matt.he spent his entire day watching political drama

matt.

he spent his entire day watching political drama shows, eating bread from the bag and thinking about how washington would be an awful place to live, probably. he’d dealt with the success of his recently published poetry collection by turning his phone off and deleting his blog; contemplating the term ‘moral blank’, he questioned whether any act of kindness he’d performed had ever not been part of a greater foundation to cement his place as a ‘good guy’.

“i have a terrible attention span,” he said on gchat to jo, “call me dumb”

“okay”

“do it”

“you’re dumb”

“thanks”

 

he found it funny to end sentences with “as a joke”

he was thinking about killing himself as a joke.

 

today i woke up at 11:49am and drank

today i woke up at 11:49am and drank some mango juice. i spent 3 hours watching cartoons online and now i want to not exist. i am desperate for people to find me funny. sadness without jokes is just sadness and now people don’t like talking to me. i turned my phone off. i haven’t showered in three days. sunlight tries to creep into my room through the cracks in my blinds but i am pale and naked and staring down at myself. i’m listening to a box of cassettes i found two years ago. i’ve ran out of mango juice and i don’t want to move, i am here and infinite. this is my place of birth and ~spiritual renewal; where i am unlimited – complications caused by splinters in my chest, so long. i am scared by my immortality. i have blocked twitter from my computer because i can’t bear to talk to anybody. there’s more to be seen here, i think.

 

Adam corrected his posture, evolving from his more simian slouch into a self-conscious Real-Human-shaped beam. He fixed his hair and straightened his tie. He was looking in the mirror and feeling dishonest, this was not him: a clean shaven young man who always wore his glasses, with a wristwatch set two minutes early and a Direction. An attempt to achieve thoughtlessness had rendered him deeply unhappy; yet awash with a strange narcissism, a smugness that was derived from being An Intelligent Man, unable to be captivated by reruns of Scrubs.

On the train he checked his emails and deleted them all as part of his ritual to cut himself out. He was becoming a better person, which involved a fascination, and very real concern with honesty – a troubling concept that he didn’t want to look directly at, and found very difficult to talk about frankly, and so he was constructing a new model for life which closely resembled the original but with less ~people. He’d found it easy to cut and peel himself away; as it turned out he didn’t have many friends. He left his ex-girlfriend a message on her phone, crying. She called him back but he didn’t answer.

 

“Have you had thoughts of self harm or suicide?”

“Yes.”

“What stopped you?” the doctor’s eyes darted back from his computer and Adam, who shifted in his seat and widened his eyes, hoping to distract the doctor from typing. He couldn’t concentrate. He looked at the floor and back up, eyeing a poster on the dangers of smoking.

What stopped you? is a standard question in this situation, but Adam had always found it antagonistic, almost mocking. Why not? Why didn’t he kill himself?

He left the surgery with a prescription for Citalopram which, as he was informed by the doctor, may cause suicidal tendencies. He laughed.

 

Earlier that day he’d deactivated his account on every social network he was a part of and thrown his ipod away. There was always something better to listen to.

 

Zak was giving up caffeine in order to better himself as a person. He’d thrown his iPhone into a river and shouted: “I don’t need you, palmtop digital sex!” the day before after reading too many articles about the dangers of technology. Due to the impassioned nature of the commentary, he didn’t fully understand what they were saying, but, given his underdeveloped emotional intelligence, he was ready for some kind of revolution. Zak had a lifestyle that had given way to the cerebral, compromising existing on a physical plane for the virtual, a digital consciousness hilariously manifested on Twitter. His low key observations, punctuated by dry remarks, amassed a crowd of wry smiles. Zak just didn’t know any different.

 

Zak worked at a smoothie bar next to library. He went on twitter:

i’ve been thinking

i am going to quit my job

and leave the internet

i am going to pursue my dream of being a fisherman

or maybe a vicar

i don’t know right now

how easy is it to be a vicar?

i could be a vicar

watch me pass the interview

what do they ask in church job interviews

i don’t have a favourite bible story

maybe abraham whatever

i have to go back to work

 

He looked out of the window of the smoothie place which was called ‘Smooth Joobs’ and saw a homeless man. He made a banana and strawberry smoothie and thought about his ex-boyfriend – he was always clearing his throat, “You probably have cancer, or something. Something bad.” he told him, he replied with a series of gestures and facial expressions indicating sadness and confusion – “Why would you say that?” why would he say that? “I don’t know.”

Zak quit his job and went back to his flat. He masturbated and passed out, awoke three hours later, and masturbated again. It was a celebration, I guess. He wanted to go to the library and read war books but it was closed, this caused him to become frustrated which manifested itself in masturbation. i am a masturbatory human. He thought.  He posted on his blog about leaving the internet:

I am leaving now because I’m bored. I’m shaving my head and I am going to masturbate and watch Jerry Springer and then I will leave London and buy a boat. I want to sail. No, a motor boat. I can’t swim and I’m afraid of spiders and I hate Top Gun and I want to kill people but only sometimes and I’m going to quit being vegan and order a steak at restaurant and I’ll be sick. Don’t call me a cyborg anymore. Robots aren’t cool.