The unfortunate catch of the entire circumstance, the utter irony, was that he was always agonizingly aware of his hypocritical role in his rhetoric, and was always ashamed that he dare think that being aware and adapting to what he was unable to change was somehow making him a better person than the endless procession of sheeple consuming the carrots of technology and information.

 

In short, he lived in the place he resented the most, and he was good at living there, and he despised his own success.

“It’s the one thing I haven’t figured out yet…how to be reborn.”

 

So, he thought.  So, he stared.  So, he drank and created games to cope with the world he had to, for now, still live in but couldn’t tolerate.  He was too afraid to leave the only way of life he had known and too stubborn to suck it up and just conform for a few more years.

 

“Fake and happy?  Or the truth and loneliness?”

 

He did meet one girl, one who might understand, one who might be different.  But, that was the other problem he had yet to figure out – How to tell the difference between who is real and who is blowing smoke up his ass in the name of, or dream of, love lust and the attraction to a different life.  He met a few of the real ones over the past decade, but being an honest skeptical cynic, trust was the virtue he needed to trade in order to question the status quo, and he never learned how to have trust for the few who might be real.

 

So, he always broke the ice with the same request.  Writing was the only way he knew how to volunteer his soul to a person, but, rather than simply writing and being honest, he would say…

 

“Give me a good topic!”

 

…hoping, just once, someone would say the words that he did not even know he was looking for himself that would unlock his optimism once again and allow him to be honest rather than brilliant in his gibberish.

 

 

 

 

af

 

(written with pen on paper)