Last Thursday, I decided was the worst day of my life up to that point, and thus I decided that I would get smashed. I went downtown and found the first bar which looked as if it were clean enough so that I would not die of some disease which I would contract in sitting in such a place. I scurried in, trying to maintain some bodily heat as it was the first Tuesday of an unusually cold December. It always seems the weather is "unusually hot," "unusually cold," or "unrelenting," in retrospect. I don't think I have ever read a book where the weather was "moderate" or "unusually kind." It is always so dramatic. In theory, it must add to the melodrama. In reality, it just makes one more aware that life is a big ol'clich�. Everything can be translated into an anecdote if you try hard enough. And the whole "I'm unique!" thing -- just something to make everyone feel like there is a purpose to it all. That we don't suffer for seventy years, just to die, without making a single mark on the universe. If you are "unique!" then you are more likely to be remembered by time, despite being killed by it. But it seems one finds uniqueness by dressing and imitating everyone who is unique around them. The "unique" people all look the same to me. And it always seems that the truly different people are persecuted or deemed insane. I watched "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" when I was about sixteen, and I guess I just really realized that if you're the same, you are part of the problem, and if you diverge, you are swallowed up into the problem. The last scene in the movie, when Chief runs away, I found to be the way to only true and feasible manner in which to achieve liberation from all the burdens and petty tripe which one must combat in society.
And that is why I found myself in the bar last Thursday, the worst day of my life up to that point. I was sick of coping with all the crap which had been shoved down my throat by life, the universe, and everything. However, Boston is a hard place to run from, especially when you have no sense of direction. Despite living here in my dorm for the past two years, I still can get lost if I turn around too quickly. The brownstones always give me a tough time. They all blend together, so that I can barely tell one street from another most of the time. If the inhabitants are not bustling around outside of the buidlings, I can never really identify them as different from one another. Oh well.
I went into the dingy little gin mill, and sat at the end of the bar. Yes, another clich�. Although I am only twenty, I look much older than I am. I carry myself in such a way that most people estimate my age to be about thirty. I haven't really decided if this is a good thing, but the practical applications are endless. By the time I was fourteen, I could drive around in my friend's car without getting a second look from any cops. When I was fifteen, I could get into R movies and buy cigarettes. When I was sixteen, I had someone ask me if I was married, seeing as they had estimated my age at twenty four. By the time I was seventeen, I had mastered the bar and nightclub scene, and I could get into any concert that sounded good. In short, I could pull a lot of stuff off, and I never really felt any great consequence or negative repercussion from my somewhat amoral actions. If I had gotten hurt during one of my escapades, maybe I would have given up. But it never was really necessary, as I was pulling down solid grades in school, and I was able to hold a cashiering job at a grocery store, as miserable as it might have made me.
The bartender asked me what I wanted, and I decided maybe I didn't want to get as wasted as I thought, so I told him a glass of water. He looked at me cockeyed, and asked if I was kidding. I asked him if I looked as if I was (considering my disheveled hair, the dark, circles under my eyes) as I knew he would know I was serious. He assented, and within moments, I was halfway into my first glass of mineral water for the night.
As is inevitable when a lone female goes into a bar, within fifteen minutes, there was a moderately attractive man sitting at my side. He started talking to me with some remark about the weather being peculiar. Clearly, he attempted to make it an inane remark, so that I would be charmed by his slightly-goofy, innocent, non-chalance, but he failed miserably. I bluntly responded: "You don't mean that seriously, do you?" Most people are easily deterred in a blatant pursuit of sex, but he wasn't. He laughed it off, and began again.
"My name is Eric," he said. "You seem to be different from other girls." Poor Eric didn't know how right he was. While those girls I am different from go to the bars to meet up with some guy who they think might be "really different" from all the other guys, I despise those guys I find in bars. I go to a bar to get drunk solely so that if I drink too much and I am in medical danger, I have a chance as there are a bunch of people who will notice that I have collapsed. For instance, I'd be screwed if I was to get alcohol poisoning in my dorm. My roommate, Sandra, was as dumb a person as I have ever come across. If it were not for her innate talent to discover ingenious solutions to huge mathematical problems, she would have never made it anywhere. It's really beyond me how I got stuck with her as a roommate, as I would have been better matched with Hannibal Lecter. If I was to collapse, she would have probably fainted dead away at my side. Personally, I like to drown my sorrows privately, but it's too much of a health risk, so I traditionally do it in a bar. And I hate to be disturbed. Poor Eric was yet to know that.
"You're persistent, aren't you, Eric," I responded, as tersely as I could.
He grinned foolishly and answered "You know, when I see something I would like to have, I pursue it," Oh wow, I thought. A smoothie.
"So, Eric," I began. He took the bait and smiled. "You are pursuing me. I am a trophy for you, a notch on your belt. You look at me, and you desire to make me yours." The dawn finally broke on Eric, and the smile was wiped clean from his face. I was not quite done, seeing as last Thursday was the worst day of my life up to that point. "And you are just like every other chauvinistic, womanizing, domineering, male who lurk around in bars, waiting to drag drunken and willess women back into their caves. I'm glad you want to 'pursue it,' Eric, and I wish you better luck in the future." By now, poor Eric was flabbergasted, and searching his drunken mind for the correct pickup line for this newly improved situation. However, poor Eric was not successful, so he sat there, staring at me until I added, "You really don't have to be here."
He finally understood that I did not care one bit about who I was talking to, or that I was not some bra-burning, feminist who was out to save the female gender. I just had a really crappy day. At that point, Eric left and attempted to pick up the shattered shards of his ego. All right, maybe I didn't really shatter his ego, but I like to flatter myself and think that I either decimated him, or reformed him. I probably just pissed him off and became a story for him to tell his friends. He would modify it and make him seem like the hero, by putting the woman in her place. Alas, resistance is futile.
Thursday was a bad day, and it was destined to be on Wednesday night. I had crammed for my calculus test, but I knew it would be of no help. My brain is not designed for the systematic approach which math forces on to take. Not to be exceedingly proud, but I am too innovative to memorize processes. I cannot repeatedly do something and learn it in that way. I am a history diva, and I can remember huge amounts of material. However, formulas cannot stick. And so it goes, I figure. I'm forever doomed to stumble when I need to find the amplitude of a cosine curve, however a simple operation it may be. I asked Sandra to give me a hand in studying, as I constantly tutor her in her Psych class (despite never taking one, I have a really great grasp of it) and she agreed. I waited until 7:30 before I decided that she was not going to come home to help me out, so I undertook studying solo. By 9:00, I was sick to death of everything mathematical, and so I fell asleep, my head in my notebook. Sandra wasn't home when I fell asleep, and so I cursed her for he flighty nature, and lack of character.
By the time I awoke last Thursday, the worst day of my life until this point, I was already a half hour late for the calculus test. I figured that I'd skip it. There was little else I could due, due to being unprepared and extremely late. If I could have only one more day, I would be better off.
Well, seeing as it was a bad day, the heartless professor told me I received a zero. Seeing as I get three exams in Calculus each semester, I was pretty much doomed. I found some solace in the sadistic humor in the sign above the head of my professor as he gave me this death sentence. In huge, resonating, black letters, it read "Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life." Usually, I would have contested this remarkably harsh judgement, but today, I did not offer any resistence, as I did not have the will. I had found out en route to the office of the professor that Sandra had been brutally beaten and murdered last evening as she was returning from a friend's dorm. Some student found her in the morning or something. I could have used concern for Sandra's whereabouts as an excuse for being late for the exam, but I didn't have the heart as I had been cursing her all morning as I had gotten dressed. So much for little white lies.
The day spiraled from there, but I believe bottom was hit when I had a cathartic realization at about three in the afternoon, during my chemistry lab, that Sandra was an infinitely better person than I was. Despite her lack of insight (something which I pride myself on, but I have recently begun to doubt), she was a good person. She loved with her entire heart, gave to any cause which deserved a second glance. Although she lacked a solid character and true insight, she was a good person. When there is no meaning in life, other than to die, why not assist others in being happy, as she so frequently did? I searched for a personal pleasure, while she saught to make the world a better place. Perhaps her crowining acheivement would be that she had tolerated me, a sarcastic, miserable, egotistical, boor, for two years, never bemoaning the horrors of her predicament. Anyone who could do that while maintaining such a cheery demeanor was really a good person. My idle, pedantic, musings never really bothered her, despite being a thousand times more irritating and frivilous than her declarations of loving humanity, and saving the world. She never complained about her own welfare, but only cried for the causes she believed in. And it took her death to make me aware of this. I was always a selfish one, I just never realized how much so.
After Eric left, I stayed at the bar for another hour and a half. I downed more scotch than I knew humanly possible. Eventually, I was one of the last ones sitting at the bar in the wee hours of the morning, and a fortish looking man, sitting about ten feet from me, looked at me. We made eye contact, and I noticed he was fervently turning his wedding band around his finger. His sorrowful eyes were encircled by black rings, and his hair was disarray and wild. He looked away, and I could tell that he was now crying. I should have spoken to him, consoled him, held him until he had cried the last bit of sorrow from his soul, but instead, I walked out, and stumbled home. I distinctly felt his eyes follow me out, and I cursed myself all night for my abandoning of him. Sandra would have given her life to make him smile.
The Saturday after the worst day of my life, I watched "Cuckoo's Nest" again, and thought about the utter futility of resistance. The establishment will always get us in the end, just as Nurse Ratchet got McMurphy in the end. Just like a faceless coward stifled beauty with a fatal thrust and left such a terrible, miserable, wretch, as me, to live.
Last Thursday may have been the worst day of my life. However, I suppose I now have a springboard from which to live the rest of my life. I will no longer ponder the difficulties and lack of justice which seemed so abundant in my life. I know how hokie, how melodramatic I sound, but it is true. Life cannot help but be what it is. However, I can help to prevent being what I have become. Melodrama happens.
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