Editor's Note: This is a completely uncensored, unhinged look at where I'm at right now. I just finished Fake Accounts which, despite not liking it, inspired me to write about my life in a style similar to Oyler's candid dissatisfaction. I am okay, I promise.
Earlier this week, while scrolling Instagram, I saw a painting of a clown smoking a cigarette. Me, I thought, because I am incapable of thinking in full sentences and also because I am narcissistic enough to project myself into something asvequally sophisticated and removed (temporally and spiritually) as a 1914 Edward Hopper painting. Me, I thought, because it is not uncommon in 2021 to use "clown" as an insult or at least insult-adjacent. Urban dictionary: just a downright fool, someone who there's no other word for other than 'clown'...it explains how stupid they can be and how little you think about them. Okay, so maybe not me in that sense, but me in the sense that I frequently have no idea what I'm doing and subsequently have no idea what to think about my aforementioned lack of knowledge re: my own life and opinions. Also, the clown looks really sad. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it, but there's something soul-crushing about smoking in costume, right? Like, remember that time Barney-out-of-costume was caught smoking a cigarette, causing a subsection of parents who subscribed to FamilyFun magazine to create a petition demanding the actor be sent to Guantanamo Bay (I made that last part up, obviously)? I remember feeling sad for Barney, my kid brain unable to assign that sadness to a subconscious shame associated with doing something very adult (smoking) in the context of something very childish (a literal children's TV show). Anyway, let's not get into it because I think he turned out to be a sexual predator.
I started a job as a part-time bookseller. I spent the four-hour training learning how to use the register, look for books, restock shelves, etc. At times I felt useful, like when a woman asked for a copy of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and I immediately knew where to find it because I'm gay and also semi well-read. Other times, I felt like a clown smoking a cigarette, particularly when a woman demanded a refund after checking Amazon and learning she could have bought the same book for $10 less. I had no idea what to say. Like, no shit lady, have you been in a coma for the past ten years? Do you have no concept of what Amazon is doing to small businesses and community-oriented institutions? And that's not even addressing the global implications of increased optimization, corporate-funded politics, the accumulation of capital amongst a very small percentage of the world's population, etc. "The world sucks," I wanted to scream, "Why do you think I'm working here, dealing with your bullshit when I recently graduated from a top-tier university?" And then I realized: oh wait, I'm also an asshole. Why do I feel entitled to a certain type of life? Why do I feel embarrassed about the fact that I work a retail job? I'm not better or worse than someone else because of what I do (or, more importantly, what I don't do).
Here's the problem: I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm literally a clown, fumbling in the dark, trying to find a light switch. Even if that light switch illuminated a small portion of the room I'm in, a dusty corner, for example, at least I'd have a point of orientation. Right now I just feel lost in every aspect of my life. I don't feel confident in my ideas. I'm lonely. I feel sad all of the time and I don't know why. Sometimes the future feels untenable, a black hole where all our possible realities converge into nothingness, a mass accumulation of climate disaster and right-wing politics and capitalist over-reach. Other times I wake up and feel invigorated by this same maplesness, encouraged by the future's potential for reinvention. But this excitement, similar to the excitement of telling a person off for buying her books on Amazon, seems displaced and entirely selfish. In the future of my own making, I think only of myself. I am working in publishing as an editorial assistant, commuting to work from my small but well-curated studio apartment in Brooklyn. I carry a tote bag on the subway and smoke joints on a fire escape. I reunite with my ex-boyfriend, also living in New York, who is impressed with how much I've changed, how intelligent and self-assured I've become. I tell him about the bad times, times when touching my hand to a burning saucepan or letting go of the steering wheel while driving along a particularly curvy part of the road felt more real, no longer ghastly figments of my imagination but the real thing, a Paranormal Activity-type ghost that might actually make me burn my hand or drive off the side of the road. Wow, the ex-boyfriend would say, amazed at my ability to persevere, to make it from there to here. But "here" is nowhere because, as I mentioned, this is all a perverse fantasy of the future, one completely devoid of the political realities of the 21st-century. As I take the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, am I worried about the continuous erosion of the coral reefs in the Pacific? Am I happy, working this fake job? Is anyone happy? I wonder if my ex-boyfriend is happy. This entire post is, after all, about him. Or maybe not, I can't be sure. Like I said, I really don't know what's going on anymore. I'm completely lost.
Please, where's the light switch?
