I like a bar, and old Irish pub type, the likes of which I’ve found in Boston, but these have been altered too. They have to keep up with the times, so they turn into a sick form of night club as well. Music too loud to hold the classic conversation at the bar, very tall people talking amongst themselves because, well, they’re all tall, guys with way too nice shirts that don’t ever seem to fit properly, greased up hair, cologne that makes you wonder: “Man or woman?,” and women who get dressed up for the cruel game of how many men can be rejected before everyone stops asking altogether. We feed into this culture just like we feast upon antidepressants. We drink to forget, we drink to forgive.
If you’re wondering where single people are after 10 o’clock at night, well let me point you to the nearest location serving alcohol. For those that are at home, I’d be willing to bet they’re probably wearing reading glasses, because the glare from these computer monitors we can’t detach ourselves from is killing our eyes. They are no doubt working studiously on some way to make money so that the next time their friends remember they haven’t seen them in a while they can buy more expensive clothes to have drinks unapologetically spilled on and indulge in a higher shelf of liquor. The couples . . . ah yes, couples. There is no one right person for anyone, and judging by the rate at which we seem to multiply, it should be evident that the value of “The One” isn’t anywhere near as delightful as the three or four you could possibly relate to in the time it takes to realize that you’re either ready to settle or not. Those three or four months would be better spent sampling from a variety than deciding whether this could potentially get boring once you’ve exhausted every position and realized the muscles down there aren’t as strong as you might prefer.
I can’t attribute any of these observations to any iota of military experience or any clinical form of psychosis. I’m not an obsessive compulsive maniacally paranoid delusionist. I’ve just spelled out the facts of the case in a three-part series, ladies and gentlemen, and they are undisputed. There are too many people on this planet, too many squirrels fighting over the same nut, like the scene at any night club you’ve ever been in, but magnified to a global scale and mixed with all kinds of people who dress differently than you would expect, eat different amounts of food bearing distinct aromas, and have dissimilar skin pigmentation.
What have we done? What have we come to expect of ourselves as a society? Is it really that cyclical, that we have come back around to a day in age when the huddled masses need to believe there’s a better place to go to after you suffer through this one? No, I’m not depressed, because the endorphins keep me on an even keel, but I can certainly see why people are. I used be under the impression that perhaps human kind had grown weak. That due to our own intellect and ability to alter our environment to suit our needs, we had somehow just become incapable of coping with what is, and forced ourselves into a state of what could be. That ain’t it. My calloused hands are no weaker than those of my forefathers, albeit they weren’t tempered in the same fires, but the problems that we face now are quite possibly worse. Hope and purpose are two intangibles that carry people through, whatever the destination may be, and it seems that civilization has evolved beyond concern for such individual requirements. There are as many philosophies as there are people, which is just downright frightening, so how the hell are we ever supposed to agree on anything? My head hurts.
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