Chapter One
I only had one pair of slacks. To offset this, I owned three dress shirts: One white, one black and the other was navy blue. I lived in a studio apartment in North Oakland’s Temescal district. It was a strange place. During the week, I would hear sirens and motors revving. On the weekends, I heard the hustle and bustle of bars on Telegraph. I listened as people laughed with their friends, their lovers and met new people. I didn’t. I didn’t meet new people. Many of my friends had left the Bay Area for greener pastures. The few that remained were too far gone for a connection to be maintained. I was disconnected, yet I was always online. I worked at a call center in Berkeley. I was a solicitor. I called people and asked for donations. Sometimes they’d donate, sometimes they didn’t. After work, I’d ride BART back from the Downtown Berkeley Station to MacArthur. I then walked 4 blocks from the station to my house. Once inside my home, I took my slacks off and put them on my futon. I then would spray my slacks with air freshener. I did this to save money on laundry. I had very little money, but my internet was fast. You didn’t need many material things if you had fast internet.
I remembered when I was walking around Lake Merritt and a man approached me. He brandished a pistol, and told me to give him everything I had. Luckily for me, beside my iPhone, which had a cracked screen and needed to be replaced, I had a debit card linked in a checking account with only $32 dollars, a secured credit card with a limit of $1500, an ID that had an address listed I no longer lived at. I also had a rubber band that I discovered upon emptying my pockets for the robber. When I gave him my phone, he looked down at the cracked screen, stuffed his pistol back in his pants, handed my phone to me and walked away. I was too pathetic to rob; a first in the history of Oakland…
My days were always the same. I woke up tired every morning. On average, I’d get roughly 4 hours of sleep per night. I vowed to change, to go to bed earlier, but I played video games, watched Youtube videos or porn. Sometimes I didn’t even jerk off. I just let the sound of a woman’s moans fill the apartment. I liked to lie in bed, stare at the ceiling and pretend someone was beside me. I stacked pillows, covered them in a blanket and cuddled. Roughly 90 minutes into sleeping, you enter the REM (rapid eye movement) cycle of sleep, this is where you begin to dream. Sometimes, with my arms wrapped around the pillows, I fooled myself into believing it was really a person lying beside me, and for a few blissful moments, I wasn’t alone. The small apartment was full of life. But then the alarm would go off, and it was time to get ready for work.
Some people liked morning showers, I was not one of those people. I found showers in the morning oppressive. I preferred to take them before bed. Yet, I rarely did. The shower itself was nice in the morning, the warm water was soothing, but mornings in Oakland were usually chilly, and my studio apartment was poorly insulated, so, even when the windows were closed, I still felt the cool air from outside, and when stepping out of a warm shower, it was bone-chillingly cold. The pleasurable sensation was immediately ripped away by uncomfortable shivers. I hated it. But I hated lots of things, and yet, I still did them. I hated the way alcohol tastes, but every night, I drank. I hated the smell of cigarettes, but I smoked. I hated heartburn, but I kept eating food that was pre packaged and prepared to be heated in a microwave. Maybe I hated myself or maybe I just hated the process of sustaining and prolonging a life that I no longer wished to live.
Chapter Two.
Were fluorescent lights designed to hurt your eyes? When I walked into the office, I always winced. My eyes had to adjust to the unnatural light produced to sustain an unnecessarily busy life. I wanted to climb trees. I wasn’t very athletic but I wished I was. If I was, I’d climb trees and breathe air untainted by the muck and mire of humanity’s machinery.
“Will, after you’re done setting up, step into my office,” my boss’ delivery was unusually apathetic. He always had life in his voice. Not that his life was that great. He rented an apartment in Oakland, just like me, but his apartment was next to the lake and a little bigger than mine. He made more money than me, but paid less in rent because of rent control. He also had control of whether or not I paid my rent, which I think he liked. Not that he liked or disliked me on a personal level, but he liked the fact that he could control me and others through subtle coercion. He was a little Napoleon. This little office was his own little kingdom where little people worked for very little to sustain their little lives, and I think he liked that. But I could be mistaken. I was prone to mistakes. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been working in a call center.
I was sitting at his desk. He was typing something to someone. Perhaps an email. Maybe it was business related, but he had a smirk on his face. Maybe it was a love letter. I wondered what his love life was like. Does he do well with women? Or maybe men? I shouldn’t be presumptuous about the genitalia of those he chooses. Is genitalia relevant to gender? I didn’t know what anything meant anymore. Maybe he was bi and in a polyamorous relationship with both biological genders. Maybe. I’m straight, but he could sucking a cornucopia of cock and fucking a plethora of pussy and I’d be none the wiser. I was bored. This office was boring. Perhaps he was on a dry spell. I hoped he was. The fucker. He was still typing. One of his fingernails was dirty. Who had a single dirty fingernail? They usually came in a set. He stopped typing and looked at me.
“Sorry about that, Will. I had a few things to attend to.”
“No worries. Am I in trouble?”
“Not yet, but I wanted you to be aware of something,” he began looking at the computer screen again. *CLICK, CLICK, CLICK* He was typing something. Likely a password. He eventually turned the screen toward me, it was a spreadsheet showing my numbers for the last 3 months. “In September you were averaging 30 donations a week. Which is what I like to see. 30 is a good number. October, we have you at 27, still good, roughly within the same range as before,” he paused, “but this month, you’re averaging 14 so far. Is everything okay?”
“My tactics haven’t changed. I stick to the script, but I have noticed that I’ve been less successful at locking in donations lately. I think the call lists have been exhausted.”
His eyebrows raise for a moment. He just dismissed me in his head. He’s trying to think of a way to dismiss my rebuttal verbally.
“I see, but everyone’s call list is derived from the same source material and none of your coworkers have experienced a significant dip. Everyone has been pretty steady.” He leaned back in his chair. “Is everything ok? Is there anything outside of work that may be causing stress? I’m
here and would be happy to lend an ear if you need it, William. We’re a family here. You can talk to me.”
I fucking hate Berkeley. This was what they did. They’ve mastered this. He wasn’t my boss. He was my friend… Bullshit. But we had to play the game.
“Actually, I have been struggling lately. I was robbed near Lake Merritt.”
“Oh my God! That’s terrible.”
“Luckily, I wasn’t hurt, but it’s just made me anxious lately, and I think that has been affecting my performance.
“Did you call the police?”
“No,” I took a deep breath, “If someone is desperate enough to pick up a gun and rob someone else, they must really need it. The criminal justice system would only worsen this young man’s prospects for a better future.” It’s true. I was robbed and it did make me anxious. Well, I had a gun pointed at me, he was going to rob me, but that wasn’t the problem. It was the list; it had been exhausted. Anyone from my portion of the list who was going to donate already did, but they wouldn’t admit that. So we had to play the caring boss game. Now he had to pretend to care and also give some sort of empty compliment about how virtuous I was. Let the woke games begin.
“That’s an incredibly thoughtful and mature outlook to have,” he said, but there was nothing behind his eyes. No sympathy, no empathy. Nothing. He was reading from an internalized script.
He began typing again and the printer started buzzing. He printed a list of counseling services offered by the City of Berkeley and Alameda County. He handed me the paper and smiled. “Well, if you need to talk, I’m here.”
I took the paper, quickly scanned it to be polite, and smiled.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome. Now let’s try to start the day off right.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” I replied as I got up and went back to my desk. I sat there for the majority of 8 hours and continued to dial the numbers on the list that connected me to an endless sea of indistinguishable voices who all have one thing in common: They didn’t want to talk to me.
I lived a boring life. But every now and then I’d do things to break the monotony. I decided to take the bus home instead of BART. Taking the bus instead of the train was about as unpredictable as life got for me. It wasn’t always bad. I did some of my best thinking at bus stops. I liked reading the random shit people tagged near the stops. Berkeley’s graffiti scene wasn’t like the scenes in other cities. It wasn’t really about getting up in Berkeley; It was about anonymously making statements. The backrest of the bench at the bus stop doubled as an advertisement for some lawyer, but his name was covered with large black letters that said
“FREE THEM ALL!”
It was vague, yet I understood. I wanted to be free, but I got on the bus and went home instead.
Chapter Three.
The only thing more depressing than my own thoughts were online dating apps. Yet, my need to begin the procreation process with the intent of it never reaching its 9 month conclusion seemed to keep me in a pattern of downloading and deleting the same apps perpetually. I’d match with a girl, sometimes cute, sometimes not, but immediately after matching, I would feel intense disgust with myself and delete the apps again. It was stupid. I missed my ex. We hadn’t been together for over a year, and I knew she had a new boyfriend. I saw a photo of him kissing her on the cheek and in a fit of rage, I threw my phone against a wall in my apartment. It’s how I cracked the screen. The tantrum left a hole in the wall, but I covered it with a poster of Bob Marley that I bought for a dollar off some guy in Berkeley. I thought it was a bargain until I realized the poster was a bootleg. Bob Marley’s face was reduced to a vague blob of pixels. The poster didn’t even say Bob Marley at the bottom of it. It just said “weed” in this weird font that was as pixelated as Bob Marley’s face.
MacArthur BART had a liveliness to it that other stations in Oakland lacked. There was no cohesion to the crowds you’d find there. Most of the stations had a type of person you could count on seeing. Rockridge was home to wealthy people warily dipping their toes into the unpredictable realm of public transportation. Just as Fruitvale was home to working people who dreamt that one day they’d reach a point in life where they wouldn’t have to take BART to places like Rockridge or Walnut Creek to work for people who quietly hated them as much as they needed them. MacArthur was the United Nations of BART stations. We had rich yuppies and tired workers clustered together with mentally ill artists, street kids, gangsters and at least one homeless person with a cup who would say “God bless you,” whether you gave them your change or not. I liked to watch the waves of society awkwardly crash into each other and quickly disperse like oceanic waters being propelled by opposing winds.
As I entered the Richmond bound train to Downtown Berkeley, I saw a woman sitting alone who had large green eyes. She smiled at me and I was overcome with a surge of nervousness that involuntarily tilted my head toward the floor. I stopped myself and looked back at her with my best attempt at a warm smile, but by then she had turned her gaze toward the window and kept it fixed there until she got off at Ashby.
When I arrived at work, the day felt slower and the work felt harder than usual. I couldn’t remove her green eyes and inviting smile from my mind. I wanted to sit with her and ask her questions about life that for some reason, unbeknownst to me, I was certain she held the answers to. This was a part of my psyche that I rather loathed, I didn’t just get crushes on people, but fleeting obsessions with them where I would create an entire fantasy in my mind of an ideal life only to forget them or the aspirations their beauty inspired just a few days later.
I made chili for lunch. The microwave at work was unbelievably powerful. I had only put the chili in for a single minute, but it came out boiling. It was so hot that I couldn’t eat it. So, I just sat there and stared at my chili while it bubbled. A fly was buzzing around the room that began to circle me and my chili. Diversity wasn’t a multicultural classroom or a white lesbian with a nose ring wearing a hijab for some reason; it was me and a fly in a room waiting for chili to cool down. We didn’t understand each other, but we both recognized we wanted chili. But not too hot. Too hot and you’d burn your mouth. We wanted warm chili. Well, I knew I wanted warm chili. I wasn’t certain of a temperature suitable for a fly, but I was willing to share. My chili was too hot so I grabbed another can and served my tiny friend with the ability to fly a spoonful of room temperature chili. He landed on a bean and he started doing that weird fly thing where they rub their arms together really quickly. As I watched my little friend dance on his little bean, I stumbled upon the solution to every problem in the world. Everyone wanted the same thing, but didn’t necessarily want it in the same way. We all wanted our chili, and just because someone liked their chili at a different temperature than you liked yours, didn’t mean they didn’t deserve to eat. Unfortunately, not all of us get to. By the time my chili was at a suitable temperature for my consumption, my lunch break was over.
On my way home from work, I saw her on the BART train again. Her green eyes were just as beautiful as I remembered them. She was wearing a dark green jacket and a red scarf around her delicate looking neck. My eyes were drawn to her. She noticed my glance and she smiled, just as she had before. This time I smiled back. I wanted to sit next to her, but I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. Women had to deal with enough men harassing them on a daily basis, I didn’t want to be another one. I just wanted her to know, in my own subtle way, that I saw her, and I hope that she saw me too. After I got off the train, I felt like I was floating home. Everything felt lighter. The trees regained their color, the cracks in the sidewalk had meaning, the hum of cars zipping by sounded like music to me. I was in love with a stranger. I knew our romance wasn’t real, but the feeling was, and sometimes that’s enough to get you to tomorrow.
When I walked into my apartment, I didn’t take off my clothes, I just flopped onto my bed and stared at the ceiling until I fell asleep.
Chapter Four.
The subconscious mind is one of life’s greatest mysteries. Fears unbeknownst can present themselves in unorthodox ways. I was in bed, and a dog was standing on my chest. It must have weighed a thousand pounds because the weight of its paws inhibited my ability to breathe. This dog wasn’t like any other animal I have ever encountered. It spoke to me via telepathy.
“You’re a coward,” the dog said.
And then it just sat there, suffocating me in my sleep. The pressure on my chest was unbearable, I felt as if I was on the precipice of death itself, and my life began to flash before my eyes. I remembered watching my mother inhale methamphetamines, and the dog’s voice filled my ears again.
“You’re a coward, aren’t you.” The voice was cold and indifferent to my impending doom.
I remember watching a fellow classmate in ninth grade get beaten nearly to death for no reason, and I remember sitting there, frozen, watching as his delicate, youthful face was impacted by a flurry of stomping feet. I didn’t do anything, I didn’t say anything. I just sat with it.
I gasped for air, and the dog began to growl, drool falling from his mouth on my face. The voice in my head turned into a scream.
“YOU’RE A COWARD!”
I remembered the day my ex-girlfriend told me she was pregnant, and I grabbed her, pushed her against a wall, screaming at her to get an abortion.
“COWARD.”
I gathered just enough oxygen to scream. As the fear left my lungs, I awoke from the nightmare covered in sweat. There was no dog. Just me, fully clothed in my poorly insulated studio apartment. I ripped my shirt off and walked into my bathroom, stripped naked and stared at myself in the mirror.
“I am a coward,” I said aloud to myself as I watched beads of sweat fall from the top of my forehead.
I was a prisoner in a life I never wanted. But I was also the police officer who picked me out of a crowd and convinced me I was guilty of a crime. I was the prosecutor of the case, and the public defender who told me to take the plea. I had taken pleas my entire life. I was the prison guard who watched as I withered in my cell, and I was the warden who ran the prison. One could even claim with some semblance of accuracy that I was the politician who legislated my own existence to be illegal.
I didn’t go back to sleep, I just stood there, naked, afraid of dogs that didn’t exist.
Coward.
It felt like only minutes had gone by, but in actuality it was hours. The birds began chirping and the overcast subsided just enough for a few slivers of sunshine to slip through the cracks in the clouds. The whole world and my interpretation of it existed in my head. I needed to rearrange the interior of my mind or my life would continue to subsist on dead-end jobs, overpriced studio apartments and a nagging anxiety that ensured I’d be stuck inanimate at the bottom of this purgatory we call life.
I walked into my shower and turned the water to its hottest setting. It burned, but I needed it to burn. I began to reach for the shower valve to decrease the temperature, but I remembered my nightmare. I remembered the dog and the smell of its breath as it called me a coward. The pressure of its paws was significantly more painful than the burning sensation of seared skin. So I stood there, and I took it. The pain, while still present, wasn’t as bad as it had been. I learned to accept the discomfort. I was adapting to it. I needed to adapt to fire in order to create a sort of immunity. Fear produces a prolonged pain that is usually worse than whatever the fear derived from.
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