No Coasting on The Block
This is the coolest picture I have ever seen and I've seen at least three pictures.
The cursor blinked steadily and he stared at it. Through it. Into it.
Black and thin and… unconcerned.
Frustration and the ghost of depression made it easy to anthropomorphize any and everything.
The silent, cold (cold as in “unemotional” and “detached”) refrigerator, staring him down, taunting him to eat. ”Come on, fatty, just one more pudding cup!” His dog, who, by refusing to sit still and demanding constant trips outside, was mocking him… sort of playing with him, every bark dripped in irony and sarcasm. ”Come on, fat ass, look how much goddamn energy I have… and you can’t even write a sentence.” Even his chair sought to anger him, making his legs fall asleep in such a way that seemed to say “you’re pathetic, look at you… chained to the chair by life, now your legs are asleep, haha!”
Nothing he seemed to write was funny, it was more… of the same. As if his style of humor and his style of writing suddenly seemed stupid. That moment when you no longer want the “latest toy” and realize that you’re becoming an adult.
Ev looked at the glass in his hand, it was now empty and the last pieces of ice, now partly melted, danced in his hand as he turned the glass… that sounded good. The way the light mixed with the caramel coloring of the scotch and the weight of the glass in his hand… glass that traveled from a beach or a bank of sandstone to his hand. He could write this, right?
The heating vent came on and he watched as particles of dust lifted into the air and danced.
Back to work, Ev. Keep it up.
He began describing the character now. His mood and the room he was sitting in, the color of the walls and the grain on the desk. Was this too much description to be interesting? Fuck. Backspace… wait… wait…
I wonder if anyone has commented on my Facebook status? I feel this need for validation even if it’s not in person. Maybe if I’m funny enough this sort of idle writing and song making could turn into serious money. Fah, that won’t happen. For the love.
For the love.
For the love.
Ev refocused on work… wait…
Just one new tab in my web browser.
That was it.
Is this where he told you of his plan to continue his "not quite funny" style of humor that is so popular with the people? Did you tell him to "eat a dick and get better writers"? Hindsight is 20-20, Conan, and I bet now you wish you did.
That was the plummet into unproductivity. That one indulgence led to a night of idle surfing… looking at things he wanted to buy, but had no money for, reading articles that he intended to follow up on, looking for inspiration, but really just looking to avoid the work.
Because it is work.
Don’t let the naysayers fool you with their complaints about “your time” and the need for “help” on a myriad of projects. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not wrong to help your friends, in fact it’s noble, but Ev tended to let his friends run him due to some deep seated fear of rejection if he did not.
The old “you’d be cooler if you did…” line could get nearly anything out of Ev. People knew this.
Yet this distraction was his alone, hell they all were “his” distractions… you can say “no” to people and perhaps being more forceful about it would be good for him.
In the string of blogs and comments and endless video clips, Ev felt the weight of this one, singular notion:
He would never be cool.
Sorry, Noah... this shit ain't coastal, so you're only "almost" interesting.
It happened when he stumbled across a story on a new coffee house and how the author was shocked at how “coastal” it seemed and Ev, being in a landlocked city, was certainly not coastal. So… so the only currency of cool was being on the coast? You had to be somewhere that cultures substantially different than yours interacted?
No, that didn’t make sense.
Ev spun the ice in the glass.
So if I’m in a non-coastal city, which is patently uncool, then what do I have to lose?
There is nothing I cannot write about, because, in the end, it doesn’t matter. No one will read these words, but I’m not bitter.
Ev thought as he refilled his glass.
Ev couldn’t think of anything but reaction.
Fuck my city. I escaped far worse to get here, but fuck it. I won’t be cool unless I live in New York, but my life and my friends seem to be stuck here, despite my longing for sunnier skies and warmer days… does “cool” even matter?
Ev sighed and drank from his glass just as he began to feel an idea… a lose idea…
Fuck Denver…
"Random House" is the weirdest name... what does that mean? You open a door and you don't know what room you're going into? Or maybe you just stay at some "random house" every night, except your not like Ted Turner and you don't own them all. At any rate, at least they were down with the LGBT rights. Just like Apple.
He stopped… this had been done before, but it felt so right. He wrote a scene around his little speech: the main character of his novel was being confronted by his ostracized wife in an all night dinner, in the midst of the midnight crowd in orange formica booths. She would confront him about his drinking and his lack of motivation to fix things… how he hated the world he lived in, but was resigned to it, so instead of solving his problems just grew more and more bitter. This was going to be towards the end of the novel, towards the end of the story and if Ev was lucky, he would have earned this declaration… his characterizations would have been effective enough to warrant the reader already feeling this and the wife is just being the mouth piece of those who have witnessed his character’s spiral out of control, spiral down down down fucking down towards the fucking bottom.
His character, instead, would rant about the city. He would rant about being “stuck here” as his wife put it.
Fuck Denver.
Fuck you, you fucking mountain skirting cross town of cattle and minerals and bullshit. Fuck you.
Fuck you, downtown. Fuck you and your wool jacket, latte carrying actuaries and accountants. Fuck you, Brown Palace and cathedrals. Fuck you and your old stone.
Fuck you, lower downtown. Fuck you and your brazilian steakhouses and post-industrial renovations. Fuck you and your shitty bars filled with gelled up, juiced up, Jersey Shore of the mountains rejects. Fuck you and your tapas restaraunts and your hidden bars.
Fuck you, hi-lo. Fuck your boutique skate shops and bike shops and sneaker stores and trails. Fuck you and your rennovated train garage stores and your Keen sandals and “high on REI” daytime shoppers. Fuck you.
Fuck you, Five Points and your hipster art gallery and soul food and underground music venue. Fuck you Larimer Lounge and Rhino, Crema and Andenken. Fuck you, no grocery store around and gunshots in the night.
Fuck you, uptown and your overpriced restaurants and gay bars… get a fucking clue and shut the fuck down. We don’t need anymore rainbow beer signs or cross dressing coffee shops, thank you very much. It doesn’t go well with the new clientele: the gym rat women in Ugg boots waltzing around with soy mochachinos and oversized black sunglasses.
Fuck you, Capital Hill… fuck your hipsters stacked on top of each other, wanna be San Francisco, too many bars with PBR bullshit. Fuck you with your non-existent parking and converted mansions and liquor stores with odd hours. Fuck you and your vegetarian restaurants and your douche-tard tight jeans wearing mother fucking vintage clothes shopping on daddy’s money bullshit.
Fuck you, Civic Center park and the capitol building, the art museum and the library. With all the fucking drunk homeless fuckers fighting and shooting up in the porta potties and with your stupid ass festivals that shut down the fucking streets so idiots can eat funnel cakes and spend to much on fucking beer tickets. Fuck, fuck fuck you.
Take that, LeFavor! I'll teach you to try and rep Denver elsewhere... mad panda!
Fuck you, Sante Fe Arts District. Fuck you and your cheap burritos and your galleries full of failed artists overprice shit, foisting it upon a fucking tasteless public who has no fucking clue what’s actually good and will buy any shit you sell. Fuck you, with your untenable market and your King Soopers in a parking garage surrounded by near housing project style apartments that are filled with students or idiots. Fuck you.
Fuck you Baker and all that surrounds you… with your hipster tattoo shops and pricey clothing stores and adult clothing shops. Fuck you. Fuck you and your crowded thrift stores and hipster bars with themes and old movie theaters with art deco revisions of Mayan art and your cheap beer on every damn corner and hipster music venues. Fuck you.
Fuck you, Wash Park and your crowded as shit paved path. Fuck you, weekend ultra warrior with your carbon fiber, overpriced, won’t make your ass less annoying road bike and Euro team kit. Fuck you rollerblading douche tard who can’t stay in one lane on the path, I’m trying to fucking pass you. Fuck you, lady who lets her toddler stumble around on a path whilst bikes are whizzing by, maybe we will get lucky and something will connect and we won’t have to worry about your contributions to the fucking gene pool. Fuck you and your expensive sushi bars and nouveau American cuisine. Fuck you.
Fuck you, Colfax. Fuck you and your endless string of converted theater and ballroom music venues. Your homeless people stealing bikes they can’t ride and your suburban “in for the show, dude” crowds who can’t fucking park right and who drive the wrong way down one way streets. Fuck you.
Fuck you, Cheesman and your thousands of buried bodies and your stupid ass hipster kids riding their bikes in the pavilion at night. Fuck you. Fuck you, high rise apartments and dogs and runners and other idiots who overtake the paths cutting through your green grass. Fuck you.
Fuck you, Congress Park and your “grown up hipster” vibe, with your indie book shops and cupcake bakeries and coffee shops. Fuck you. Fuck you and your botanic gardens and fucking aggressive homeless people (fuck you, Chicago, fuck you for harassing girls and being a general creep) demanding change and money. Fuck you.
Fuck you, street sweeping and bikes not on the sidewalks laws. Fuck you and your wannabe cool kids with their Vans and their vintage clothes and their tattoos and their smiles and jokes and life.
And lastly, fuck everything I missed: fuck the art shows and the keggers and the drivers who don’t pay attention to bikes on the road. Fuck the rich kids, fuck the poor kids, fuck the unwashed crust punks, fuck the drunken kickball players and the cooler than nothing fixed gear cyclists. Fuck everything about this stupid fucking city and everyone in it, fuck them with a big rusty fuck stick and in the blood and the screams and the death and destruction and brimstone…
Fuck me, too.
It was that easy. It felt good to write it, it felt good to read it. It felt right and Ev couldn’t help but seeing the “fuck you”s as “I love you”s and the detail and knowledge of the city just implied that as much as he hated things about this place he lived in… he loved it. It wasn’t perfect and neither was Ev, nor was his character. It was his characters moment analogous to Spike Lee’s 25th Hour when Edward Norton tears apart New York, or when he pulled the same move in Do The Right Thing.
That's the story of love and hate. Forever and ever and ever, Amen.
Love and hate, Mookie. Ev thought as his fingers flew.
Ev would be out, the next morning, riding to work and yelling at the cars that ignored him as he skip skidded his completely impractical fixed gear bicycle (sans brakes) in and out of traffic as he rode down to his office and Ev would be screaming “Fuck You Denver” in capital letters.
He wasn’t coastal and he wasn’t coasting and as stupid as both of those were… he was fine with that. He wasn’t coastal, but he was writing. He wasn’t coastal, but he was painting images with his mind and dancing on words and keyboard keys and feeling, feeling quite fine.
Scotch and a smile and some time alone and Ev realized, not for the first time, but maybe… maybe fore the “best time”:
Everything sucks and everything is beautiful and that is just the fucking way it is.
Love.
And hate.