The Game (August '07)

It's 4 pm and I'm walking across a parking lot under blistering sun. The official temperature is 100 degrees, but with humidity hovering in the high seventy-percent range, and with heat reflected off the blacktop, it feels like I'm tucked under the backside of Satan's scrotum.

I'm running on about 4 hours of sleep, having worked at the club the night before. I always try to get up at a normal hour on Saturday no matter how late I stay out working on Friday night. My ritual is probably unhealthy, but the exhaustion ensures that I get a good night's sleep on Saturday night and I'm well rested for church on Sunday morning. I'm a regular churchgoer, for those who didn't know. I'm well aware that I'm not the sterotypical Christo-zombie clone many have come to associate with the churchgoing crowd. Any pride I might take in that fact is tempered by the awareness that I'm a very deeply flawed individual. For all that I cherish my righteous indignation, the simple fact is that the average pew-filler is far ahead of me in many, many ways.

None of that matters here in the parking lot. I'm having a nice day out with the wife, and trying to stay focused on the moment. I say "trying" because my mind just won't slow down. The oppressive heat and humidity brings me back to last night. 88 degrees at midnight, 75% humidity, and I was working outdoors in a full suit and tie getup 'til four in the morning. I must have lost ten pounds, and I was barely moving. The job was actually a lot easier than usual. Less smoke, less noise, and a less feisty crowd thanks to heat-induced lethargy. One old man patted my backside on his way out the door, but even that wasn't anything more than an awkward moment and some quickly suppressed anger. He was leaving anyway, and never said a word, so what could I do?

I'm asking myself that very question as we continue to stalk our way across the softening blacktop. I stopped by the truck to drop off a shopping bag. I've just bought a few Hunter S. Thompson books that I've been anxious to read. I drop the bag on the floor next to the tuxedo I just bought for ten dollars. I have big plans for that tuxedo. I'm not sure I even know what those plans are yet, but my subconscious assures me that somthing epic may be in the offing.

Thompson is kind of a role model for me. I like my truth spiced with a dash of opinion and healthy dollop of the surreal. I value experience for the sake of experience. I laugh at the world because I just can't seem to muster up the effort to keep my head down and pretend that all of this is normal. Fuck it. Maybe it is normal, but it sure as hell isn't right.

So very little about how we live is really the way it ought to be, and still we keep our heads down and our mouths shut and pretend that this is all exactly what we were expecting all along. We ignore those alarm bells shrieking in the backs of our minds, screaming about wasted time, chances blown, and opportunities missed. We're afraid to stop and raise our heads above the current. We're afraid to stop drifting along. We're terrified that if we stop and look at our world without screening it through the filter of what we tell each other is the norm, we'll be left defenseless against the cold and unchangeable reality of that which is so very wildly out of our control.

I can't help myself. I think I've gotten addicted to that lack of control. I think I'm taking cold comfort in staring into that abyss. I'm swept along on a current more powerful than anything generated by the hand of man. I'm yanked under by the riptides of culture, education, social convention, law, chemicals, nature, and a hundered other circumstances that none of us can change. At best we can keep our eyes open and work our hardest to avoid the debris and the obstacles that litter the way. I've a habit of slamming headfirst into these hazards. As much as I might want to keep my head down and do what it takes to avoid conflict, I'd much rather rip my head above the current, laugh out loud, and scream in defiance of it all. I'm still getting carried along like everybody else, but I refuse to pretend that I don't know what's happening. I'm out of control, damn it, and I sure as hell won't pretend that I don't know.

All of this flashes through my mind in a matter of seconds as we stride from one commercial establishment to another. I laugh at the irony. I'm screaming at the immutable, and it's looking back at me with a grin. I can be disruptive, I can be subversive, and I can even be defiant, but the fact is that I'm still part of the scene.

A few more steps, and I'm through a door into an air-conditioned, concrete, steel, and glass box, one more in a long row of similar boxes lined up all around me. I drift back into the moment, and I embrace the comfortable numbness that we use to float through our every day. I slide back beneath the current, back into my insensate little cocoon--the shelter of the voluntarily oblivious. I am here to consume. I am here to smile and to laugh.

I am here to play the game.

Whether I like it, or not.