April Fool

The scene: 9:45 a.m. I’ve just woken up.
Her: “You know those at home pregnancy tests?”
Me: “Um…yes…”
Her: “Well…I already took one…and you know what…we should play the lottery…because we’re good at beating long odds.”
Me: “…you’ve got be fucking kidding me. There’s no way. There’s just no way.”
Her: “There’s something else.”
Me:…what is it?
Her:...April Fools!

Spring is here and I feel a profound sense of disconnection. For the past months I’ve only felt comfortable when truly alone. When you’re alone there is no self-censorship. No selective omission. No need for strategic truths. When you’re alone you’re completely cut off from the responsibility of interacting with others. It is a condition as liberating as it is potentially dehumanizing.

Most of the time I long for nothing more than a quiet moment to myself. A moment to stare and think. An hour. An entire day. I rarely find time for things, being that I (foolishly, perhaps) chose to live in a major American urban center…with people that I love…rather than go all Walden on everyone. If, as Thoreau said, “A man is measured by the things he can leave behind,” then I have certainly inherited the dreaded “short gene.” I am too lazy to build a cabin in the woods and too antisocial to do anything else. I work all day at my mechanized job, and at night I lock myself inside a room and star into my computer. This soul-less, humming box that is certainly inhuman in its unfailing ability to do only what it is told.

I feel as if I have assimilated some of its less-enjoyable traits. I, too, seem to suffer from a bad habit of doing what I’m told, of acquiescing to other’s needs, of not getting what I want, or even knowing what that is. Of having nothing to want…or wanting only the impossible.

Jagger said, “If you try some times, you just might find you get what you need.” I will continue to try. Otherwise all of this is going to turn balls-up, into the sixth season of Buffy. And nobody wants that. That would just be maudlin.