You're Making Me Hate You (4 page)

I was so preoccupied with trying to catch him making the noise that I missed the turn to get him to his house. He was
supposed to remind before I got there, not
after
—which he did … and then made that noise again. This time I saw it! He wasn’t snotty, full of phlegm, or anything; he was just making the noise with his mouth as he stared out the window. What the fuck is
with
this kid?

I got him to his house and pulled into his driveway. Without saying another word, he jumped out of the backseat, slammed my goddamn door, and sauntered slowly up to his house, where his father was waiting for him on the steps. I sat there trying to understand what had just happened, and as I did I heard him make that noise one last time as he went in his house.

SSSHHCREEEEENT!

At least he’d waved good-bye as he did it.

Nothing against Milt, but he’s a crazy little shithead. He is also one of the reasons I am writing this fucking book. Those fucking popcorn shrimp … sorry, that’s giving too much away. You’ll understand when we talk more about him later on.

You see, I can handle adults wallowing in their individual dumbass quagmires. You’re all for the most part mature and old enough to do whatever you want with your lives. If you want to be ignorant wretches, that’s your right; all I can do is add something new and better to the menu above the Slurpee counter. But our kids are another matter. They are growing up bombarded with images and words worthy of profound ridicule. Worse yet, they are being taught that
this shit is okay
. But it is
not
okay. For fuck’s sake,
it is not okay
. It’s a travesty to our nature and propensity to evolve. The fact that children are growing up having to push through a foundation of shit just to find their place in this world is unfair. We should be discouraging their exposure to the worst bits or at the very least explaining to them that this is aberrant behavior and they shouldn’t engage in it. That’s what we do with our kids in the Bonnici/Bennett/Taylor family hybrid.
That’s what I feel we all must do around the world before the next generation grows up in perpetual need of having their adult diapers changed while they post pics on PoopTube for their friends to make crappy comments (pun intended) about their latest shit mosaic. That’s not a Rorschach Test—that’s a mess.

So strap yourselves to the seats, fuckers. As I have always said when I start these feeble clothbound attempts at reason, you don’t have to agree with me. But that doesn’t mean I am wrong. I may be an asshole, but I’m not wrong. Just because the world can read it doesn’t mean they understand what’s being inferred. I’ve been studying you for a long time, as I’ve said. I know what you’re capable of just as much as I know what you’ve been up to. No offense, Earth, but …

Sigh.

I’m going to pretend that you are all fucking dumb.

Proceed with caution.

BEFORE I COMMENCE
to hacking my way through the treacherous wilds and heady navigations that forced me to write this vile diatribe in the first place, let’s get to know the “star” of this Broadway production: humans. You’re right, of course: considering that I’m terrified by a myriad assortment of species like sharks, spiders, and tree sloths, you’d think I’d have a bigger beef with the rest of the dinner party taking place outside our end of the animal kingdom. Sadly, this is not the case. “Haters gonna hate,” or so my iPod has led me to believe. So let’s get to the soft meaty gooch of this chapter’s query.

Have you people fucking paid attention to each other lately?

Seriously? By that I don’t mean the Delphic maxim “Know thyself” jibber jabber; I mean have you really taken a look at yourself with some clarity (no eye boogers) and noticed how ridiculous you are all behaving? Huh? I have to be honest: I don’t think you are. If you were, you’d have realized long ago that the roaming packs of raging morons that most of you tend to
comprise when you go “out on the town” are making us
all
look like shit. From Vegas to South Beach, from Cabo San Lucas to the French Quarter, all over America and beyond, the masses are frothing and scrambling from bar to bar, street to street, hovel to hovel, searching in earnest for the next buzz, the next free one. They all make it seem like real life is so bad that they can’t handle being sober to enjoy it, which is utter fucking drivel. But if eyewitness accounts are to be allowed into evidence, they don’t need alcohol to act the fool.

Let’s start with this global “party scene.” Trust me: I see it all over the world. Most of the belligerence starts at night, and yet the seeds for this universal embarrassment are planted while the sun still blazes high above us. Apparently you don’t even have to have a
job
these days to be so stressed and tested you need to go out and blow your mind on bootleg gingers and high shines. I could understand this shit more if it were just nine-to-fivers embalming themselves. Even college kids could get a pass—that’s a lot of pressure for a mind that hasn’t sufficiently finished developing. But from my standpoint many of those who butcher the conventions of public decency are young, lazy layabouts. They do fuck all in the a.m. but sleep. The p.m. is reserved for finding out what they’ll be up to while they’re missing late-night television. I know what I’m talking about: I used to be one of those people … when I was nineteen. Being young was kind of a requirement for this oafish bollocks. Nowadays, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be a shock to come across a coven of bastards and bitches, all of differing ages, trying desperately to do beer bong hits together on a Wednesday night whilst hanging out of a third-story balcony at a Best Western hotel. I suppose if you’re going to set an example, you better be able to walk the walk. About an hour later, however, they’re all out on the streets,
wasted
. That’s just what we need right now. Oh, wait—actually no, it’s in fact the exact opposite.

If you don’t spend as much time as I do strolling the streets of various metropolitan byways inadvertently engaged in anthropological research, just switch on your TV sets—if you can stomach it. Every network on the dial or dish has a variety of programs all showing the glamour and glut of so-called reality shows, the worst idea in the history of programming since Geraldo went digging for Al Capone’s recyclables. All of these shows have several things in common: the “cast” are dicks, they spend all day bitching at or about each other, and at night they just
have
to blow off some steam, what with all the energy they spent doing
nothing
all day, unless you count the aforementioned high-speed bitch attacks. So these same cunt-face people load up on chemicals and cocktails, only to have the inevitable clash of hairy cat shit right before the producers cut to commercial. It’s a gross mess devoid of class, morality, or even a working vocabulary because half the time they’re speaking in beeps. I didn’t know high-pitched squeals were in the English language. Well, it’s either that or these fuckwads use so many curse words it’s amazing they got on the telly in the first place. But people around the world are mesmerized by this trash, and by calling it “reality TV,” they believe this is how everyone lives, so they decide to do so in turn. Can I get a “hell yeah” for the human race? Before you go hip-hip-hooraying, though, remember that this shit makes me want to stab squirrels in their cute little innocent faces with a ballpoint pen.

It’s no wonder we’re all a mess in public, then. All we see and hear is crap, so we have to be crappy to blend in. That’s the cattle mentality: it’s always easier to follow the herd than it is to go find better cud somewhere else on your own. The blame
also goes to the producers of this calamitous form of entertainment. They make sure that all the hands involved on the screen are going to be venomous harpies, then they throw a bunch of “story arcs” their way in hopes that it will stir up the kind of controversy the networks are looking for. It is a maddeningly rich racket that they are milking at every nipple. Shore to shore, Jersey or Geordie, the cameras are getting close-ups on all the festering boils that the gene pool has to offer, and the entranced huddled masses are following suit. This is one of the reasons why I believe public intoxication, drunk driving, arrest rates, and subsequent related deaths are at a twenty-year high all over the planet. What really makes me angry on a nuclear level is that no one is doing anything about it.

But let’s get back to my original posit: Are any of you privy to how dumb you all look? First of all, you all dress the same. The guys all look like they bought the same shitty button-up shirts at the same strip mall, along with the brand-name pants with shiny shit on the ass. Good call, guys: you look like rapists. The sad thing is you probably are, convicted or not. You are one roofie away from your own personal pink card and having to legally live a certain distance away from schools and nurseries. We shouldn’t forget the hair gel and the
constant
sweating. If nervous porcupines could stand and walk upright, they would all look like the men of the world. Between the race to see how many shots you can do in sixty minutes and the high fives, chest bumps, and screaming in each other’s faces like you just scored a touchdown, I’m amazed we’ve been able to propagate humanity at all. It’s a fucking wonder women consider having sex with any of us. Oh, that’s right—women are just as bad.

Ninety-eight percent of you girls wear shoes you can’t walk in, clothes that don’t fit, and dresses or skirts that don’t cover your bulbous asses. You scream and giggle at each other like you’re
in third grade while casting a wary eye about for “bitches” that might encroach on your territory. When you feel sufficiently safe, you stand in a circle and do shots off of each other’s tits. Then you complain when the men in the vicinity start treating you like hookers, even as you’re being dragged to the bathroom for a quick blowjob. All of this culminates in a sad, drunken walk to a car or a cab, whether you’re going home or to some guy’s house, ending with you falling over in your stupid shoes, dress hiked up, ill-fitting panties hanging out, and a depressing video on YouTube in which you try in pure inebriation to get back up, looking like a turtle in drag that unfortunately ended up on its shell. I watch all those videos, and they are all fucking hilarious. Then I find myself wanting to slit my wrists because of how painfully sad they all are. Is this where we are? Is this what we’re left with? We’re all coming off as pretty petty and pathetic, and the brutal facts point out that the evidence supports this theory wholeheartedly.

It doesn’t really help our cause that there are giant constructs designed to lure the platypuses to the fuckfest. Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing on the cities drawing the diseased to their bosoms: Vegas, LA, South Padre, South Beach, New Orleans, Austin … America may not have the patent on the urban need to pub crawl, but they have definitely upped the ante in a lot of ways. It’s the red, white, and blue way: take something that may have been designed for joy and pleasure, inject it with steroids and bacon grease, throw a grenade in it, and build a giant adult theme park as a beacon for the soiled, charging way too much as they make us pay with something other than money. Sometimes it just really sucks to be American, especially when I know just how much potential this country has for greatness and acceptance. But I don’t dwell; I just make voodoo dolls. Someday soon those things are going to work.

As always, I digress …

If only the facsimile of ridicule was just relegated to the nightlife, I wouldn’t be going off on this particular tangent. Oh no: this self-important opera plays itself out at all hours. You see it everywhere. I could do a dissertation on coffee shops
alone
. You know that feeling? I walked into a Starbucks the other day and, as usual—with my sunglasses on so people didn’t notice me staring—I studied the various customers around me from my vantage point in line. Starbucks never lets me down. Free Wi-Fi and caffeine bring out the inner dipshit just as strongly as Jack Daniels and Grey Goose. Tables are filled to bursting with writers, pumping out script after script that most likely will never be committed to film. If they’re not punching up scenes, they are working on their manuscripts in hopes that a publishing house
really
has a division dedicated to fan fiction involving
Harry Potter
, Superman, and a multisexual duck with several sets of genitalia. As flattered as I was to receive that particular story, I would be remiss if I didn’t say I was uncomfortable passing it on to people who trust my judgment.

One day, while waiting to order my usual mix of java and Yeah Dawg, there was a woman jogging in place, fresh from her morning run—or at least that’s what she wanted us to think—talking rather loudly into her headset Bluetooth device at a colleague she obviously had seniority over. The conversation was long-winded, innocuous, and holding up the line: she was actually doing this at the counter while ignoring the “coffee barista” who was trying to take her order. The lady wasn’t even looking at him; she was just barking into her NSYNC microphone: “No,
no
, NO! You can’t
do
that! There’s obviously been a misunderstanding on
their
part!” I couldn’t take it anymore and leaned behind her, essentially cutting her in line. Now I deplore queue
barging as much as the next dude, but I was in a hurry and didn’t want to stand there waiting for the Queen of Douche to place her order, which was most likely going to be some sort of soy-smoothie-berry-green tea concoction that, in my eyes, honestly has no place in a coffee shop. As I did so, she suddenly came to life. “Hey—hold on a second, Martha. Hey! I was next in line!”