— ONE . . WHEN WERE U LAST BORED? — . . . for Halloween, Gaby dressed me up as a girl. I identify as unflappably game for all FUN’s exigencies that I would normally eschew if my freedom were foremost in the decision-making: — yes, sometimes I have to be dragged to a party. But mild suffering fallows the soul, — feeling every DRIP of time’s molasses so acutely, U become skeptical of death, How the hell is my life EVER gonna END if I’m still sitting here & it’s only been three minutes, — enriching Ur soil for impending fecundity. . . which is why the prospect of “having a bad time” is irrelevant to me. . . We went to a Halloween party at her friend Lucas’s apartment. The theme was vaguely Coraline (2009); Gaby was the Pink Palace Apartments. I was an old spinster who lived inside her: Mrs. Forcible. I hadn’t slept the night before, and I had been at the gym from 5:30AM until 12PM. I was tired. It was one of those days where idle hands become sinward tentacles: U can’t do nothing but jerk off & doomscroll. I had 45 minutes of sprightliness in me. Obviously, usually, there’s the ebrious cure: U bored, GET DRUNK! But I was 28 days sober, — my pre-Humpty purification was nearly complete, — not even itching to drink. I talked to her friends, shimmied my shoulders in what surely resembled dancing; but by 10:30PM, I was COOKED. I took a geriatric seat in the corner: next to one of the other attendees’s grandmothers (we were the only two sitting). I had already awarded myself a gold-star for not complaining, not pressing Gaby to leave the party; I was just gonna quietly sit back & feel the full brunt of BEING. In my mind, Gaby had NO CLUE I was feeling like I was in the War of the Triple Alliance, suffering horrors, “some comrades were eaten alive, their bodies, their faces, their viscera fattening those little worms, causing at first itches, which made them tear off bits of their rotting flesh, and later unbearable pain, which they had to endure in solitude because not even the doctors would get near them.” We left the party around 11:30PM; as we stepped outside, I was greased up, ready for KUDOS: surely I would get points for all my silent endurance. We got in a cab to go home, and I said, “I’m so tired. . .” “Really?” Gaby said, “I couldn’t f*****g tell.” I looked over at her. She goes, “this is U at the party.” And she slumped into a mouth-agape droopy-eyed C-shape. I said, “that hurt my feelings. . .” She goes, “oh my god. 99% of the time I make fun of U U laugh hysterically, how am I supposed to know when U R gonna take it seriously??” “U have no compassion for me!” I said, thrusting my head back dramatically & trying to fill my eyes with tears, — so that my mascara would run. “U were such a DRAG at that party! I don’t want U to come if U R gonna be miserable.” “I NEVER FEEL MISERABLE! BAD EXPERIENCES DON’T MATTER TO ME. EVERYTHING IS EXISTENCE!” “Well everyone sure thought U looked miserable!” “I just can’t believe I don’t get any points, when I sat there all night, not even complaining, while I was completely MISERA—” I covered my mouth. “SEE! U WERE MISERABLE!” — TWO . . WHAT DO U DO WITH MISERY? — . . . when I was a sophomore at Miami University, there was a girl in my dorm, Becky, who was a bit of a torment. She had a comically awful last name I won’t cite because if I tell U it was Farhtcock U won’t believe me. Every day I would wake up at 4:30AM, — often sleeplessly shaking off a dozen beers, — and trudge to the dorm’s common area to work on my horrible novel. Becky Farhtcock was an insomniac; something awful & secret must’ve happened to her because she had a Pixar lamp tattooed on each calf, both encircled by an inspirational quote about survival like, “oh yes, the past can hurt, but you can either run from it, or learn from it.” I must admit back then I was enamored by private anguish. . . She discovered my schedule coincided with her still being awake, so she would come out to bother me; — once she said, “so Ur a boxer, does that mean I can punch U in the face?” and she punched me in the face. After that, I opted to just write in my room; typing furiously, loudly in the DARK, while my roommate Jacob tossed-&-turned, grumbling annoyance. Becky & I went on one date. She needed a Halloween costume. I had a car. A car I was so reckless with, I accumulated $2,500 worth of parking tickets in a semester; the Parking Services Office called me in simply to put a face to their cash cow. Once, my car was towed 3 days in a row. When I would come home from the bars, I would take the car for a spin. . . My joy ended when I soberly drove the car under a school bus on the side of the highway in Columbus. I totaled it; but that’s a story for another day. . . Becky hopped in, and we drove out to Hamilton, OH to go to the Halloween store. Slowly we discovered we had absolutely nothing in common; worse than that, any attempt at humor, from either side, would be met with interminable seconds of silent incomprehension. We made it to the Halloween store. She had absolutely no difficulty choosing her costume: she was gonna be a SEXY SOLDIER. I thought she was doing a bit. “A soldier, why?” “I love the military,” she said. On the way back home, we stunningly found ourselves bumper-to-bumperly jamstuck: there was never traffic on that road. The lifethread that often feels like a way-too-short piece of floss (unusably sad) in those moments when U ecstatically click with another human being, when U happen upon a supreme bit that leaves both of U with tears in Ur eyes & a cramp in Ur belly, feels, on the flipside, — when U find Urself in traffic with someone U just realized U hate, — ENDLESS: let me cut this s**t short & die. I turned the music off because I was so sick of everything. But when it was silent, we heard a scream. A sustained, aching, helpless scream that got louder with each forward lurching inch of my car. Finally, when it was at a window-rattling volume, we saw the source of the traffic: a car in the median of the road with a completely shattered windshield, with a globular indent like a meteor had crashed into it. And lying next to the car: a man, covered in blood, being tended to by paramedics, screaming like he was in more pain than anybody had ever experienced. I said, “oh my god. . . he’s awfully stoic.” She didn’t laugh. — THREE . . DOES LAUGHTER HAVE LIMITS? — . . . I wrote a short story about my failed date with Becky. It was called “I Hope We Don’t See a Dead Body” : the narrator, uncomfortable with the silence of the car ride, inexplicably blurts, “I hope we don’t see a dead body!” and of course, at the end, they’re driving back & they see the victim of a car crash, screaming in pain. The narrator says, “well at least he wasn’t dead!” His date doesn’t laugh. . . I didn’t think twice about using the real man’s real suffering as a symbol in my story. I submitted it to Inklings, — the literary magazine where I served as a business manager so INEPT, I once accidentally embezzled $250. Inklings submissions were supposedly anonymous; I hadn’t submitted anything since this poem my Freshman year. When it came up on the screen to be discussed, one girl started laughing; her attempts to stifle herself made her laughter contagious; soon the whole room was laughing at my poem. In exultant concord at a reality I was excluded from: my poem was so bad it was f*****g hilarious. They didn’t even need to vote. When “I Hope We Don’t See a Dead Body” came up for discussion, my chortling enemy said, “I have a lot of problems with this piece. . . the narrator is a f*****g a*****e. He’s like making fun of this girl for being boring, and he doesn’t even realize maybe HE’S the one who’s f*****g boring! It’s supposed to be like satire I guess, but it’s not funny, and the whole thing ends up feeling empty.” Satire? I was shocked at that word. In my mind, satire mocks something, and the result is U end up thinking the writer is smarter than what he’s mocking. I thought my story was a drama about people not being a… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haroldrogers.substack.com
