The maniacal energy that lights the streets of last call passes before me in a slow-motion sway, and watching it all I can’t decide who I want to be. The giants, Polo shirted and short skirted, laughing and kissing and crying and shouting, entirely oblivious to anything but the immediate sensation before them, pinballing to wherever they can find another drink or a hand to hold, or the dwarves, contemplative and weary-eyed, walking home with backpacks and hands in pockets and slouched shoulders, taking notice of all the thoughtless smiles and catcalls, standing behind the ice cream counter fielding the boisterous and muddled orders of the drunken giants. I don’t think I want to be either.

Devin is out of town for the weekend, so I am invited back to the girls’ house where everyone has gathered on the porch, doling out cans and chain smoking and retelling Captain’s lore of semesters passed. Shivering in a black dress, Becky and I slip into the house so I can give her the Browns t-shirt underneath my button up. We haven’t spoken much in the last few months, but earlier in the evening chaos had led us to conversation over pitchers and eventually back here. She is leaving in the morning for Alabama, and I’m fairly certain that she’s never coming back.

“Y’know,” she says with a laugh as I peel it off and toss it to her. “If you put half as much into your life as you do your football team…”

“So why did we stop talking?” I ask abruptly, buttoning up.

“Because you don’t do anything to better yourself.” Her answer comes quicker than I’d have liked it to, sharp and void of any contemplation. “Do you know how many people would kill for your talent? And you piss it away…I mean, you’re wasting away here, Dan. These people don’t matter, and you know that. You’re better than all of this.”

I don’t think she’s wrong, but I think when she says ‘all of this’ she means a bar full of confused and fraudulent twenty-one year olds. And the way I see it, the world is mostly compromised of confused and fraudulent twenty-one year olds; as age and careers and families progress, we never shed the fears of confusion and alienation or the desire of freedom and possibility. We merely grow old and seek ways to keep preoccupied, narrowing in on arbitrary successes that distract from the failures of dreams and past.

Becky is beautiful, honest, and has a soul – a young, murky, unpredictable soul, the kind Kerouac talks about. Somewhere down the line I imagine she’ll stifle it for stability and the finer things in life, and I think I would do that if I could. But I can’t seem to find the temperament to believe in this world. If I heeded her advice and made an attempt at a future, it would likely end on a sour note. Pessimism is often confused with realism, and while I may be able to bang out a few pages of eloquent words every now and again, none of it is anything that would be profitable. And even if it was, and I’m just being self-defeating, a Pulitzer is as meaningless as a million dollars – neither would do much in the way of my view that we are all lost in search of something that doesn’t exist.

“It drives me crazy to watch you throw your life away. I mean, I had to stop talking to you because it just…you remind me of my mother. She just gets eaten up in this vicious cycle of depression and apathy…and it’s just too hard to watch.”

Her voice has taken on that of an impassioned plea, as her mother is one of the larger demons in her days, and I just want to hug her. Hug her for caring so much and for being honest and for having to deal with her mother or me or the rest of the animals. I want to hug her because we’re alive and we don’t know what to do.

Someone stumbles into the room looking for ping-pong balls, and we help to find them, sliding out to join the rest of them, the conversation hanging on agitating ellipses. I make the transition from confrontational honesty to casual beer talk, and as I listen to Joe slur the notable stories from the previous night’s bar shift for the third time, I think to myself that while she may be right that I’m too pessimistic to better myself, she’s casting too much doubt on these people.

She’s always been distrustful of the people around us, and finds solace in the thought of leaving this cesspool, though she doesn’t know that the whole fucking planet is a cesspool and the people who inhabit it, as sick and lost as they seem, are timid and kind at heart, no different than we are, merely swept up in the machine that whirs fluidly whether we fight or submit. We seek out the world when it is right in front of us.

But I see no difference in trying to ascend or toiling here, in finding a wife or taking home a stranger, in exercising regularly or letting my teeth fall out. I see neither path as righteous and both as futile. And that’s a terrible burden to bear when you see the earnest faces of those who care. The last conversation Becky and I had took place months ago, during a break from painting her room. She remarked at one point that when I spoke about life I talked as if I was dying, and in a way I think I am, because the way I feel is like a black cancer that spreads fiercely and rapidly, rotting away my soul. And every day that I wake up and walk through this world is another cigarette, a little too much time in the sun, a worsening of the situation. I see no difference in telling this to a shrink or drinking it off or surrendering. The people around me – the Beckys of the world – are the only thing that seem to make those thoughts particularly troubling to me.

As the beers dwindle, a few of us plot a trip out to an Indiana diner, and Becky is not in the fold as she must catch an early flight. Her ride starts the car parked out front as mine awaits out back. We exchange a knowing, brimming glance for awhile, as it’s one of those goodbyes in which both party is painfully aware that it’s a goodbye.

“Take care of yourself out there.”

“You, too,” she says, hugging me tightly and giving me one last soft look. “I believe in you.”

As I watch her dash off to the car, I wish I did, too.