The Pretend Boyfriend

http://goosebumps.wikia.com/wiki/Bride_of_the_Living_Dummy

When I was growing up, there were certain questions we weren't allowed to ask, like why our cousin John didn't get help for his obvious medical conditions that included a series of tics and hand-wringing rituals he HAD TO perform within certain time windows, or why our aunt was single for so long and lived with our grandparents. Of course, the only job she ever had was being an entry-level admin a mere block away from their condo development (which she drove to, because walking is for healthy people, suckers), and she slept on their pull-out couch in the living room. We knew they were sick people, but no one was allowed to talk about it openly or freely, because solving problems is also "taboo", especially if you're kind of an asshole, and they are.

Their fetishes and multiple life-long problems are always yours to solve for them, always, and any deviation from that established pattern of co-dependence unleashes their "inner bitch" like a heroin addict weaning off methadone. It wasn't worth the few visits we had to suffer through to even pretend to care about them anymore, when they so obviously didn't care about us or their own health. What was the point? Lapses in our natural childhood senses of curiosity created time frames they built into thick walls during our absences over the years to tend to our own lives, creating defense mechanisms made worse with time and deliberate neglect.

Even if we wanted to have normal conversations with my cousin, he's such a fucking dick, no one wants to. He's never done anything for anyone, ever. Not one card, or holiday gift, nor any kind of praise or acknowledgement from him (kudos can only go to him), unless he's forced to give us an awkward peck on the cheek (if the gathering is so small that he flares violently enough to attract attention, then my uncle goes over to him and whispers in his ear to make sure he resembles human customs), in case we didn't get the first thousand messages he telegraphed to us openly and without censure that he doesn't really give a shit if we live or die, just that he gets a pile of leftovers from us for free, because he has no friends, life, or cooking skills.

In fact, outside of his annoying trivia habit or compulsive train rides, there's absolutely nothing there for anyone. There is simply nothing beneath the surface. Once you get past the severity of his issues, you uncover a total selfish prick. Same thing with my aunt. After disarming her "raging bitch on steroids" act, you're left with a whiny little puke of a person, so it's not like we're peeling back layers of untruth to uncover the golden goddess within, or anything. She hoards cheap plastic crap from dollar stores, vomits from basic things like chairs that move slightly, getting "high" from junk food, soda, and hoarding, She's an evil little troll, which she knows, so that's why they came up with this whole diversion and ignoring routine; they don't want you to know how much they "soul-suck" from humans like you. But, we do know.

For years, my aunt pretended that her one boyfriend from college and the neighborhood (some kid we barely remembered from the 70s), "broke" her heart forever, because she deliberately ditched him night after night, leaving the plans that they'd all made together in the lurch on purpose, just to be a bitch to him and her supposed "best friend" (an average-looking blond girl, also local). They did the inevitable hook-up one night that was rigged by my aunt so she could milk it forever, because teenagers get together with enough time, booze, pot, and planning, if you leave them alone together often enough. Of course, she couldn't partake in any normal teenage partying, because she'll have psycho "bitch fits" in public, and that was the real secret: she didn't want to reveal the depths to her madness, even if that meant forcing her "bestie" and her boyfriend into a relationship that everyone knew she couldn't sustain anyway, due to illness and infirmity.

She's so inept at being "human", her old friends from back then left her company to get married in her marked absence, not reconnecting until they finally divorced many years (and kids) later. The old boyfriend probably thought he could finally collect on all that hot teenage sex they missed out on years ago (you know, because my grandparents were strict Catholics who kept an eye on her all the time, in between their fun senior cruises), and all those push-offs onto her friend, but no such luck. My aunt played it off like he just wanted "sloppy seconds". She just knew that their marriage couldn't last compared to their "true love", but it was pure bullshit. All of that manipulation and maneuvering around was simply to divert everyone from figuring out that she's secretly gay, but too fucked up to do anything about it, hence her unhappy reorienting of addictive energy into hoarding and mall trips for the insane, in lieu of genuine healthcare and real relationships.

All of those years of lies, spitting out curses, staged bitchy scenes with deliberately-done cold wars, tricks, and head games...just because some bitch no one likes is gay, and can't talk to the women she really likes. That's what all of their sickness that we were forced to absorb was about: their fucked-up gay shit, make-believe boyfriends and fake boyfriends be damned. I can't wait to find out what's hiding in the closet of the autistic kid. Shit, by now? Must be legions of skeletons in there, yo! Happy hunting today, freak-finders. Don't forget to vote. You know those freaks ain't registered for shit, let alone some primary. Too much work. Someone else can do it for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_apathy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fatigue

Philosophy 101

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker

Much like those oft-repeated stories about typical human corruption and still-horrible wastefulness, hurricane season comes every single year, though if you rely on most t.v. networks for schooling, you'd think that they just dropped out of the sky for the very first time. It's baffling to me as to why some people think that their audience is the same drug-addicted moron with ADHD (off their Ritalin), wide awake at four in the morning, and yet, the scam continues. Until network executives understand that we're not all dumb, rich, and white like they are, we will continue to suffer under the same delusional fantasies that persist with the mentally ill and their limited perceptions about, say, storm clouds, with this confusingly modern science called "Meteorology", something so insanely difficult that apparently only magical people with special superpowers can decipher its secret coding.

Until that one day when recognition finally dawns over the features of the disordered, we must suffer through their hypnotic cloud of confusion. With my friend Lisa, there aren't even the basics of "A,B,C" and "1,2,3", because German-American farm daughters from rural/suburban Minnesota apparently skate by on their finely honed bisexual cheerleading skills from high school, chased with copious amounts of alcohol. I didn't mind it, as much as I totally don't get it as a lifelong cultural reference, because drinking coupled with her perpetually confused pansexual identity questioning just ain't my bag, baby, in any century. She was (like most RISD-oids from that time) functionally illiterate, with a much lower IQ than the average college student, which made me continually question the high price tag attached to my supposed Ivy League education, but it's been cleared up in this century, thanks to pioneers in education like me. 

RISD students can now study Liberal Arts concurrently at an accredited Ivy school like Brown University, along with their art and design studies (I made my own program between my SUNY school of choice and RISD back in the day, because there were no programs for people like me), making for that essentially well-rounded student who needs to be multi-faceted to be a genius in this world. My former classmates don't have those star qualities, but they did(do) have inflated senses of self that blew up like the strong winds buffeting us as we walked around College Hill in the fall-time. 

Lisa is one of those farm girls who tries her hardest to appear sophisticated (she naturally adopted the typical "Art Fag" look that's necessary for Midwestern bumpkins who are in way over their heads), by pretending that she wasn't actually a country bumpkin from the Midwest, which only works if you're around other lying, cheating art school students who are Idiot/Savants* like you. I have no such luxuries in this life. Self-deluded behavior does absolutely nothing to further my cause. Needless, Lisa boasted about her scholarship in Fashion Design, because it's one of the least popular majors at RISD (why go there, when you can attend F.I.T. or Parsons for fashion), but it gave her an ego both crippling insecure and wildly arrogant at the same time; a manic/depressive rollercoaster ride that seemed to be up-and-down like the weather outside, except that the weather always wins, if you are ever dumb enough to challenge Mother Nature to a contest, which she is.

Me and my Armenian friend from Massachusetts wanted to go outside in the electrically-charged air for a thrill-ride, which Lisa tacked onto, like she did with all of my friends. She's that awkward third-wheel kind of kid who's too retarded to understand that you want to be alone for awhile, or "vibing" with your East Coast friend, or on a solo date with your boyfriend. She was exactly like that as an older, near-30 undergrad we took care of. And so, with eyes rolled, we let Lisa tag along with us. Like any kid, she was happy and a little freaked out at the same time. She enjoyed the really strong winds that blew the leaves and water directly into our faces, laughing at the static charge that put our little hairs on end. She found an old pair of jeans blown up against a wrought iron fence that drove her delirious with happiness for awhile, so we were glad. While she was occupied with her new object, we could talk and enjoy the spectacle in our more experienced fashion.

We took a turn through Providence's infamous Roger Williams Park, with me contemplating a lift over the tall fence that girded the park so I could stand on the edge of the statue, underneath his big outstretched hand for an unusual, impromptu, hurricane-season-only photo op (we decided against it after one or two tries, because it was way too tall for our short trio), so we turned around to leave the park. In a rather unfortunate (and also highly fortunate) coincidence, one of the biggest oldest trees in the entire park slammed down loudly to the ground, right in the spot where we had been standing just a few moments earlier. Uh oh...me and Ed were delighted with this rare sighting, with me present-minded enough to crack a joke about some broke-ass Philosophy 101 class at my SUNY school, when I took on the idiot Professor during his lame "tree in the forest" exercise, because it means nothing to an actual thinker like me: "There you go! Proof positive that trees actually do make a sound when they fall down, even if no one is around", or something like that. 

I love the wildness of our forests and raging Nor'Easter storms** like they are the salt in the blood that runs through my veins, but Lisa took a turn for the worst. No more giggling over an old pair of discarded jeans, no more joking about the current you could feel in the air...
no, she was like my young niece during a family ferry ride to the 
Aran Islands: at first all happy bouncy giggles, until that first brutal seasickness sets in. She grew pale and shaky, like the cushioned Midwest girl she really is: "Guys, I don't like hurricanes anymore. 
I want to go inside", less than a block from the big old house we were renting. OK, sure, no problem. Ed and I burst through the door to tell our stories to my housemates, excited as energetic young people always are, but Lisa was rocked to the core. 

She shut up quickly, nursing her de facto cup of organic hippie tea that's essential for nursing a person with such a delicate sensitive nature like hers through nervy encounters with big storms, in this brush-up with reality that her types do everything to avoid, like moving to the West Coast to assume a totally new identity, but that's a story for another day. Today belongs to the wet wilderness of this gloriously tempestuous, wildly beautiful East Coast Autumn that holds an eternal truth for me, and I wouldn't change a thing about it. Not one single thing. Enjoy the Fall weather this weekend, my dear friends, come rain or shine.



* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome
 ** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nor%27easter