Captain Apathy felt his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He smiled to himself, knowing who would be contacting him at this point in the night. “Lucky Bar at 10?” read the brief message. He thumbed the “reply” button, then typed: “Yes.” It was only eight in the evening, but Apathy knew that tonight was the night he would reach his destiny. It was the night he had been waiting years for. Or if not years, then at least since Tuesday. Tonight, I will get hammered, he told himself. It had been a long week, there was no mistaking it. Apathy removed the tie and button-down shirt that marked him as a member of the professional classes. A member of something…respectable. “It is only a disguise,” he had thought on many occasions. Apathy stepped into the shower, cleaning the body that he kept in reasonably good shape by forcing himself on the treadmill a few times a week. Once finished, he pulled his green polo shirt over his head. It was a shirt he had been wearing since his freshman year of college, and repeated washings and weight gain meant that it was tighter than it had been four years ago. But it still fit, and Apathy had found that in a darkened room, girls would often mistake a tight shirt for increased muscle mass. Apathy walked the six feet from the closet to the kitchen. He cooked some penne pasta for himself, then covered it with marinara sauce. He washed down the pasta with one of the Heineken's his roommate had bought. It was a simple repast, but it would provide enough sustenance for his coming endeavor. Tonight, I will get hammered. Having satiated his need for food, Apathy logged on to fark.com. A thin smile came to his lips as he read about yet another Florida teacher who was caught sex with one of her students. He looked at the clock on his computer. 9:50 p.m. His time had arrived. Apathy hailed a taxi outside his apartment building and gave the driver the address for Lucky Bar. The driver was a middle-aged Ethiopian who nodded and smiled to him as he entered the backseat. A nice man, Apathy thought, but completely unaware of the role he was playing on this fateful night. Tonight, I will get hammered. Focus: Write about your day as if it was narrated by a famous author. Try to sound like Hemingway, Kerouac, Vonnegut, or if you're really good, Cormac McCarthy.
Bill Bryson (or at least my best attempt at mimicking him) describes a very sleepy, very early Sunday morning The cat's meowing, so it must mean that the perpetual beeping from his cellphone alarm is actually the snooze. Very rarely does he even remember reaching over the first time and slapping at the phone until it's quiet. The cat, however, rises with the first alarm, and sings in tune with the second. He vaguely recalls a book on the shelf in his Dad's office called 100 Uses for a Dead Cat. The umbrella holder was always his favorite. It's a shame he doesn't have any umbrellas. After making his way into the bathroom, he realizes that there's no possible way he'll be able to relieve himself without spraying the ceiling. Something else had risen with the first alarm and was ready to meet the day with an unflinching dedication. Any attempts to bend it to his will would result in what he decided long ago should be referred to as the 'trumpet effect,' where, in the abscence of unconstricted flow, liquids tend to spray wildly in a large and unpredictable funnel pattern. Time to take a seat. The third alarm comes as a surprise, seeing as it had transformed from a persistent cellular beeping, occasionally accompanied by an orange feline, into a confused and angry female not very pleased with his decision to re-route fluids between the seat and bowl and down the front of the toilet. Through the fog of scant consciousness he begins to understand that he had fallen asleep there on his apparently-comfortable throne and failed to aim properly--or at all, really. She gets in the shower, still muttering in disbelief as he about-faces and stares at his reflection in the mirror. "It's 6:40, and we're already here, huh?" he thinks to himself. His reflection blurs as it's replaced by the quickly-gathering steam. Still hard as ever, he jokingly coaxes the shower curtain aside to climb in, taking the opportunity to say, "Hunny, look at this!" in the direction of his wholly unimpressed counterpart.
With sincere, and profound apologies to Cormac McCarthy. The burnt orange sunshine glow of his alarm preceded the awakening music by the nanosecond's difference between sound and light. Passing his wife in the hall bisecting their house he stumbled toward the coffeemaker. Goodmorning. Sleep well? With the coffee prepared the two set off on separate paths, to separate gyms. Mounting the stair machine he was snatched from his musings about the vicissitudes of life by the breasts of the weather girls glowing on the flat screen televisions. Is there a connection between a woman’s boobs and her ability to predict weather and traffic? He wondered. Returning home he continued to perspire. How was your workout? Good. Yours? His journey to work began easily enough. There is a moment in its metamorphosis where a caterpillar’s labor almost becomes too much to bear. Yet it endures. For this drive to work, it was the intersection of the 101 and the 405.
Dr. Seuss writes about The Wildcard's average Monday The alarm clock sounds and the boy sighs, "fuck" He goes back to sleep, but his mom is a shmuck "Get your ass ready for school!" the old bitch hollers He hops out of bed, feeling like zero dollars On with the shower, and the soggy eggo waffle He blends a whey protein shake, "this shit tastes awful" Brushes his teeth and drives off to school Wakes up periodically on a desk filled with drool When the 7 hours of bullshit is done,he's feeling stellar It's The Wildcard Bitches! comin' out with a best seller
I was awakened when my mobiloticus rang rang rang. I answered feeling shagged, fagged, and fashed. Fagged and fashed because there was a pain in my tolkus real horrorshow, and shagged I can't say because I was awakened in my onesome. I answered the mobiloticus, "This is me, there is BL1Y," I said. "Wrong number," the other end said and hung up without even an appy-lolly-oggy. And at this my gulliver was too stirred on the inside bits to fall back unawakened, so I opened my lappy-appy and began another real horrorshow day of being the viddy fat stinking blagonaut I am.
AlmostGaunt awoke, casually flicked back the bedclothes, rose lazily and began another unremarkable morning. He trod heavily to the bathroom, grabbing a towel as he went, already trying to avoid thinking about the coming day at the office. Janice would almost certainly be waiting for him when he got in, making snide remarks about slightly overdue TPS reports. He sighed contemplatively, then, banishing such thoughts from his mind, began his showering ritual, starting first with the unscented shampooing of his thick, dark hair, followed by a quick application of the budget shower gel to his paunchy midsection. As he began brusquely scrubbing at his legs with a loofah, the furthest thing on his mind was the ancient mirror above the bathroom cabinet. The mirror had always been there, as far back as Gaunt could remember, and even in the old, creaky house, it looked somehow older than its surroundings. As with every morning, as he finished his shower and began to shave, his mind was still too sleep-addled to notice how little of the light the mirror reflected, seeming almost to absorb the feeble glow from the lights mounted above the cabinet. Even if he had noticed, it was unlikely he would have paid attention. He continued to dress, selecting plain black trousers, then pulling on the black dress shoes that had lost about half their shine. As he moved on to his rack of plain, office-appropriate shirts, his mind went automatically to the tie he would use, unaware of the way an odd gleam in the mirror seemed almost to follow his progress around the room. Morning ritual complete, he exited his front door, locked it twice, then drove away, plugging his iPhone in and letting the sounds of Lou Reed anesthetize him to the coming day. Deep in the shadows of the bathroom, the mirror gleamed.
Charles Bukowski just got a text message from 15 Step's recently-ex-girlfriend. Spoiler tags added so you can skip right over this... Spoiler The new girl and I, we stay up until it’s morning again Having sex We just listen to music She plays things I’ve never heard And you still try to talk to me Can you throw away the old bills? They still send them In my name To the apartment Sigh, you say You miss me You still miss me I don’t reply Because what do I have to say? I’m fucking someone else? I’m happier? I’m headed somewhere? Anywhere? I never wanted to hurt you I still don’t I want you to be out fucking someone else Anyone else Grinning from ear to ear Or panting heavily I want you to find that guy who’s ready for marriage and kids at 20 Maybe a Mormon It’s not me It will never be me I don’t feel it Not for you And I’m sorry And I’m still paying the rent And half the utilities And I’m sorry For you