I Give Up (or The Day I Gave Up and Bought into the System) [Part I]

[This is the story that got me in trouble this summer]

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So I was thinking that night, sitting alone in my room, that maybe, just maybe I wasn’t missing out on too much tonight. Dan, Maya and beautiful Julie, the girl I had a slight attraction for, were out celebrating the first night of the Montreal Jazz fest in the pouring rain as Stevie Wonder played and crooned. And so, I thought, sitting down in my chair, reading Kerouac, that maybe just maybe, I wouldn’t be missing out on too much tonight.

It was last night at about three in the morning on the corner of Lapierre and Jean-Brillon that the weed was spinning my head and the music wasn’t working well with my stomach. The ambivalent buzzing of electro beats and foreign sounds that in no way sounded human, (realistically, because they weren’t), swung my head into an unknown field of fear and, (to sound slightly radical) oblivion. We pulled over and I puked out, on the side of the road, the recently-eaten chicken Shwarma bought from this Lebanese joint, Boustan. I don’t think I puked because of the beer; in the past I drank much, much more than seven beers, but ever since I smoked the joint it messed me all up, with the spinning and buzzing. I was convinced that shit was laced with something or other, probably speed, as I couldn’t control the shaking of my legs, and when I woke up in the morning I still felt like a part of my mind was under water of some sort. And so I let it all out, a still life to be admired, dried up by the rising sun on the side of the road (and slightly on the door of Matt’s car). A majestic piece. And then today I cured my hangover by smoking another joint.

Looking back, I guess you can say I lost my innocence at a relatively young age. I say relatively because age is mostly relative to the growing person, the individuals’ mindset on growing and learning. We all grow physically, but the most clueless are those who are still kids in their heads, grabbing onto every new toy they can get their grubby paws on; at least that’s what I think. Not that you care. Not that I care whether you care. I’m not talking child-like innocence either; not To Kill and Mockingbird innocence where Scout learns that she isn’t a child anymore, but nonetheless grows and learns a harsh part of life. Not quite. Really, I’m talking sexually, and I’m saying that I was only about thirteen years old when I went down with a girl in my bedroom on Valentines day, and I felt the pride swelling up in my chest, and it wasn’t the only place swelling up, either. Getting it from a young blonde girl when kids in my grade still didn’t even know what it was somewhat terrifying and gratifying. But after a while, and also at a young age, I learned that fucking around with people you don’t care about is more like riding a dead horse than a stallion.

So anyway, that’s what I was thinking. I was tired and worked all day. That morning on the metro on the way to work, I had a hard-on that was visible through my pants and I felt like jacking off so bad. That’s usually not something you tell people on an every day basis. But it was true that I wanted to fuck every tight-clothed living woman on that fucking underground train, and I just wanted my urges to guide me, like they do in shampoo commercials. But then I realized I had a headache and my mind wandered off.

Slowly yet willingly, these downtown visits were sucking the soul right out of me. I worked at a downtown bookstore where people hid their pain behind their smiles, and where the lonely made friends with printed-on pieces of paper in their minds. And on that ride downtown that night after puking out a perfectly delicious shwarma, a girl sat across from me and I decided in my post-inebriated state that I’d fall in love with her, and I decided that I would spend my life with her. I would always fall for the artisan types, and would always convince myself in love of every intelligent-looking girl I’d see. The ones who studied the arts or literature and who would go on to obtain a Masters in something or other and would eventually teach. These are the girls I fell for. ‘The sordid hipsters of America’, as Kerouac once wrote. And of course in return, all the hipsters read Kerouac. The brunette sitting across from me was dressed like all the other kids who tried not to dress like everybody else. A plaid shirt, low top single coloured shoes, ray bans and a tweed hat. It was so predictable that I’d convince myself to love her, and eventually I blamed her for my hard-on. But truly, I just wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Then again, I’ve been told that I throw around the word ‘love’ way too loosely.

When I was younger, my older friend Zack, who also happened to be my cousins cousin, introduced me to a lot of things I would have normally never thought about at a young age. Things like smoking, sex, drunk driving, and most importantly, he taught me how to be social around others. It really is a formula once you get the hang of it. I’m still awkward, but at least I can be social. I think I was about ten at the time and we saw a shy small caterpillar slowly crawling up the door of my house. It was a fuzzy yellow one with two antennas sticking out of its tiny head; the sun shone brightly on it. Simply out of nowhere, Dave lifted his foot and smashed the poor thing as greenish yellowish ooze striped the door of my house in a line. I felt terrible for it.

So I’ve been thinking about that lately and I thought it was symbolic, as the squished caterpillar could be a metaphor for something or other, and I thought I wanted to share it with somebody.
So instead of hanging out with Maya, Dan and the beautiful Julie, Charlotte called me up and she was with Julian and Alicia, and they were going to roll a joint, so I ended up with them.
“How much wood can a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood.”
That is what Charlotte would repeat over and over in that indecent little mind of hers with unique pothead mannerisms. She’d recite over and over these somewhat childhood riddles, other times, philosophical aphorisms.
She would go on, and after the wood chucks would come more, and over again and blah blah blah.

We smoked up in an abandoned underground parking lot in Lasalle, row PP, spot 34. We sat in a circle, smoked, and chanted away the dreaded cold of a winter in Montreal. The lights shone mellow, as everything did when you were stoned, and flashed solemnly as we drove past suburban cottages and dug-up potholes. We drove and swerved, as we watched old Mitch Hedberg’s comedy skits on a cellphone (or multimedia device as they call them these days), and our synchronized laughs followed his unique one-liners, (rest his soul).
Then the four of us drove back to the underground parking lot as Julian rolled another fat one. As we were high, we continued to sing and laugh obediently in the backseat.
“I think I’m gonna’ write all of this later.”
“You should man, you’re a really good writer.”
“Thanks I…”
“Yeah I read your last short story. Amazing. I didn't understand the ending though.”
“Thanks, um…”
“If you write this down, can I be the star of the novel?”
“Okay Alicia, you can.”

Alicia was a girl of average proportions and a unique out-going smirk on her face every night, but she was by no means the star of this story. Just an idea for it.
This was when finally I got home, and when I cleaned up the newspapers that my dog pissed on. I usually let my dog, Cockhead, a half shiatsu half bichon breed, piss on the Gazette pages when she had to. Sometimes I specifically choose the pages for her to piss on, for example, ‘Top 24 reasons to love Quebec,’ or ‘this will make you smile.’ It made me smile anyway. Other times she pissed on the obituaries which made the souless side of me laugh, and the soulful side of me feel terrible.

And that night when I got back home alone and dizzy in my room, I tried thinking of irony. I thought around of such things like comedians committing suicide, or of fire trucks being on fire, or of Atheist churches. And thought that somewhere in the depths of my soul, I am a heartless Atheist. Between the supernatural and the natural. The metaphysical and the physical. The abstract and the concrete. And I don’t remember how, because I tend to loose my back tracking to how and about these things come out on the page; but despite the threads being cut, my conclusion was that there is no heaven or hell, and that life just goes on.
And so it did.