All Too Easy

Last night I was reading a book, Will Self's "How The Dead Live", I had special ordered about three months ago and sort of never got around to reading more than a few pages of until, well, last night. I came across a line in it, "After all, anyone can be a success, but it takes real guts to be a failure."

I must of re-read that line... four times. Maybe its because I've been feeling like a failure lately. Maybe its because it seems like I've spent most of my life trying to succeed and failing spectacularly at it. Or maybe because I just didn't understand it, but I couldn't get that line out of me head. I don't know if I believe it. I don't know if I want to believe it. I guess I do. There is something magical about failing in life. Maybe I haven't really failed spectacularly as I said, but I haven't been able to get anything right in my life. Girls, jobs, school, its all my life really seems to have in its past and most of that is tainted with failure. I drink too much, I smoke too much, I eat too much crap and never exercise. Some people seem like they are good at everything they do, unfortunately there has to be a balance in this universe. Some of us have to suck at everything we try. Somewhere out there is someone cruising through life while I soak up all of life's crap for the both of us. Stupid mother-fucker. If I ever decode the universe and find out whose been living a life of success built on the back of my failures in life I'll totally kick their ass. Actually, they would probably kick my ass, as, you know, they would be succeeding where I was failing. Fantastic. Stupid universe, always making me look like an idiot.

I would like to be able to succeed in life, but there are a few things about such an event that I'm not too sure about. I mean, do I really want a job? No, I don't. I mean, if I can get away with it and still have money for important things, like diet coke and cigarettes. I'll grant that I am ridiculously lucky when it comes to money. I always seem to have enough. So am I really failing when it comes to getting a job? Sure, it'd be nice to be making money, but it doesn't always seem worth it to sit around and suck it up at a shitty job unless you really need to, unless the job leads to something you really do want to do. And since I really want to be a writer and there aren't a ton of jobs that promote you up to that position, maybe I am doing what I ought to be doing. And yeah, girls, I fucking love women. The feeling, unfortunately, is not mutual. But it just isn't in my personality to cruise women, to find someone who can make me happy for a night and then forget about them. So I take my time and try to work up to something that may have a little more longevity to it. But is that what I really want right now? I know married people around my age that are perfectly happy with that life. But I am no where near ready to get married, and frankly I'm not sure I could really handle a relationship right now. I'm unemployeed and all I'm doing is taking one class and I'll be struggling for the rest of the semester just to keep up with that one class. I don't even seem to see my friends all that often these last few weeks. Hell, if I can't find time for just a couple of things going on in my life, how the fuck could I start spending any time with someone else? Sure, I know I could find the time, maybe drop a couple of hours off of my television/movie watching schedual. Still, I'm a solitary creature. I was driving to breakfast this morning (where I sat alone reading the paper) and realized I'm probably going to be alone for the rest of my life. Right now that mother fucker thats living the successful version of my life is probably fucking three swedish bikini models. Hopefully I've had enough good luck in my life to at least make one of them a dude. That'll show that bastard.

The last couple of weeks I've been living this sort of fantasy life. In it the girl I have a crush on and I are living happily together about two years in the future. I've managed to get money together to open the bakery that she wants to open and I stand happily at the counter during the day while she bakes in the back and then in the afternoon I sit down and go over the books before we take off to go home together. It's a comfortable fantasy, it fits easily into my brain. But its purely fictional. I don't think any part of me really believes anything like that will happen, could happen. Could I really be happy just running a small business because its something she wants to do? A part of me must think it sounds nice. Maybe like slipping into a coma sometimes sounds nice. A mundane Americano day dream. We can drive our Ford back to our white-picket fenched home in the suburbs. Could I really live a life like that? I thought I could until a restless nights sleep in which lucidity took hold and I realized I'm probably more likely to get lost on some soul-searching trek in Indo-China than have something like that happen in my life. Though perhaps I am being to hard on myself. Maybe I could be a simple man with simple desires in life. Sometimes when I think of me and this girl getting together I can't help but imagine her stabbing me in the chest while I sleep. Not that I think she wants to kill me, but rather this is my brains way of saying "you don't deserve this, not even in fantasy, KNIFE!" A product of low self esteem. Many of my thoughts end like that. Some people say the way to get ahead in life is to imagine everything working out. I imagine everything working out and then immediately getting in a head-on collision with a semi. I imagine getting a job working for $100k a year and getting impaled on unusually large scissors. I don't intend to do this. But it happens. I remember sitting in a Denny's in Las Vegas with the Chitwood brothers and we were chatting about how we imagined ourselves dying (which was a fairly peppy conversation for such a morbid topic, as I recall) and I said "I'll probably fall in love with a crazy woman and then she'll stab me to death." The waitress walked up to refill our drinks at that moment, this little peurto rican woman, and she says "Oh! You talking about girls?" and she giggles, and I turn to her and say "Yeah, I'm gonna get stabbed by my girlfriend."

Maybe all those people are right. Maybe I can't get anything going in this life because I can't imagine getting anything right in this life. Or maybe Will Self is right. Maybe its easy to go for success and to go for these things in life because that is what everyone else is doing. That is a well worn path that is easy to follow. To follow the advice of those that get to sit in corner offices and say yes to everything until you get to the top. To sacrafice that part of your soul that says "maybe I should become a punk rocker" to go and sit in a cubicle for forty years. You let things fall into place and just do what you think is expected of you and, yeah, maybe you are going to be successful. But if you have any guts at all you just sort of wander off, maybe fall into a river and emerge on the other side covered in leeches only to find that you are now faced with a mountain lion. And a monkey with a bad-ass attitude who is riding the mountain lion. It may not make for a better life, but fuck all if it isn't more interesting.