The Cake is a Lie (34 page)

But I can’t say any of this
to Brandon, so I say the only thing I can, “What about Marcus,
Brandon? What about Kace? Steven? Carol? Are
they
doing fine?” I could have gone on
and on… Tim, Duncan, John, Victor, Pacey, Chris, Mark, Janae, Isa,
Eric, Jay, Mia, Josh, Isa, Jake, Daniel, Emily, Riley, Simon, John,
Brendan, Nate, Rachel, Eric, Chris, Greg, Chelsea, Mike, Jeff,
Jake, Ricky, Ivar, Eamon, Gabe, Nick, Bradley, Ben, Daniel, Eric,
Chris, Seth, Seth, Danny, Kyu, Justyn, Josh, Andrew, Aaron,
David…

Brandon must know, he knows.

On our way home we stop at the local
grocery store, while Brandon and Michael go in I wait with Luke in
the car. I’m parked right in front of a group of fifteen teenagers
hovering around three or four cars.

“
That’s him,” Luke says,
ducking a little lower in the backseat.

“
Who? The guy that sold you
crayons as e?”

“
Ya, the short blonde
one.”

The kid’s maybe 5’3, a lil’ guy. He has
impressive energy though, he never stands in one place more than
two seconds. Jumping in and out of his friends cars, bouncing
around the group.

“
He looks like a real cocky
mofo,” I tell Luke. I try to think of a comparison for him to
someone from my high school but I surprisingly can’t. He’s unique.
You can see that the other 15 kids look up to him, he’s one of
their leaders. It’s a rag tag group of rave beads, neck bandanas,
multi-positioned hats, sagging jeans, and acne. Their group reminds
me of the grimy, classless druggies from our high school. The kids
that did 20 e pills in one week. The kids that never had a
chance,
ever
.
Watching them in the parking lot I can see their future as if it’d
already happened. It’s so clear. In my head I start putting
together another line for my speech. Being successful these days
isn’t being 1 in 500. Who gives a shit about 1 in 5,000 even.
There’s 7 billion people in the world. Life is about being 1 in
100,000, at the very least.

The worst feeling in the world is being
forgotten by someone you can’t forget.

We can’t really communicate. All we can
do is busily go through the list of things popping into our heads
and pretend to listen. Eventually it all boils down to “Look at me.
Look at me.”

I spent the first half of my life
wishing I had hair all over my body and the second half hating
it.

We imagine ourselves through camera
angles now.

This Oakley thing used to be
fun, one of the quirks I loved about myself. I let it go on
harmlessly for too long and it grew into something pathetic and
crazy. I have Great Gatsby syndrome, I don’t know how to let it go,
he gets killed at the end. Writing a book about it was
not
the best
choice.

I’ve seen things so perfect they can
never be repeated, copied. Picturesque images of Drake riding the
beat in his brand new top-floor, glass-walled Miami condo. His crew
posed impromptu around him, some off in the background gazing down
on their city like they run it.

What the f are you if you don’t have an
Instagram full of amazing pictures? A white linen fruit breakfast
overlooking the pyramids on a perfect day. Wading out into the
sunset on a secluded gorgeous beach in Thailand. Spontaneously
caught dancing with your eyes closed at a savvy nightclub in
Belarus with a tight skinned stranger in a backless dress bent over
in front of you.

I’ve seen SO many pictures of
strangers.

A whole life lived to have people look
at me and think, “Wow, he’s so much better than me.”

I try to listen to swag pop without
getting upset. It’s just music. Creative, genius music. I try to
imagine that the artist is a surrogate for my own self-esteem, to
pump me up. That’s what everyone else seems to be able to do. I
can’t go to a gym, sports game, club or party without some
superstar reminding me how much better they are than me. The songs
talk about having freaky ass sex with thick ass girls with the best
brains who give the best brain. Fucking two, three at a time. How
they fuck them so hard they damage their internal organs. How
they’re friends with everyone in their city and how they wish they
could blow all their money just so they could make it from the
bottom all over again. How you’re a hater who ain’t doing it right
‘cause money talk and you’ll never be on their g4 level. How your
girl’s their groupie. How you’re a lame because you actually catch
feelings for these hoes.

Older people will never understand.
They can’t even understand the lyrics. You have to have grown up
with it your whole life.

And who am I to complain? These guys
are cultural icons, gods among billions. It’s just a party, there
are much worst things in this world than casual sex. I like having
my shirt off, I would love to be in a music video, I’m a slut. Why
am I such a grumpy hater?

It’s been the same thought process for
ten years. I’m drawn in like a jealous junky and then hate myself
for envying them and then debate whether selling power, drugs and
sex is wrong. Trying to draw a murky line between supporting the
artist and enabling the addict. Between artifacts and
art.

I always conclude that swag pop’s
basically musical crack, pleasurable at first but then terrible for
your soul. Then I stay up until 4 in the morning reading about the
17 year old that made the hit beat for Rozay’s new
single.

They should do a triple blind,
quadruple control study where they teach children about Jesus and
Ghandi and Martin Luther King while at the same time raising them
with music videos. Superstars are our lead pipes, well definitely
the pollution and bad food, but after that.

Panic is spending your entire life
thinking you’re special and better and then realizing one day in
the face of 7 billion people that you’re not all that special or
better. A whole life wasted watching too many hero’s journeys,
dreaming too big.

“
I try to write about
everything that happens in a moment…all our feelings…the history of
it…everything in the world. Everything all mixed up… No matter what
you start with it ends up being so much less.’[28]

[28]The Hours

My greatest gift is one that’s all too
common these days. Being critical. Give me a few minutes and I can
cleverly put down anyone. If you look long enough were all ugly, we
all have weird bumps on our heads, weird things on our skin, ears.
You can always find something if you look long enough. Human beings
are all hideous in the right light.

When I see a girl I want to ask out, or
a guy I want to be friends with, instead of talking to them, I
critique something about them until I feel satisfied enough to not
expend the energy. I haven’t made a new friend in years.

These days I’m mainly critical of
myself.

It’s amazing how alone you can get in a
city of 3 million people.

I’m the fakest revolutionary ever. I
have lots of moments where I’d sell my soul for some portable
status symbol. To sit VIP in the swankiest clubs, to hang out with
go-getta girls that are trying their hardest to impress you. Their
unique smells, their sweat.

Give me any semblance of power, any
high ground to look down from, and I’d fail every test. I’d be as
cocky as any of them. I’d run my mouth and try and control my
friends, my family. I’d be a dick to all the dicks. All my neurotic
whims would slowly slip out.

What’s the point of a thought if it’s
not hilarious and brilliant? That’s what being smart is, thinking
through a bunch of shitty thoughts as fast possible. Constantly,
frantically monitoring your thoughts for the next great idea. Being
a thought factory. How many hours of daydreaming equals a great
line of poetry?

Most of my thoughts don’t even make
enough sense to be bad. I’ve squandered my brilliant spark. Killed
too many braincells. Doomed to hyper-vigilantly comb through a
lifetime of unexceptional things to say.

I’m not even a good writer, my
metaphors and similes suck. It’s all been said before and no one
reads anymore anyways. And I’m lazy

I
can’t stand
21
^st
cenutury conversations. “I’ve been watching… Have you seen…?
We’ve been watching… I heard the funniest joke in… You gotta
wach…”

I spend 10 hours a day in front of a
screen. So does everyone. We’re the first to live most of our lives
in front of a screen.

In the 21st century all the songs
remind you of other songs because they all use the same synthesizer
noises from the same music programs. Even the old songs because of
all the samples. In the 21st century, faces aren’t divinely unique
anymore, everyone reminds you of 5 other people. There’s such an
oversaturation of everything it’s all just one big overwhelming
mess. There’s so much information that the best you should hope for
is to find a niche running a blog that reviews dog toys or
self-published books. We haven’t adapted yet, we have to change all
our plans and dreams, but I don’t know how yet.

And I know years of being on the
“medication,” the future drugs, just made me worst. They say the
medications somehow increase neuron production in the brain,
increasing message delivery. They used to say that they somehow
balanced your neurotransmitters, but now it’s the other thing. What
if I now have too many neurotransmitters after all these years?
What if they’ve permanently sped up my thoughts? Who knows? There’s
something wrong in my subcallosal cingulate. I’ve just been
thinking too fast lately… For how long? Who knows... I can’t
remember. Maybe for years. They just pop in and out of my mind too
fast, racing, this is what it’s like to live in the information
age. I’m mad, I’m absolutely going mad. It’s only a matter of time
now.

This book’s no different than the
gangster rappers. I’m selling fourteen year olds huffing gravity
hits and giving each other oral sex. And I wish I could tell you
even more. I wish I could write a story about 14 year old
gangbangers in chiraq using snapchat.

There comes a point when you’ve been
down for so long there’s no getting back to the top. Years spent
looking at a screen. And how many panic attacks? 3000? Ten is too
many. And how many social faux pas? Humiliatingly rejected by at
least 50 girls. How many times have I come off as desperate and
creepy? 80 jobs. Waiting for texts, emails and calls that will
never come.

22 years old having your dad drive you
to an emergency room at 2 in the morning while you’re laughing out
the window about how you’re going crazy because you’re only smart
enough to memorize other people’s jokes. So frozen with fear you
can’t even pray. Asking to be put into a psych ward.

Once you’ve been to the abyss a few
times. That does something to you. There’s no getting your top of
the world swagger back after that. No more energy to engage bad
story tellers and smile and nod and make their days. Say hi to
strangers.

Ruminate on negative thoughts like
these long enough and eventually you might find yourself in a place
where you can’t stop thinking about how unsettling first person
vision is. You’ll shudder and feel nauseous thinking about how
you’re just a walking panorama with limbs sticking out:
unsupported, ungrounded.

Every couple of seconds an
alarm of self-awareness will go off in your head reminding you that
you ruined your brain and your life and everything’s wrong. You’ll
start to hate all your meaningless, repetitive, sporadic, dull
thoughts: Washing my hands for the 100,000
^th
time is so fucking fun. What
a retarded thing to say. Out of everything there is to possibly say
you said that? I’ve heard so many jokes they don’t mean anything
anymore, I have a joke tolerance. Why I’m I so critical and
negative? What’s wrong with me? Why can’t you be happy for other
people? How much of life is forgetting and double-checking and
remembering and skinny arm poses? Oh god I’m chronically sick. I’m
weak. Life’s meaningless.

The roller coaster ride of obscure
sensations and thoughts in your head will make you feel really
weird and terrified. In the same breathe you’ll be utterly too
smart and too stupid. Terrified of stopping at cross walks, driving
to the grocery store, being along in bed. Certain that the next
unbearably mundane moment you’re trapped alone with your delirious
thoughts will be your last. Which one will be the one that
completely eats you up? Will it be imagining all the silent disses
that people have thought about you? It’s only a matter of
time.

What’s wrong with you will become that
you spend all your time trying to figure out what’s wrong with you.
You’ll spend months, years, chewing over a brief unexpected window
of euphoria in the midst of all the anxiety. What drug you were on,
what dose. Holding out hope to try and piece that moment back
together. Just saying the words “mental illness” or conceptualizing
the idea will overwhelm you with an “I can’t believe this is
happening to me” moment. All your thoughts will be followed by,
life’s weird, this sucks. You’ll hit a last second shot in a
basketball tournament and think, I can’t be happy, I’m
sick.