Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in Last Days On Earth's LiveJournal:

Thursday, November 3rd, 2005
1:30 pm [scottcrawford]	December 2nd, Part Five OK, I'm off the boat. Now what? It's getting close to Noon, and I still haven't eaten anything, so I suppose I should eat, but I feel like I'm going to throw up already. Hardly conducive to one's appetite, though I've got a strange craving for a McDonald's vanilla shake. That will at least look cool if I throw it up on someone, so perhaps I'll give it a go. I think I want to get out of here before I do, though. This area of town is as alien to me as Staten Island was. I'm not so sure that I want to grab a cab just yet. The rain has turned into a relatively fine mist for the moment, so I have this overwhelming need to breathe the cool, damp air. So, I start walking along the edge of Battery Park, another beautiful place that might as well be on an island off the coast of Argentina for how remote it usually seems to me. A lot of this town is like that to me, and to most of us here. We put on our blinders, get into our ruts and routines, and we become oblivious to the entire world around us, even that which is within reasonable walking distance for more ambitious folks. I'd wager a guess that some of us who live uptown wouldn't have even noticed the fall of the World Trade Center had the buildings not been so goddamned tall. Those who have good air conditioning in their buildings and don't go out much would have even missed the smell of death, so while it's not exactly likely, it's entirely concievable. All it would have taken was a person without any friends who doesn't watch television or leave their apartment often. As I've been entertaining these warm, fuzzy thoughts, the rain has picked up again, so I think I'm going to take advantage of the 1 and 9 station which I'm just about up to. There's not too much that a person really wants to see down here on a rainy day once you get past the park, anyway. The feeling of being cold and wet tends to get in the way of the view after a while. So, I go underground, still completely undecided about where to go and what to do. I'd visit friends, but most of them are working, and I'm not ready to look any of them in the eyes yet. With it being the beginning of the month, I've of course forgotten to buy a Metrocard, so I have to hit a Metrocard machine. I start going through the motions of pressing the touch screen, when suddenly, the ordering menu disappears, and is replaced by the opening sequence of the video game "Double Dragon", where the bad guy walks up to the heroes' girlfriend (What was up with that arrangement, anyway? Did they share her? Did they even have interest in her that way? They might have been incestuous gay brothers who were just out to do right in this world. I don't know.) and punches her in the stomach before throwing her over their shoulder and taking off. Cute. Can I have my fucking Metrocard now, please? Thank you! Christ. I board the train, and see a copy of the New York Post on a bench, so I grab it and the seat next to it. I flip it over so I don't have to read about how the Yankees and my Mets are both failing to land any free agents thus far, and I see the headline on the front page. "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Run for your fucking lives, New York!" I jump. The few people who are in this car kinda look at me. It'd be pointless to try and explain it to them, as I've just looked back down at the front page, and the headline has changed to something about Paris Hilton's dog. Having actually met her dog at a party I went to for work, I can't decide which headline is scarier. I mutter "Sorry" as I slump down in my seat. They all go back to their private hells, and I return to mine. I'm going to have to endure a month of being fucked with like this? Ceasing to exist is starting to almost sound like a good idea. Wait, strike that. No, it isn't. I am going to die, if any of this is true. I. Am. Going. To. Die. So is everyone else on this train. That group of teenagers hanging near the poles who have obviously cut school just to hang out. The Latina sitting near the door with the crying baby. Those two investment banker-looking guys who are sitting further down the bench, having that damn election argument that everyone's been having since before the election. All of them. Everyone else I know, everyone I love, everyone I hate...we're all goners, and I'm the only one who knows about it, apparently. I'd think to myself that I'm crazy, but I know what I've experienced since that dream last night. Then again, I'm sure every other person who's ever gone totally off the rails like this has been confident that what they've been experiencing is reality, too. I just don't know what to do about any of it. I've got to get off this train. "Times Square Station, next station stop." That's my cue. Of course it is! The son of a bitch who's writing this is timing everything that happens to coincide with my thought process! I've still got to get off of this train as soon as I can. I feel it closing in on me. I've always heard about panic attacks from people I know who have them regularly, and I finally understand their descriptions. Every second we're spending travelling up this track feels like a lifetime. I feel colder now than when I was outside in the rain. I feel totally crowded, and totally alone at the same time. I've got to get out of here. The train stops. I bolt for the door. I've got to get out of here. I find myself jogging out of the station, trying not to bump into anyone because I hate when it happens to me, but the way I feel right now, if it meant being out of here right now, I'd kick over a wheelchair to do it. I'm almost up to street level now. I'm out. I'm out! I'm in the middle of the place from that dream, though! It's stopped raining, and there are people all over the place. This isn't any better than that train! I've got... "...to get OUT of here..." I can hear it blaring from the front door of the Virgin Megastore. I know that song. Damn it, I can't place it,. I have to stop to catch my breath for a second. I've got to get out of here. "...I'VE GOT...TO...GET...OUT OF...HERE!" Oh my god. Why the hell are they playing this on the PA outside a record store? OK, aside from HIM making them play it? That son of a bitch. "I'VE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE I'VE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE I'VE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!!" He's got them playing fucking "Ballad Of Dwight Fry"! I haven't heard this since high school! There's no logical reason for a Virgin store to be playing it! I can't believe this! The sick asshole is soundtracking my nervous breakdown! I look up at all the lights, all of the signs, and one of them goes black, and then reads "Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life!" I run. I run and I run and I can't breathe anymore but I just don't care. If I die now, I die. Let him kill me now. I make it back to my apartment building, walk up the stairs (there's no way I'm going to let him use the Muzak on me again), open the door to my apartment, walk in, and then it all...goes...b...l...a...c...k... (Comment on this)
1:14 pm [scottcrawford]	December 2nd, Part Four It has just started raining, and for the next hour, I will be stuck on one of two boats that I didn't plan on riding. I didn't have to walk into the terminal and get on a ferry, but for some reason, instead of just having a laugh on the way into the subway station about a cab driver's interpretation of how to get to one of the southernmost inhabited areas in the world, I did. Thankfully, I got down here after the worst of the morning rush was over, so there's a little bit of breathing room, and I manage to get a seat along the outside of the boat, facing the Statue of Liberty. It's going to get a little wet out here, and I should probably take cover, but I'm not going to. I need to be outside. I just need to breathe right now. I've just listened to the very Brooklyn-sounding announcer run through his spiel about safety, one I'm told was instituted after the ferry crash of a year or so back, and the ferry is moving toward its destination. The water is rough, and the rains have quickly picked up to where it's not much fun to be outside, so the few passengers that were near me have retreated to the interior of the boat. Me, I think I'll just sit outside, thank you very much. From the look of me, the folks just inside the boat, who are gazing out the window, probably think I'm going to jump in the river, and I'm a little surprised there isn't someone from the ferry crew actively keeping an eye on me. Then again, given what I know right now about this predicament I'm supposedly in, it could be a ploy to get me to try to jump. He'd probably cripple me, but keep me alive. I suddenly feel bad for every insect I tormented when I was a little kid who didn't know any better and wasn't watched well enough by my parents. I went through a phase when I was 5 or 6 where I would catch fireflies, and squash them so that their glowing bodies would make my fingers glow for a spell, not really having that broad of an understanding of what I was really doing by doing it. I'd had death explained to me (and experienced it through the early death of one of my grandparents), but then it was contradicted by the fact that everyone around me killed insects without a second thought. 'Death is bad, killing is bad, ew, a bug, step on it!' It's funny, I never see fireflies anymore in the summertime, and I miss the hell out of them. Beautiful little creatures. If what I've been told is true, I'll never see them again, and as that hits me, it's as hard to deal with as anything else I've had time to think about this morning. The ferry has arrived in Staten Island, and like the tourists do on nicer days, I walk right off of the ferry I rode here on, through the waiting area, and onto the next departing ferry to Manhattan. What the hell am I going to do in Staten Island? Yeah, I didn't think you had any answers to that one. Even if you're in Staten Island and reading this, you're watching me hustle through that terminal and thinking "Go, man!" I find another outside seat once I've boarded, and have the rain blown in my face as I wait for the boat to leave the terminal again. This sure isn't the Falklands. No penguins at all. I'd love to see Argentina's army try to take this place, though. The landing party would be met by a bunch of big, angry Italian men, leaning up against their IROCs and holding two-by-fours. They'd shit their pants. That, I'd get off the boat for. Finally, the boat is beginning to move again. I was beginning to worry that I'd be stuck here forever, and it was only ten minutes. Time's passing extraordinarily slowly today. I wonder why. Part of me thinks I should have brought my laptop with me or something. Yeah, great idea. I know that they make waterproof laptops, but I somehow doubt that Apple's doing it on any kind of a wide level and not telling us. Still, it'd be great to see if I could get a wireless signal out here and look at pornographic web sites with a stunning view of the East River and the New York City skyline as a backdrop. Maybe I'll cache some for offline browsing and come back here, just in case the signal doesn't happen. Of course, now that I've zoned out thinking about porn, an old lady has walked outside and taken a seat near me. She appears to be in her seventies, but not too weathered, as the old folks go. She's bundled up pretty heavily (as I should be), and is carrying her belongings in a Strand bookstore bag. We're both clearly aware of each other, being the only two fools who are out on the deck right now, but neither one of us is making any contact with the other. Now that I've abandoned my laptop idea, I move on to a wish for a newspaper, which would also be a fiasco in this weather, possibly worse than the laptop because of all of the wind. I just feel naked with this person sitting near me, and me not having anything to occupy myself. I've got this great view, even in the rain, and a person to talk to not ten feet away from me, but somehow, none of that's good enough. It's just that I'm already communicating with an audience of voyeurs, and I've had one hell of a morning. I don't know what I'd say, exactly. "Hi, I'm fucking crazy!" doesn't seem like a good ice breaker here. If she asks me how I'm doing, I'll be equally stymied, because "Aside from the fact that I was told by a higher power that this universe and everyone in it, including us, will cease to be in a month, I'm doing just great!" also might have her on her cell phone to the Department of Homeland Security quicker than you can say "psychotic episode". That's something else I wonder about all of this. I'm going to have to live with this knowledge that I have for the next just-shy-of-30 days. If I tell anyone, will they believe me? "Actually, no." Oh, MAN. Can I have a moment's peace without you eavesdropping? I've already got all these other pricks gawking at me. "I'll certainly give you your share of time without me, but you brought up an important point I forgot to address earlier." Is it at least alright if I don't talk to you out loud? "Sure, kid. Do what you like. Besides, you've already decided that you don't want to freak out that poor woman you keep looking over at suspiciously while you shake because you were too dumb to grab a heavier coat on the way out the door." Oh, shut up. So, no one's going to believe me if I tell them what you've told me, then? "You can certainly try. Knock yourself out! Even if I told a lot of them, though, I'm not sure if the ones I'd tell would believe you, because they'd be wrestling with their own doubts, fears, and paranoias about it, just like you are. I'll put it to you this way: even before you found out that you and your universe didn't actually exist, it would've been a hard sell, and now that you know, and especially now that I know you're thinking about telling people, you're going to have a real bitch of a time convincing them. Think about it. Half of the people in your immediate vicinity just voted for a guy who essentially puts all of his faith in ME. If he had any idea who I am or what I'm about, he'd cut out his tax breaks and start buying Kool-Aid with the money, and once they got wind of it, they'd spend longer in line to drink it than they did to vote for him! We won't even get into the ones who still want Creationism taught in schools! Tough crowd, man! Anyway, I'm off to be shot down by girls I like via instant message. You have fun, y'hear?" Rot in hell. "Mwah!" Damn him. The boat is pulling back into the Whitehall terminal. I missed most of the ride this way. Of course, nothing says that I can't just sit on the boat and go back to Staten Island (the ride, after all, is free), but I think I've gotten myself soaked enough for one day. I stand up and meekly wring my coat out a bit. It's not soaked, but it's a little damp and cold. As I do, the old woman walks past me, smiles like a grandmother would, and says "See you on Monday!" to me. Either she's crazier than I am, The Author's fucking with me again, or I've got a date on Monday morning. I shake my head, and walk off the boat. (Comment on this)
12:46 pm [scottcrawford]	December 2nd, Part Three December 2nd, Part Three I make a left out of my apartment building, and head up toward 2nd Avenue to get a cab, because the weather kind of sucks. It's a chilly, windy day and rain looks like it could be showing up any second. It's that sort of day you always see in movies when they do a funeral scene. Normally, I take the subway, but after my morning so far, I really don't want to be that close to that many people right now. I'm not even sure where I want to go once I hail the cab, but I need to be as far away from my apartment as I can right now. If I had more money on me, I'd ask the driver to take me to the Falkland Islands. Christ, I'm falling right "into character" here. This is terrible. In the matter of a few hours (give or take a dream), I've gone from someone who had a basically normal life, to an apparently sick person who hears voices and thinks like he's narrating some trashy novel from the 80's. The thing is, I have this gut feeling that it isn't a sickness now. Like I said earlier in my conversation with The Author, I can feel The Audience looking at me. It's a really unsettling feeling. Are you all happy? I'm unsettled! Yeah, you! I see you out there, laying on your stinking Ikea couches, eating those weird organic blue nachos! Don't think I don't know you are! You get to be entertained by this crisis of sanity I'm having, and I get to live it, knowing that there's a possibility of a bunch of smarmy, long-monied NYU kids someday, kids who are just like I was when I was at NYU, debating what The Author really meant by all of this. The Author didn't mean a goddamned thing! This is MY LIFE we're talking about here! Oh, wait, here's a cab. We'll get back to this in a minute. "Where you headed?" "Falkland Islands." "Sure thing." The driver, as if nothing is unusual about my request, just starts driving down 2nd, and continues to listen to 1010 WINS. "You give us 22 minutes, and we'll bring you to the brink of suicide before we LAY ON THE CUTE with an animal story and bring you right back for some more." But where was I? Oh yeah. I was trying to make you all feel like shit for reading this, if you are indeed reading this. I think I made my point with that for now, though. I'll take a Brillo pad to your conscience again the next time this gets to me. The driver hops on the FDR Drive, continues to head South, and eventually ends up at the Staten Island Ferry terminal. "Here you are, buddy. That's $16.80" he says, as I hear the receipt printing and Rudy Giuliani thanking me for riding. Despite this minor annoyance (though it wasn't as bad as when he called me on Election Night and asked me to vote for Bush; oh, if only that wasn't a recording...), I throw the driver a twenty, because he got me here fast and didn't ask any questions. (Comment on this)
12:41 pm [scottcrawford]	December 2nd, Part Two There. I showered. I'll bet you were expecting a laundry list of all the personal hygiene and cleaning products I use, weren't you? Well, it isn't going to happen! If this really is a story, then we've already spent way too much time alluding to and referring to another story in it. Let's get this straight right now. I'm not going to slit some little kid's throat at the Central Park Zoo, I never rent video tapes, I actually don't carry a business card, and Dorsia is fucking CLOSED. I just took a fucking shower. This will not devolve into some obsessive-compulsive, stream of consciousness essay about which products I endorse, so you can all go straight to hell if you were looking for one. I'm just going to step out of the shower now, and wipe off the mirror...oh, what is this now? There's a note taped to it. "Man, that book must have really pissed you off! Alright, fine. I get it! No more "American Psycho" references! At least not in this chapter, heh. Your Pal, The Author" OK, now, wait a second. I have this note in my hand, and that's one piece of physical evidence that this is happening. If I go into the other room, the clock radio should still be on the nightstand, since the goddamned thing was bolted down. Let's see...nope! Gone! Son of a bitch! He said the thing was going to play "Man In The Mirror" every morning, though, so what gives? Is it going to magically re-appear tomorrow morning, and if so, will it do so at the same time? That would REALLY suck if so. 7:30 AM is no time to wake up. I'd say that this is one hell of a practical joke, but how does someone take part of a practical joke into the dream state? I don't feel drugged. I'm definitely awake. I don't want to keep repeating myself, but if you were me, you would too. You would retrace your steps a thousand times, trying to make sense of this. I've been awake for 2 hours, and already, this is the longest day of my entire life. How am I going to explain any of this to anyone? What am I going to do if, in fact, this really is what's going on here? I've basically been told that I'm going to die along with everything around me in no time at all. I should be telling people, but how do you tell someone something like that? They're going to think I'm crazy! Wait, I am. I fucking am. That note's gone, too. I put it down for a second on the bed so I could grab a pair of pants and a shirt, turned around, and now it's gone. To hell with my email for now. I've got to finish getting dressed and get out of here for a bit. I feel like I'm in a cage right now, being poked at and prodded by scientists. I'm being fucked with on a profound level, and if I don't get some air and see some people soon, I'm going to start banging my head against a wall. There. I'm done, and I am out of here. The elevator door opens, and after walking in and instinctively pressing the "L" and "Close Doors" buttons, I recognize the opening strains of what's on the Muzak, those opening notes...you guessed it, it's "Man In The Mirror" again. I scream "YOU SON OF A BITCH!", and the door to the elevator opens at the word "BITCH!", with my next-door neighbor Ed standing in front of it. Ed is an old guy, in his early 80's, who pretty closely resembles Abe Vigoda. He responds to my "BITCH!" in his gruff, weathered voice simply with "Breeder." You see, Ed's also gay, and practically an institution in the New York gay community as one of its most active older members, though he routinely receives shit from the young'uns for living so far uptown. "Sorry, Ed, that wasn't meant for you. I dropped my new cell phone, and I just got the thing last week." "Well, you're still a breeder", he responds wryly, and he enters the elevator as I exit, feeling even more like a fool than I did when I was in my apartment and couldn't hurt anyone. As I walk out the door, I wonder how many more people I'll manage to alienate today. (Comment on this)
12:35 pm [scottcrawford]	December 2nd, Part One "I'm gonna make a change...for once in my life..." HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON JESUS CHRIST FUCKING THING IS BLARING MUST KILL!!!!! OK, wait, deep breath. What's going on here? The clock radio's blaring! No big deal...wait. I can't find the on/off switch on the clock radio! Wait a second! What the fuck is this clock radio doing here in the first place? I don't own a clock radio! Why is it playing "Man In The Mirror"? Oh, whew, there's a volume knob...but it won't go down! And the CD door is stuck! Fuck!!!!!!! "Whoo! Whoo!" OK, this is fucked. This fucking thing's bolted down to my nightstand! Oh...wait. The song's over. Let me see...oh, holy fuck. The on/off...no. It couldn't have... "...just appeared?" ... Oh, no. Oh, no, no no. You have got to be fucking kidding me. That dream... "...wasn't actually a dream, chief. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life! How do you like your new clock radio? I picked it out myself!" I can't fucking believe this. No. This cannot be happening. I must still be asl...OW!!! "Man, you have some vivid dreams if you can feel yourself stubbing your toe like that when you're asleep! Sorry 'bout that. Just wanted to make sure you were awake. So, it's 7:40 AM, and you're wide awake now. What are you going to do with your first day? You've only got 30 of these babies, so make 'em count!" No. "'No'? Fine, suit yourself! Go back to bed! If you want, I can make you sleep through the whole 30 days! Or I can just toss this text file in the "Recycle Bin", and write some other story, maybe one about an ordinary guy who becomes God and saves the world from itself or something. Can I just tell you how much I hate the fact that Microsoft used "Recycle Bin" for their "trash", while we're on the subject? What a load of hippy crap!" NO. "Dude. Calm down. Seriously. We're never going to get through this if you panic now. Hell, the readers, and say hello to them when you get a chance, are going to think you're a pussy in the first couple pages if you go batshit before you're even completely out of bed on the first day!" Wait. Oh, no. You're right. They are out there. I can feel them looking at me. Staring at me. Oh, God. Some of them are even mouth-breathers. "Hey, be nice! Don't make the thinner skinned ones turn on you right out of the gate. You're going to want them around later! So, I have to ask..."Man In The Mirror". Was that a beautiful touch or what?" Why...are...you...doing...this? "I explained that already, unless you mean the alarm clock. That, well...a long time ago, I used to have this fantasy about waking up every morning to "Man In The Mirror", just to see what sort of effect it'd have on my psyche. You know. Repetition, combined with this song about a guy waking up and making a difference in his life. Of course, in Michael Jackson's case, he was (allegedly) thinking about changing from one hairless boy to another, but that's another story. I ended up experiencing a vaguely similar thing later on in life (the repetition, not the hairless boys), when I was working retail in a store that had their muzak on a 3 hour loop. Every 3 hours...sometimes, it'd be 3 times in my shift if I timed it just right, Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love Of All" would play. Yeah, I know. You're probably assuming that this is going to be another "American Psycho" reference, and I can't blame you after the Alison Poole thing from your dream last night, but no, this actually happened. Anyway, I hate that song, but after a while, when you hear something constantly like that, it worms into your brain...it festers. It's really terrible, almost like a form of psychological torture or brainwashing or something. Once it got in there, I'd be walking around the store, and when it'd come on, I'd start to perk up a bit, sort of have a knowing, satisfied chuckle to myself, like 'Oh yeah, here it is', and when Whitney went for that big, money shot "MAH DIG-NA-TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" as she was about to bring it home, I'd always get down on one knee and pump my fist rhythmically in time with each syllable of it. I felt dirty doing it every time, but it was an amazing rush! The only other comparable experience I ever had was in my first retail job. I worked in a mall then, and there was this "best hits of the 80's and 90's" radio station located in the mall, so they'd pump that crap through the speakers 24 hours a day, even past closing time, so the night security people had to deal with it too. The store I was in was right above an ear piercing place, so I'd have to contend with the sound of screaming babies being mutilated by an ear piercer mixed with Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" every single day. That's some mash-up, eh? Oh, look at me, talking your ear off! I'm wasting valuable time during which you could be living your life, and you're a totally captive audience while I'm still typing! You can't walk off until I type 'I walk off' in your character, so when I do start babbling like this, you're screwed! Anyway, to finish the story and make some connection to the point I was trying to make, I'm sort of going for something like that with the "Man In The Mirror" thing. You're going to wake up to it every day for the next month whether you like it or not, just because I think it'd be kind of funny to fuck with someone like that. We cool?" You motherfucker. "Bitchin'. Wow, jeez, look at the time. It's 8 AM already! I should let you do whatever it is that you plan on doing for the rest of your day! " ... "Well, you do have a life...kinda. There are things you can do, and some things you probably have to do. Hell, you can at least bathe. If you need me...oh, hell, I'll know when you're talking to me, rather than to yourself or to THEM. Seeya!" Unfuckingbelievable. Just unfuckingbelievable. My life has suddenly turned into some kind of fucked up transmutation of an "Oh God!" movie. And my toe still hurts, so I know I'm not still dreaming, and if I'm hallucinating, then someone slipped me some REALLY good shit. And I'm still thinking out loud as if there's an audience, because the voice I heard in my dream last night, that apparently wasn't so much of a dream, told me that there is one. Well, if I do have an audience, fuck you all very much. There, that's my first real attempt to connect with you all. Fuck you all very, very much. I've always heard stories of what it's like to go crazy. Usually, if you're not born that way, there's some event that happens during your formative years that sets it off, or you have some sort of adverse reaction to stress as an adult. Well, my childhood was fucked up, but whose wasn't? I don't think that's it. I also can't remember the last time I was under any real stress. Maybe that's it. Just about anyone my age who lives in this city is living paycheck to paycheck, getting worked to death by their corporate massa, they're in the middle of a bunch of relationship hassles, and they're trying to get through it all with some cocktail of booze, nicotine, and drugs both legal and illegal. (As a rule, the legal ones seem to be the more dangerous ones.) Me? Until I had that dream last night, I had no worries to speak of. Maybe he wasn't bullshitting me about my life being some made up fairy tale. My columns always get sent in before deadline. I basically get paid about a grand a week to look around and write down what I see, because people have latched onto my line of bullshit. Because I do what I do, my entertainment needs are more or less taken care of. Shows? Drinks? Media of whatever variety I'm in the mood for? If I need it, it gets sent to me, and if it can't be, chances are pretty good that I can make it happen cheaply or for free. This reminds me, I need to line up Tears For Fears tickets for New Year's Eve. Wow, shit. Hold on. If all this craziness is really true, that will be the last thing I see before I cease to be. I'm going to have to think on that a bit. I always pictured myself being buried alive by obese nude women, cocaine, and cheesesteaks if I had to pick my spot. Tears For Fears? Sure, the new album is FANTASTIC (and why couldn't that son of a bitch have picked THAT instead of "Man In The Fucking Mirror"?), but I don't know if that's how I want to die. I'll keep it in mind, anyway. Christ, where was I? Oh yeah, my life. My co-op is about the size of one of those capsule hotel rooms in Japan, but it's MY capsule, and it's worth a ton more than I paid for it a few years ago. It has a bed in it, where I usually sleep these days. It has room for just enough shelves to keep things from getting cluttered. It's got a great bathroom. The bathroom may be bigger than the rest of the apartment, and it's got this charming '70s-era blue and silver wallpaper. I thought about getting rid of it when I moved in, but fuck it. It's still in beautiful shape (the previous owner was a dead person who never went to the bathroom), and it's entirely too "The Ice Storm" to part with. It's also got one of those little kitchenettes for those extremely rare moments when I actually decide to cook. It's got a window sill I can keep my plant on. There's some wall space to hang things up on. I need to hang more things up, actually. The only thing I have up right now is the cork letter "J" that's been on my wall practically since I was born, wherever I lived. I don't know why I keep it, but I do. A friend of mine once said "Mary Tyler Moore has an 'M', and you have a 'J'", so maybe that's it. It's a reminder of who I am and where I came from, even if, as "The Author" says, it's all bullshit anyway. I'd really like to believe otherwise right now. I don't feel like I'm in some tank filled with warm goo. I've never walked into a building and had someone say "Greetings, Program!". I really hope that I'm just having a moment here, and my life isn't a conversation between two stoned metalheads that went way too far. I'm not seeing anyone seriously at the moment, but I'm not totally alone, either. I have people that I spend time with, and some of them are pretty okay. There are women in my life. Honest, Mom! I'm not gay! "Not that there's anything wrong with that." (For those interested, our next tour of Clicheville leaves the station in 15 minutes, making stops at Inaneworld, The Enchanted Land Of Irony and Williamsburg on the way to our final destination.) I like a few of them, but for now, I've been keeping them at arm's length, more for their protection than mine. I just haven't felt like making up my mind lately. I don't want to promise anyone anything, and then turn around and decide that Truly Wonderful Girl B is a better idea than the Model A, who's already working on our gift registry 2 months into a for-real relationship. This also means that I masturbate a lot, but...fuck, why am I thinking about all of this? Am I just thinking out loud, or is this whole "thing", for lack of a better word, making me act like someone on reality TV who just remembered that the cameras were on? Well, like them, I'm actually not deep at all. That should be obvious to anyone with a brain. I'm not the guy with the tortured soul, I don't do very much searching for the meaning of life, and...you know what? Fuck this. I'm just thinking myself into a corner here. Maybe this shit I'm being fed is true, and maybe it isn't. It probably isn't. I'm probably just sick or something. Maybe I did get slipped some drugs at Lit when I was there last night. I hate that place. Yeah, I'm going to take a shower, then I'll saunter over to the computer and see what the Internet is shovelling my way today. Do you hear that, readers? I'm announcing my intentions! Aren't you excited? Shit. I'm totally buying into the hype on this. And my toe still hurts. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005
2:31 pm [scottcrawford]	Prologue-Evening of December 1st "I'm afraid that I've got some bad news for you." I hear these words, not knowing who or where they're coming from. I am standing in the center of Times Square. Strangely, it's lit up as it normally is, but it is completely empty and dead silent except for the echo of those words. Hey, wait a second. Why the hell am I narrating what I assume must be a dream, and who am I narrating it for? "You're narrating because your story is a first-person narrative. Without you, no one is around to tell your readers what's happening as it happens." The same voice. It's strangely familiar, but at the same time, it's not exactly one I think I've heard before. Its tone is somewhere between thoughtful and condescending, if that makes any sense. OK, since this is a dream anyway, I'll play along. Who are you, what are you doing in my dream, and who are "my readers"? "Slow down, man. One thing at a time here! You haven't even asked me what the bad news is yet." Lovely. This is going to be one of these, isn't it? I swear, if I could see him, my bastard subconscious (who I have to assume that this is) would be smirking. Fine! Tell me the bad news! "Well, it's pretty big, so rather than pussyfooting around, I'll just drop it on you. You're a fictional character." I think I'm going senile or something. The voices in my dreams are getting all existentialist on me. Christ, why am I still narrating? "Because, if you don't, the people reading this will just see a blank page. Not too compelling, if you ask me. If you're lucky, maybe they'll draw pictures of stick figures fucking on that blank page, but more likely, they'll just stop attempting to read the story, assume the whole book is a misprint and put it down or throw it away." OK, this is totally ridiculous. "What, do you have something against stick figures fucking? I can see I've got a live one here, oh yeah. For your information, buddy, without drawings of stick figures giving the high hard one to one another, there would be no art! It was the foundation of all visual media! You see, it all started when a young caveman watched a bunch of his buddies diddle some cavewoman. He was late to the party and still a bit young and small, so he didn't get to join the pile-on, but he started masturbating while he watched them do the heavy lifting. When he came, he fell to his hands and knees, and his pecker ended up in the dirt. A moment later, after he regained what passed for his senses, he noticed that his pecker was where it was, and had left a mark! Still watching the gang bang, he started dragging his cock around in the dirt, making designs. This amused him for a few moments but then, he had an epiphany! He should try to draw a design that looked like his friends fucking the woman! He scribbled in the dirt for a bit, though it became difficult toward the end as he became increasingly flaccid, but he managed to come up with a reasonable looking stick figure facsimile of about 20 cavemen fucking a woman. He was proud, but then one of the cavemen was thrown clear of the pile-up and landed on his draw..." Enough already! Alright, now I'm pissed. "Pissed? Great! Anger is a terrific catalyst for plot and character development! Talk to me here. What are you pissed off about? Is it that bullshit I just made up about the caveman drawing with his cock? If so, jeez, what a sour puss! I thought that was some inspired material! Oh well. Whatever it is, it's small potatoes compared to what you'll be pissed about by the time you 'wake up'. Hell, you don't even know how deep this runs yet. You're probably still laboring under the delusion that this is only a dream, rather than the beginning of the book." I sigh, resign myself to the fact that, at least for now, I'm still narrating my dream as if there were an audience to explain it to, and say "OK, subconscious, let me have it!" in the same voice Kent uses in the movie "Real Genius" right before the Jiffy Pop gets lit up by the laser. "Good reference. The target demographic of this story will LOVE it. Anyway...as I said, you're a fictional character, and while this is a dream, it's also the start of your story. You know those 30 years, give or take a month, that you have all those memories of? It's all bullshit, kid. I needed some plot devices and a basic character profile for you, so I made them all up. All those experiences...all that hard work, all your happiness, all your pain, that blowjob you got from that girl after the Portishead concert a few years back? None of it ever happened. You're essentially a blank slate in the story of your own life, aside from a few trivial details. Obviously, you know what Times Square looks like. I don't have to explain what a caveman was, or what a gang bang was. I don't think I do, do I?" NO. "Fantastic. As I was saying...you've seen the movie "Real Genius". You know what Jiffy Pop is. You're 30 years and a month old, You know who Portishead are. You've seen them live, and you got a blowjob from a girl after the show. You don't even know who the girl is. She could be anyone." That's not true! She...she...oh, fuck. "Exactly! May I continue?" Fuck. "As I was saying...I've created a rough set of memories for you, and I'll be developing them over the next month as we're writing your story." Wait a second. "...as we're writing your story"? "Do you have to interrupt me so much? At this rate, I'll never finish it in time, in which case I'll look like a fool in front of the people who I promised I'd finish it for, and you'll be stuck in the middle of it with a hard-on and a bunch of angst stemming from a lack of closure. FOREVER. Here's where the bad news gets even worse. You see, I'm on a deadline. I only have one chance to write this story, and I only have one month in which to do it. Win, lose, or draw, this means you've only got a month, too. You heard me. You have exactly one month in which to live your life. When that month is up, you, everyone you know, everyone else in this currently-empty replica of Earth, and even this lovely, nauseatingly neon replica of "the crossroads of the world" will cease to be. All gone. Can I go on to the part about the audience, so you don't keep questioning why you're narrating, or do you need me to go back over what I've just told you, using words that you can understand?" Jesus fucking Christ. "Oh no, I'm much worse than that. I'm The Author." And I'm some asshole who's going to laugh his face off over this dream tomorrow when I wake up from it. "Don't push your luck, kid, or you won't wake up. I could always get bored of arguing with you, and replace you with some acting student named Alison. If Bret Easton Ellis got away with stealing her from Jay McInerney for one of his books, I'm sure I could probably slide by here. Come to think of it (and I just may), I'd actually be able to get myself off a hell of a lot easier while thinking of material for the story if there was some foxy, rich, neurotic acting student as the lead instead of you." So let me get this straight. Not only am I a fictional character with 30 days left to exist, but I'm a fictional character in a book that's being written by a compulsive masturbator who's read McInerney and Ellis? "There's obviously quite a bit more to it, but you're starting to get a grasp on what's afoot here." And even though this feels like a dream, it's actually happening? I'm not going to wake up, remember some vague details of it, and gradually forget it over time like I have every other dream... "You haven't had any other dreams. You just think you have, because it'd be pretty hard for me to write a dream sequence if you didn't understand what dreams were. Besides, assuming that I'm just a figment of your imagination rather than you being one of mine, do you remember a conversation happening in any of your dreams that was this vivid, went on this long, or went into this much depth about a subject?" Tell me about the audience. "Fucking godhead! Finally, some cooperation. Didn't even have to get out the spurs! Anyway, there's an audience. I'm not writing this story for my own personal gratification. We've already covered what I do to achieve that. I am writing this story for an audience that you, grudgingly or not, are already aware of. You are a fictional character in a first-person narrative, but one who's aware of not only The Author but also The Audience. You've got a chance to appeal to them, make them sympathize with you, make them hate me, or make them feel whatever you'd like them to. If you want to bore the shit out of them and make them hate reading this story, go right on and try it, but know that I'll be more likely to want to finish a story about a compelling character. If we both do this right, a whole lot of people will get to know you, and make you a part of their lives. After yours is over, of course. We'll both be famous, and I'll be..." ...a dead man if I ever get my fucking hands on you, you pathetic, manipulative cretin. "Whew! Good thing that won't happen, eh? That whole "I exist and you don't" thing sort of throws a monkeywrench into that plan. Who are you calling "pathetic", anyway? You're the one who's lived this long without doing anything! I'm doing you a favor here, really. If you were a real person, you'd be pretty fucked at the age of 30, making just enough money to maintain that ridiculous lifestyle of yours, not having made any progress at all on starting a family, and not really doing anything of substance with your life! I mean, c'mon, you're a columnist for one of those free weeklies that the homeless people use as bedding! People like you are a dime a dozen nowadays! The only reason you have this job in the first place is so I don't have to think too hard about things like workplace politics within the context of this story, and because it's a really convenient framing device for the events of the next month. You could be doing so much better than you are if you were actually a real person with a soul, rather than just a bunch of text that I'm writing in the interest of padding my resumé. I'm giving you a chance to be that person, though, and to plead your case to the audience, Humbert Humbert style. You'll get to convince them that I am a pathetic, manipulative cretin, and that you are a person of some worth. Or, you could just live out the last 30 days of your life with them watching you the whole time, and me busting your balls whenever the story needs a pick-me-up. So, talk to me while I'm still in the mood to write. What else would you like to know? No? Great! Well, then...wake up!" (2 Comments |Comment on this)