My life, up to this point, has been a waste. I feel confident in saying that, sitting here in Metaphysics, scrawling in this decrepit notebook; a throwback from Freshman year.

Decrepit. I’ve had it for just over a year, and already it’s decrepit. In my current mood I can’t even fathom if it’s just my exquisitely cultured pessimism that evokes such warming thoughts or if I’m really so neglectful and indifferent that even this notebook couldn’t survive me for half my tenure here at John Doe University.

I start flipping through the pages of this forlorn leaf of papers (obviously not writing this while I do it), barely held together by the single metal wire twisted in to thirty-five rings; my pencil rolls across the table, then the floor. Ninety percent of the pages are covered in doodles, prose, poetry; what a person in a lab-coat somewhere calls ADD or ADHD, but I call being bored out of my fucking skull. The other ten (percent that is, not pages) are either blank, or half-full with assignments I began last year and decided, in my hyper-elitist infinite wisdom, that they were beneath me.

Fuck. Does the fact that I cuss too much mark me as ignorant in the eyes of the masses? A question for later, no time now, because the professor is looking directly at me, along with every morbidly curious, smug douche-bag in the front of the class, like they’re looking at someone about to be robbed of dignity, humiliated, embarrassed, and the people in the back who have no choice; they’re simply drawn to me by the commanding gazes of other students, no choice but to follow.

He stares at me expectantly, a phenomenally intelligent man, but he drones and seeks the involvement of the class only at sparse intervals, so I have no choice but to become lost in the recesses of the chaotic mind. Christ, I even try to sound epic when I’m talking to myself.

I return the stare, but undoubtedly my sentiment is not correctly transmitted to him, he is a failure at reading people (it’s interesting how much that sentence changes with a simple comma, ‘he is a failure at reading, people’) and in his unlimited intelligence the fact that someone may not know the answer is out of the question.

“I said, ‘How can one affirm oneself as a knower, and if one can’t how can one be sure that one exists, Mr. Blake?’”

I’m surprised he knows my name, first, as this is the first time I’ve been to class in upwards of three weeks, and second, although I know the reiteration of the question was a response to my look of pure, unfettered confusion, the only thing I am more certain of now is that I have absolutely no idea how to answer his question.


“How was class? What is it, Metaphysics or some shit?”

I turned barely inside my hood to see Trey step up beside me. He’s decked-out in his black hoody and dark jeans, and, if my clothes were Ecko, Enyce, and two sizes bigger we would be matching. Trey also happened to be one of the few people who I didn’t mind talking to on the way back to the dorm.

“Hm.” I grunted, by way of answering, “Where’re you coming from?”

“Music. That shit is rough. What’chu ‘bout to do?”

“That’s a damn good question. Definitely not going to class,” he scowls, slightly, “I got one for you though, you think cussing makes us seem ignorant?”


It’s 4 am. I can’t sleep because there’s too much on my mind, or at least that’s what I like to say. In actuality it’s probably just because my roommate snores like a god-damn Hoover, and maybe that’s what drives my hatred for him, or maybe it’s that I’m just wholly incapable of sharing all of my space with someone.

Unfortunately that is among the smallest of my dilemmas here. I’d like to blame my lack of sleep or my insane balancing act between work and school schedules (which really isn’t that bad) but what is comes down to is that I just don’t give a fuck about anything any more. Even when my nights aren’t filled with tricking myself in to falling asleep, when morning rolls around, you couldn’t pull me out of bed with a tow truck.

Even bigger is that I can’t feign my interest. Everyone else here can do that, they all conjure masks and costumes daily, hardly any of them have ever shown their true colors. I lost my ability to mask a long time ago, and I say that only relatively, as it was a period of about two to four years, and ever since then I can’t conjure a damn thing, nothing. Nothing shows but this indifference, and still no one sees it, they’re probably blinded by those very same masks.


I’m staring idly at the screen of my laptop, one relatively blank page of a Microsoft Word document taunts my museless mind. I’m horribly obsessed with recording thoughts that I find to be enlightening or sage, and yet I can never express them as clearly as I thought them. My phone shakes like an earthquake, and blurts out music from a video game that changed my life in some great way.

“How are you doing?”

It’s my mom on the phone, we intermittently check-up on each other, and most often we both lie, though the love we have for one another is not to be challenged or discredited.

“I’m fine,” she knows I’m lying because everyone knows that no one uses the word fine in describing a state of relative happiness, “how’s life on your end?”

There’s a pause, and this is how I know she’s lying. The question is quite general but she knows precisely the insinuation, and every time he comes up she has to fabricate something, like a false enthusiasm conjured for the sake of saving face, or to make someone feel more secure.

“I’m great, Dean is good too, his kids are here right now. We’re about to head to King’s Dominion!”

I’m bitter. Not because she has to pretend she’s happy, I do that almost every day, I’m bitter because she doesn’t do it well enough, and that means I don’t do it well enough. I’m bitter because she’s my fucking mother and she has to put up with a bunch of shit from the kids of her current douche-bag boyfriend and his troll of an ex-wife. I’m bitter because there’s nothing I can do about it, nothing I can do about any of it.


Down to eat? The text on my cell screen reads, though I can barely see past the burst liquid crystals that have formed a green-black miasma of opaque inconvenience. It’s from J, who I know from high school, and who is now Trey’s roommate. I start to text him back but a half-second later there’s a knock on the dorm door.

“Yo, what up?!” J says, jokingly, as he walks in, giving me rocks (fist hits fist) by way of greeting, Trey’s right behind him.

“You just wake up?” Trey asks, seemingly sizing me up.

“Nah, I’ve been up a while.” Where are ya’ll trying to eat? Who else is rollin’?”

I’ve always spoken like this, since I was a little kid influenced by my older brothers and their friends.

“I think DR’s coming from off-campus, Jack and Rex are in class right now. Not sure what Alice is doing, where’s Geoff?” Trey answers, and asks, looking at the screen of my laptop where I’ve been trying to fill out the relatively slightly less blank page of the Microsoft Word document.

“No idea, class I guess, haven’t seen him since he left this morning. Shall we?” I say, closing the document along with my laptop, “Where are we eating?”

Trey hovers near my desk, the closed laptop, and just looks at me, maybe he saw too much of what I never really meant to have read. He seems about to say something but J butts in, to the rescue, “DeliCat!”

It’s supposedly a clever pun but the meaning was lost decades ago, and no hints have been salvaged since. Nevertheless, they did make good sandwiches.

“Delicat it is, let’s rock.” I move towards the door and Trey mimes throwing up a basketball for an alley-oop, J follows the unspoken signal by leaping, catching the invisible ball, weaving it through both legs, and smacking the top of the door frame above me.

“DUNKED, on yo dumb ass!”


All of the girls we pass across campus on the way to eat are gorgeous. They roam in packs of two to five, a single specimen every know and then, and chatter more often on cell phones than with each other, about those others of their gender who are currently not part of their cohort.

We (Trey, J, myself, and now DR, whom we refer to as, “The Doctor”) rate them purely on their physical assets: Rotundity of backsides, relative mass and posture of breasts, slightness or exquisiteness of visage, because we don’t know these girls. We will never even get a chance to decipher their personalities, though we make generalizations and typically harsh judgments; they are too well-made for us, too gorgeously arrayed.
Gorgeously imperfect, perfectly flawed. It makes me seethe, because although I hate them with such intrepid blackness, I desire their presence all the same. Not all of them, but just one. Just one who contains less of their filth, and who could contain all of mine. Although I insist that I’m not so picky, I’m just looking for precisely the girl of my dreams.


“Yea, so the gay guy was talking about his take on the all kinds of stuff in French again today, relating it to all of this uber-gay stuff he knows about…”

Geoff recounts the last two hours of his life to all in attendance at dinner… after all, nothing is more important than what we missed when we weren’t in his shoes. Sadder still is that he will expect a recount of what we all were doing to occupy ourselves during that period, and that at least half of the group will answer before everyone loses interest.

I sit quietly, not listening, simply contemplating my growing hatred for him as he refuses to bring his pointless, pompous, closed-minded, long-winded story to a close. Everyone else appears to be listening intently, enraptured by the inanity of what “the gay guy” said in French, like any of them knew any better, or would have any insight on the subjects he spoke on in class, though I know it’s simply another conjured charade on the part of the listeners, it upsets me all the more that way. The only two that do not mask their indifference are the Doctor and Trey, who cast sidelong glances at me with rolling eyes.

Sliding my chair back I get up to facilitate my escape, and immediately everyone turns to me as if I’m some savior, or perhaps as if I’ve slain each and every one of their families; I’m blinded by their masks.

“I’m headed back to the room, and then work, see ya’ll later.”

Walking away, I put my headphones in so I can ignore the questions about whether or not I’m alright, or if I’m trying to chill or watch Family Guy later tonight. And although they save me now, as an excuse for my ignorance of various queries and comments, they will only provide a downfall later, as Geoff will undoubtedly drill me with a much more encompassing line of questions, and reiterate his recounting of the events of the day, and there isn’t a miracle in the world that will keep him from including dinner.

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