I am thinking of Oxford, of my friends there. As she moans untintelligibly, I wonder why I am no longer there, why I no longer talk to them.

These are the same thoughts that cloud my mind whether I’m looking up at a girl or over at an X-Files rerun or down into a pint. I see no distractions from the fact that life is a distraction. The increasing restraint of self coupled with the cumulating disappointments, missed connections and failures one experiences in life require a great deal of time looking away. Without distraction, the world around us seems a very dark and scary place with very little purpose.

All I’ve wanted for the last four years is distraction, and Captain’s was the perfect place for it. Sling a few drinks to cover the bills and the bar tab, and knock reality into oblivion with people that I had come to love dearly. Sleep with women I care about, but do not venture into commitment. I was content. I trusted in the earnesty and my friendships and believed in the honesty and warmth of the situation. I believed in little else, and that was fine with me. I was looking for distraction, not ascension.

The one place I had found in four years that contained elements of true love and contentment were taken away from me in a storm of anger and unrest, and I can’t seem to find a way to forget that. Instead I seek the same fruitless distractions I always have – sex, alcohol, conversation – although now without the love and honesty. For better or worse, I left Captain’s thinking that love and honesty have no practical purpose and provide no defense from the grueling machine of society. Perhaps I merely left my heart there.

Empty distractions come exactly as advertised. They are so simple to do because we know the pain that’s coming. It’s static, and while we’re not always ready for it, in the end we know it will quickly subside. Not only that, but it is pain that can only be inflicted by the self. The injustices we commit against ourselves are infinitely easier to swallow than the what others commit against us. The hollow distraction is manageable; once we begin to care and choose distractions of the heart is when we find ourselves overwhelmed. This is exactly the type of thinking that Captain’s had helped to eliminate from my days. The machine always wins.

It’s best just to crack a beer and laugh it off. Try not to think so much. Don’t give too much of yourself away. Never tell someone you love that you do unless it is a safe and calculated risk. Try not to think so much. Do not expect better conditions, but rather adapt to what’s in front of you. Never let yourself appear vulnerable, unless it’s to your benefit. Try not to think so much. I would like to pretend that these aren’t the easiest ways to live in this society without frightened bewilderment.

I walk home amongst the conversation of crickets, as chilled and lonely as I’d braced myself to be. It feels as if the alcohol has thinned my blood into Kool-Aid, and I’m so cockeyed that I take a wrong turn or two before stumbling into the house and the comfort of my bed. If I presented myself to the world as a happy person, this sort of behavior would be laughed about.

 

Ashamed of the Story I Told Tuesday, Nov 4 2008 

This is What I Settled For , , , , nickjkirincic 16:25

Four years ago I was as doe-eyed as the rest of them. Indignant with the rich, lying cocksucker who had swindled millions into believing in him, I joined the ranks of millions duped into believing another rich, lying, cocksucker who represented a different animal logo. I took the right that so many remind me is a priviledge and a duty, and I cast that ballot of utter importance in the name of a man named John Kerry, a personality-free douchebag who stood for nothing I believed. I lost a lot of hope after that. More than one should from the shell game of the influential and wealthy. Four years later, watching them all desperately hope in the name of a man who does not come close to representing what they truly believe, it feels like the dramatic irony of a quarterback who has no idea that a linebacker is barrelling down his blind side.

To cast hope in the direction of either one of these frontrunners is to do what we all must to function in this society – look the other way at all the wrong. The people asking for your vote on the T.V. screens are as fake as Milli Vanilli. We all know this, and we all accept it. The reason we advocate one or the other is based on vague notions of morality that we are more than ready to abandon or diminish at the prospect of lessening it’s counterview. Like everything around us, in our heart of hearts we recognize that it’s all a sham. But we willingly play along because if we don’t we find ourselves left in the cold. A third party vote, a withdrawl in disgust, is never championed and often frowned upon.

We choose presidents and lover and jobs and social circles based on muted, tip-of-the-iceberg feelings that rarely represent who we are and what we feel. But to abandon such as system? Unthinkable. That is to go it alone, to vote for Nader, to essentially give up. The society and culture is burrowed within you – Democrats, Republicans, drinks, coffeehouses, people, music, conversation, sex, iPods. Those who reject the entire system are either alienated, laughed at, felt sorry for or scorned. If their voice happens to catch with the wind they are more often than not killed.

I am on the brink of society, and to join it would be to weed myself out, to go along despite reservations. To leave it would be a leap into the abyss, void of promise or of hope, only consciousness and solitude. I think falling in love is nothing but a delicious mistake, and that getting married is a fatal one. Even a fuck is rarely void of feelings of guilt or misguided fantasy. I see absolutely no reason to bring a child into this world, and I’m not one for career aspirations. My friendships as of late have been something that I had placed worth in, but many seem to have been a product of influence, circumstance and proximity. All of my avenues of faith have been exhausted. I am merely here. I wake. I sleep. The bits in between have worn thin on me. I often dull them with alcohol or reruns or any number of distracting hobbies. No matter how one bides their time, it’s chaos and propoganda. When I look around me I see a society slaving their lives away doing menial tasks they despise in order to gain a precious amount of free time they seem to do everything they can to try and get rid of.

Why does it seems so impossible and fruitless to explain that I don’t want to join the automated machine to the people around me who seem to exhibit the same muted reservations?

 

Kissing Just For Practice Saturday, Nov 1 2008 

Love and the Lack of It , , , , , nickjkirincic 08:07

The instinct of imitation and the absence of courage governs the social societies of Oxford. Take your pick from a wide array of approaches to attaining self-esteem and attention/acceptance — fuck a bottle blonde, wear a fishnet dress, join a fraternity/sorority, learn to play a Deep Blue Something cover, buy a trendy windbreaker, give some head, play along, date someone, break up with someone, fuck that bitch, screw him, do another shot. And in six years there, I’ve come to believe that almost every single one of those angles all funnel into the clearest objective — validation through having the opposite sex want to fuck you and your tribe being jealous of it.

We aim low, without the slightest hint of subtlety. The same gender that sees the word ‘whore’ as the ultimate insult parades around in practical nudity, selling their bodies as the pay-off aspect to a crowd of suitors. The gender that claims simplicity and views it’s counterpart with the most severe distrust shoves alcohol down their throats and pitches their A-List material in order to con them back to their apartment. And they both do it to impress their own gender. To fuck is to triumph.

And further mucking up this already unhealthy scheme is the aspect of Love. We want to disperse our romantic notions onto those who we show skin or exhibit casual indifference to as a lure. As a result the simplest things become the stickiest of situations; phone calls not recieved or conversations with a member of your gender incite panic, all because in our deepest of thoughts we know that it is all a sham. She’s aware that the lack of clothes and suggestions of playful but calculated promiscuity is what brought him in, and this makes her begin to wonder if the same could pull them away. He’s aware that his carefully chosen words and gestures he used that first night were a pitch she bit on, and he knows ten friends with better approaches. We all eventually question how we got there in the first place, which is a death sentence.

The magic powder on this bubbling cauldron is the mass consumption of alcohol and drugs. When this game began, most of the boys were intimidated by beautiful and seemingly confident girls. Most of the girls had yet to reconcile sex with the ingrained moral and spiritual preconceptions. Rather than address any of this, we all decided to throw back an excessive amount of liquor to qwell the fears that occur in the dark when we take off our clothes.

We wonder if they would want to be with us if we were physically unattractive or wealthy, and we do it because our initial connection and the jungle we’ve had to chop through before it indicates that we might not. There’s something at the core of us that transcends that, but we must face the reality before us. The bright things she says or the caring gestures he makes would have never come to fruition if it weren’t for our ability to attract through cheap pretenses in the first place.

One begins to wonder how love and honest affection can exist anywhere in this Mexican stand-off, and the result is that no one lowers their aimed guns. We use each other as pawns, seeking out a dispersion for affection, a sense of self-esteem, a distraction from another, acceptance from peers. Sooner or later the line between our roles and the real life actors who play them begin to blur. A paranoia sets in that causes us to question the object of our affection as well as our reasons behind it, and at the same time somehow causes us to retreat into the very same behaviors that led to the doubt in the first place.

In order to get closer to anyone else we must run from ourselves. It would be so simple if the heart weren’t attached.

 

I Never Thought Tommorrow Would Be So Strange Saturday, Nov 1 2008 

This is What I Settled For , , , , , nickjkirincic 00:15

It’s a cloudless Halloween afternoon, seventy-something, the kind of day Nature teases you with after showing you a week or so of the colder side to come. Various rusted vans and trucks plastered with faded bumper stickers promoting a love of the United States and the University of Kentucky are strewn across the front lawns of the cramped houses. The furniture on the small patios is often all shades of gaudiness – bright pastels standing out amongst lawn jockeys and cardboard curly red-haired pigs in bonnets picking flowers.

One of the trucks I pass has the legion Kentucky logo, but above it, in big monogrammed letters, reads ‘In Memory of Kenneth G. Avery 1988-2004′. It’s parked in front of a small white house with a wood-fenced patio and forest green shutters. This house doesn’t contain the various ‘Beware of Dog’ signs, smiley face stickers, weight sets, brick piles, etc. It’s entirely unadorned, save for a large, drooping American flag and two bicycles neatly resting against the patio railing. It’s lack of loud tackiness seems sad amongst it’s neighbors.

I can’t help but think that the lives of those two bicycle owners ended as they knew it in 2004. I know we don’t like to think like that; I know you wish to fight me on that assertion. But based on wild speculation I get the idea that the fifteen year old who is immortalized on their truck window meant everything to them. I bet he crosses their mind for a staggering presence of the day. The dinner table, trips to the grocery store, church festivals, dozing off to sleep, the passing of a schoolbus. And Halloween.

The house is just around the corner from mine, on the side of the street I rarely venture down. It’s suprising how much of our own backyards are left unexplored. Who was Kenneth G. Avery? What happened to him? I continue to ask myself this long after I’ve returned home, and eventually enter his name, birth and death year into a search engine. When nothing comes up, I add ‘Lexington, KY’. Still nothing.

I would like to say that I found answer to the questions so I could give a meloncholy rant about how Andy Warhol’s proclamation came true, only in the form of a lonely kid looking up your obituary or forty-seven people looking at your website. But there is nothing. He doesn’t even exist on Google. His fifteen minutes of fame from my lens comes from a monogrammed bumper sticker. The life, times and aftermath of Kenneth G. Avery remain a mystery to me.

I suppose I could ask my neighbors. As awkward as that sounds, perhaps that’s what one would do in a perfect world. They would have someone who is interested in their pain. Perhaps they would take interest in mine. Sometimes I think that’s all we want; it’s rather easy to find those who take interest in our pleasures. Either way, maybe we’d both have one more person to talk to in this world. This is how the lonely and broken daydream – the underlying assumption that despite our differences, we all seek the same thing at our core, and perhaps if we all said hello and talked honestly for a bit, we might be better off.