I actually wrote this like twenty years ago in high school, but everyone loved it then, so why not revive it?
So you’re born…
… and maybe you’re born alone, but maybe you’re not and if you're born with siblings maybe one of them picks you up without supporting your head and your neck snaps and you die…
But maybe you're born alone and your mom starts feeding you on her breast milk, but what you didn't know (I mean how could ya have, only a newborn baby) is that mama was a crack fiend and dad had gone out for cigarettes even before you were born and now that yayo titty milk has you so scurewed up you die of cholic with your strung out rat haired mama holding you up to her own dried up shiverin’ body.
But maybe that’s all just a little too dramatic…
Maybe you had honest parents and you get past the nursing stage and make it onto the playground. So then you're playing with lil' Johnny without any supervision, and when you and Johnny find the marbles you swallow too many and you and him both die...
But maybe you're a little bit smarter than Johnny and he's the one that gobbles up all them damn marbles and you manage to survive into Kindergarten. At which point as you run into the street alone after insisting to your mother that you're a big kid you get crayon smeared on the pavement by some teenage speed head and his girlfriend that he's either trying to impress...
Or rape...
We can't be sure.
Alright we’re still pretty dramatic here…
Maybe you're a survivor and that's enough of death.
Maybe you go through all those years of school happily taking that spoon full of what our society has deemed necessary from each one of your teachers. And hey, maybe one of your teachers is a desperate unhappy housewife type, and she lets you hit it before you even know what it is, or that you can even do such a thing (or maybe it's a guy and he hits you!)
And you become a part of the system.
No clue who you are, wearing clothes your mommy and daddy picked out for you. You have no personality; your brain can't hold enough information for you to construct it after absorbing all that essential information your teachers gave you. And you remember that Johhny's dead but you don't even know what that means, and you remember Miss Lickenheimer pulling out your winky, or Mr. Tuchenschtuff touching your stuff, but the idea of being dirty is still clean to you. And you remember Daddy slamming Mommy's head into a wall when she ruined dinner, and you remember Mommy knocking you down the stairs when you got chocolate on her favorite dress, but you only remember because you've got that cut on your arm that stopped bleeding but won't go away. The idea is simply too large to grasp, kinda like when that older kid Billy palmed your soccer ball and whipped it through your window...
It all seems so very terrible doesn’t it? But think of how it used to be, before you and me. Think of when every now and again, the cave lion came in while the family was sleeping and dragged dad off screaming his primitive proto-language screams, like some Holy Ghost fired from the throat of innocence… or maybe just ignorance. Or your cave sister cutting her arm on a thorn while picking berries and unbeknownst to any of the rest of that cave society, that thorn had lately split a deer turd passing through and now your sister’s arm smells like something rotten and evil and Cave Granddad can’t think of what else to do for it but to cut off the arm to spare the child… Not to mention the definite lack of any caveman teen movie plots. You know before he got eaten by that lion, the way your cave dad met your cave mom didn’t have so much to do with finally working up the courage to ask her to cave prom as it did discovering her alone at the edge of your cave family’s territory picking berries.
I mean it was still a shot he shoot, but not really as civilized as a 10 Things I Hate About You date montage, or even a pre-full moon Alex Price confessional but if I keep referencing to old movies I might catch some sort of copyright infringement. Just be grateful you only had bullies like Billy to worry about…
Besides…
You don't have to worry about Billy anymore, cuz he slit his wrist after listening to people telling him he was gonna slit his wrist if he kept listening to Manson. Now you're the new Billy, except your name is Jimmy but what does that even mean anyways? What's in a name? What's with these clothes? Why are those people wearing black lipstick and pants with tags that say Tripp on them, and why are those guys with the spiked hair and Ambercrombie shirts abusing them? You're still in that last set of clothes that your mommy bought you from when you were still her baby (how about that time when she confused you with the dog after the New Years party) And you don't fit in anywhere. You think of Johnny and wish that dumb bastard hadn't died, you see someone else from your childhood
"Sally, remember it's me Jimmy?"
"Eww who the fuck are you, who dressed you, your mom?" and she turns her back on you in her Abercrombie shirt, and you never realized how nicely her butt filled out her jeans ‘till now, or that it was even nice at all. And you come into it alone, just like when you started.
But all things pass, no worries, and you find some new friends and you buy some new clothes and suddenly you realize that there are hundreds of Sally's here and maybe you can get one for yourself, so you do and you succeed but one night when she has her lips wrapped tightly around your member you mutter "Sally" but her name is...
Wendy!!! and she bites down hard and leaves you something to remember... You cradle your bruised little man, you wonder, why is it that Sally was in your mind at that moment... Luckily thanks to your friends, before these thoughts may run to deep, you convince yourself she was just another bitch, and get on with life.
Then school is out and its summer, and somewhere in town a tent is erected and you all gotta go cuz, shit somebody put something up, must mean something. So you go and you see Wendy and she's with some new guy that you know is an abusive asshole jerk, and that you were so much better then and you snicker, and you buy some of the pizza and you play some of the games, and you chill with your friends, and school is back in sessions and you play the game again, and last year Sally's best friend Becky died, wrapped around a tree after insisting no one could get drunk off wine coolers and seltzers. Now Sally's turned into one of those fragile gothic chicks that you always secretly liked, and you take her out, and you get her name right this time, and she tells you you're everything she ever wanted, or needed, and you're totally in love and she tells you it's forever, and then on your two year anniversary…
She dumps you out of boredom...
"I'm just so confused!"
So you smoke A LOT of weed and you drink A LOT of alcohol, and maybe even snort some coke, and pretend it didn't bother you at all, and you fuck as many of those bitches as you can cuz you've convinced yourself that's what they're for through the consumption of alcohol and the indulgence of some rather chauvinistic rhetoric. But then just into college one of them gets pregnant, and you want to make her honest... but more importantly you don't want your kid to be as fucked up as you are, so out of guilt you marry her and out of work ethic you make it through college, and you get a decent job, and you get a decent house and you name the kid junior, and you learn to love the woman, and you don't need to learn to love your own kid. And sooner or later you have another one, and you safeguard them and you teach them what you could never know, and you never beat your wife, and you never hurt your kids. You're the picture of a decent man
for a while...
But then that alcohol streak you started in high school balloons out of control, and you freak out on your second kid after he scribbles all over the walls and you hit him, and you don't realize how strong you are and you hurt him badly, and when your wife comes into the room screaming "what did you do?! What did you do?!" You say you're sorry you beg forgiveness but you know she won't. You saw enough of mommy in terror to know what that face meant. And then one night you come home late after hitting the bar, and you're thinking about all this and then when you open the door she's waiting for you to scream, but just as she gets up and the peel starts, you knock her back down onto the couch and she hits her head on the wall and cries out and she shirks away from you when you try to help her, and now somewhere in the house a baby is screaming, woken up by the noise. And it's got to be the alcohol, you swear this isn't you, and you're crying and she's crying and your kids are crying. And she tells you she can't live in the same house with you like this, she says you have to get help, so you go to AA. You get rehabilitated, you become a new man. And she's proud of you, and your kids have at this point learned all about repression, and don’t even really remember any of it. And your first kid is in high school himself, and a star athlete and an honor student, and your wife forgave you years ago, and you have everything you always wanted for your children, and you go to bed the night before your first son is going to start college and you feel…
Empty...
Isn't this what you always wanted? What everyone told you wanted?
But maybe not? What if you never learned to repress? And maybe you started listening to Manson, and just started to like that scene in general, and maybe you tried to learn all about music, but could never afford an instrument, so you write poetry and call yourself a musician, even though you know you're a fraud. You're so ashamed, but you hide it so well in your black clothes. And then when your girlfriend (who of course isn't Wendy, is someone else who's totally different. Maybe Sandy?) dumps you this time, you decide the pain is too much and take a slice off your arm, just to have something else to think about. And your mom sees it and she blames the music, but she won't let you see a psychiatrist because "my baby can't be crazy!" and she steals all your CDs and she monitors you constantly. She makes sure nothing can hurt her baby... and then you meet Sally and Becky is dead and she's so like you and what you feel is deep and real, and really can last forever and you're best friends. But your mom won't let you have anything to do with her because she listens to that music. So Sally tearfully moves on and you retreat into yourself...
...Then one day you want to make a sandwich. And you use a butter knife to cut the bread, because your mom took away anything sharper. And you get a piece of roast beef, and you get some lettuce and then you decide you've just gotta have a slice of Swiss on this sandwich, so you look in the fridge one last time...
And there's no more left, your fat ass dad ate it all...
And it's just so unfair, and the store is so far away, and you want your sandwich now, and you never get the big things in life and now you're not even allowed to have the little things, and You can't take it anymore so you break your bedroom window and run both wrists across the glass, and they find you there, white as sheet. Dead. You left no note, and they think it's over Sally but really... it was all about...
the fucking cheese!
But maybe you're not a goth, and still don’t know anything about that repression bull, but maybe you did learn to direct. And you feel the hatred deep in your heart, from all the times you were struck out, and shot down. And maybe this time you can afford that instrument, and you harness that rage burning deep your spirit, and the blighted loathing that controls everything you do, and you damn all other things and you become the greatest there ever was, but it's still not enough for you. You have to take your talent further, and Rolling Stone wants to interview you, and Guitar Hero wants you to tab out all your songs, but none of the pigs can understand that you're not satisfied with what you've done. You need to take it even further...
but you don't know how.
You revolutionize the instrument. You send Hendrix and Halen to the wayside, but that was never your goal, it was to be the best you could be, not better than anyone else. And you're disgusted with all this talk of your being even more technically able than these other giants. And you drink constantly, and you fuck all your groupies, and you abuse your band, and you shoot up with dirty needless (just like that one mommy with the rat hair and the yayo breast milk) and they find you dead in a puddle of your own vomit, clutching your guitar to yourself, and the emptiness is even greater this time...
But maybe not, maybe you never had anytime for all of that. Maybe you were always just so much more calculating and rooted in logic, and maybe your decisive action and sharp wit brought you to the attention of a burgeoning corporation coming out of college, and you rose swiftly through the ranks till you were the big boss's right hand man, and you had an 8-figure income but that still wasn't enough for you, so you looked desperately for anyway to take the other one down a peg...
And at last! Footage of him with a 15 year old prostitute named Sally! (coincidence?) And you black mailed the greasy bastard, and he stepped down from his position, and now you're the head of the company, making the big decisions, and you move hundreds of factories out of America, destroying thousands of suburbs and blue collar lives (the old boss never believed in such things, being intensely patriotic, if not just a bit of a fetisher) and you move them all to the third world. Now where your boss had one 15 year old polishing his knob, you have thousands polishing your product. And you pay them 2 cents an hour, and sell it in the states for $2000 dollars per unit. And you make billions upon billions of dollars, you become the first man in America to be worth a trillion. You don't just buy a Hawaiian island, you buy four. And to avoid media stigmatism, you pump a few billion into the school system, and people see you as a hero, and every woman in the world wants you. And you take them. Even the ones that are only 15...
ones even younger...
And now someone in your company has footage of you! And they try the same trick, but you have one thing your old boss never had, the greatest power there can be for a man like you.
An army of million-dollar lawyers!
And you turn the tables on the turn coat, and you dig up your own dirt and destroy the little man, and leave him ruined and destitute, and tell him he'll know better than to attempt such a savage takeover, and that it will take more than such a triviality as that to take you down.
But he tells you he never wanted that power. He merely wanted to make the world a better place for his own family, and you learn that the 13 year old was his own daughter, and that she did it because she knew she could bring home money for her family if she did, and the man tells you that even after all you've done he still has his family, and he still has their love, and that he will endeavor to live on. And then and there you scoff at his words...
...But as you look out from a mansion on one of your four islands, across the sea to where your factories run... You behold an emptiness that you know is reflected inside yourself.
But maybe not?! Maybe you had always been cold and calculating, but you never really wanted that sort of power.
Maybe money meant very little to you...
Maybe...
You wanted to force Johnny to choke on those marbles!? Maybe after mommy pushed you down the stairs you grabbed the butcher knife and stabbed her in the shin! Maybe you lived your life awash in depraved desire, enamored of the abomination of desolation, and when that first day in high school came, you tricked one of those jocks torturing the goth kids into following you into your house, and you shot him, and you cut him up and buried him. Maybe you killed Becky?! Maybe you meant to hit Sally, maybe you'd been doing it a long time! And maybe you were sure they were all too idiotic to ever figure out it was you doing it! Maybe you removed your victims’ teeth, and burned their flesh in acid, using anything that remained as fish bait, eliminating all conceivable evidence…
But then maybe every now and again you just had to have a trophy (and maybe you weren't all that fond of fish), and the occasional buttock or breast as fertilizer never seemed like too much of a risk for you...
Maybe you had to have whole bodies to look at. To play with. Fragile entities for your subjection, cold skin for your caress, blue lips for you to kiss...
...Maybe the smell was becoming horrific and it was only a matter of time till someone voiced their suspicions to the cops, and your yard was excavated and there they all were, Sally, Becky, the jock, and a dozen others. Maybe you were a monster, and no one ever knew. Too busy looking for another kid like Billy, too sure that someone as atrocious as you must have listened to Manson. And the cops cart you off, but as you sit ready for that final shot, a smile plays across your lips, you cackle madly, you inform them congenially that Satan lives inside your soul, and that he will protect you always. That true evil can never die, and the day will come when thousands like you will walk the Earth. An army of demons will destroy the world of man...
...Of course though, you believe none of this, and simply want to leave them all with something to mull over, something to think about after killing you. Because you'd never want anyone to ever truly understand what was wrong with you, as they would say. Because you know deep inside there's nothing wrong with you. A dry chuckle, a mirthless grin, you were simply having fun. The only way you knew how, and the best way...
and at last you feel fulfilled.
Or maybe not.