ISBN: 9781631920066

Dedicated to women and misogynists everywhere

"Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to make them alive, but I'm just a fucked up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours."

-Clementine Kruczynski, Eternal

Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I guess my main question in life has always been: Why the fuck is everyone so into it? Into work, into appearances, into acting a certain way—the whole gamut of exercises in pointlessness. It's a query that has perpetually stayed at the forefront of my mind and the most probable reason for why I'm in a terrible relationship and trapped in a dead-end office job that requires zero effort or thought. I always presumed I would one day be cured of this apathy disease, fall in line with the rest of the enthusiastic lot that I seem to encounter at every turn. But it never happened. I suppose one might subsequently wonder why I don't just commit suicide if I'm so damn disinterested in life's offerings. Well, that's not really appealing either. I'd rather just wait out this life thing in a hazy stupor to see if anything worthwhile ever happens. Plus, someone who is full of love tends also to be full of hate. That's why I prefer stoicism and indifference. It allows for neutrality.

I usually ride my bike to work each day. Because I'm so detached, I find the movements effortless and the occasional hills a non-challenge. Every morning before I leave, my girlfriend, Jane, makes me a fried egg on an English muffin. I know I should appreciate her more, but she's just so fucking pathetic that I can't. She doesn't have a job, but instead chooses to live off her parents' money under the guise of using it to make jewelry, for fuck's sake. But she doesn't ever make me eat her out and she does all the cooking, so how can I really break up with her? Before I left this morning she kissed me and said, “Greg, you look so nice today.”

Her compliment disgusted me and I had to turn away as she tried to kiss me on the mouth. I grabbed my bike and practically ran out of the door. If I stayed in that apartment another second, I was going to end up saying something offensive to her. She was just so eager to please, so goddamn obsequious that it made me want to go out and fuck a prostitute.

At work, I pretended as though I was doing something for the first three hours, then I completed the one task I had to do in an hour and went to lunch at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park so I could drink copious amounts of beer in an ambient park setting. Drinking beer during the workday is the only thing that ever calmed me, made me feel like I wasn't totally wasting my life by giving my dick and balls to the man. I usually liked to read while I sat in the park; it was an activity that tended to get the right woman to notice you: A blend of smart, insecure and not utterly obsessed with shopping.

That day, I was reading This Side of Paradise because F. Scott Fitzgerald attracts women the most easily. The trick is not to choose something as cliché as The Great Gatsby and not something as emotionally disturbed as The Crack-Up. It's a foolproof method every time—which is why I wasn't surprised when a brunette (it's never a blonde, because women like my girlfriend are blonde) sat next to me nonchalantly and casually glanced at the title of what I was reading. She leaned in a little bit and said, “That's my favorite Fitzgerald.”

I stopped myself from rolling my eyes and responded, “Yeah, it's great. Amory and Rosalind are Fitzgerald's best representations of himself and Zelda.”

She looked as though she might have orgasmed upon hearing my generalized, bull shit assessment. She took it upon herself to turn my reply into an invitation, inching closer to me to say, “Do you mind if I point out a particular passage to you?”

“How about you tell me your name first? I can't let a complete stranger break down This Side of Paradise for me.” I felt mildly repulsed by my artificial flirtation.

She did this thing that women tend to do—which is pretend to be shy by affecting some sort of character quirk, in this case, putting her hair behind her ear. “My name is Elizabeth,” she said after what seemed like an eternity.

I hated that name. “What a beautiful name,” I responded.

She smiled expectantly, as though she knew I would be impressed by her moniker. She then took the liberty of removing the book from my hands and turned the page somewhere near the end (the best quotes are always near the end). Here, she pointed toward a paragraph with her index finger and then painfully read aloud, “The first fact that flashed radiantly on his comprehension was the great impersonality of sacrifice—he perceived that what we call love and hate, reward and punishment, had no more to do with it than the date of the month.”

Elizabeth snapped the book shut, seemingly impressed with herself for having shared some sort of arcane knowledge with me. If I hadn't already read the novel, I would have been angry with her for reading ahead. Suddenly, I realized she was waiting for a reaction to this arbitrary passage. Knowing that I could say essentially anything and make it sound profound, I decided to go with, “It all goes back to his love for Zelda.”

She nodded vehemently, and I was somehow surprised by how easy it was to fool people into thinking you knew what the fuck you were talking about.

“Zelda was the true genius. Fitzgerald stole all of his ideas from her.”

I had to refrain from rolling my eyes. Every woman found it so poignant to prattle on about Zelda's tragedy. I have a feeling Zelda and Francis both got off on one another's neuroses. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. But I obliged Elizabeth and said, “You're so right. She was repressed and tormented beyond belief by that asshole.”

By the end of the conversation, we had arranged to meet for drinks later in the week. Thankfully, I had long passed the point of feeling guilty about cheating on my girlfriend. Her pandering and phoniness only made it easier for me. Even the thought of going home to her after work made me want retch up my Shake Shack burger.

Back in my cell (or cubicle), I pretended to make a spreadsheet, which really just contained the names of serial killers. I'm not even really sure what exactly my job is. The words “social” and “editor” are in it, but that could mean any number of things. It was really just a way of labeling me in a manner that made me seem worthy of being paid.

When one of my “bosses,” Robert, who loathed it when you called him Bob, would occasionally come up to me and say, “How's it coming Greg?” I, in turn, assured, “We're making a lot of progress here, Bob.” He would then look at me strangely and leave, too offended and disturbed to pursue the conversation any further.

After a light day of pretend work, I tended to head toward the same bar, a dive in Alphabet City (maybe the last dive in said area) where the drinks were cheap and the women were sparse. Women had such minimal capacity when it came to exiting their comfort zone, after all. That night, however, there seemed to be a surfeit of women. And by “surfeit,” I mean one woman. By looking at her, you would think she was the type of uppity lady who watched the Olympics and cared about causes. This aura of hers initially put me off, but then I came to the conclusion that it wasn't as though I was doing much else at the moment, so why not? Why not? is, in fact, the only philosophy I adhere to.

I sidled up to her and said, with as much of a contrived air as I could, “Come here often?” She let a strand of dishwater blonde hair fall across her eye as she turned to me and looked me up and down.

“Probably about as often as you actually go down on a woman,” she returned, somehow already having me pegged.