I really think this is going to be one worth paying attention to.
I know I need to accept it. I’m “weird.” Except, I’m not just weird. I’m “different.” I’m “particular.” I’m “sooo Nick P.” that when you warn your friends about me, nothing really supplements like the real thing.
I challenge people. A more deliberate way to phrase that is I accost people. Very often, I ask them, “What is your goal?” In Bloomington, you meet very many fat white semi-drunk kids at the wee hours, and they overwhelmingly have the same story.
“I thought this, and then I gave up.” “Who are you, drunk asshole, to question me?.” “This was fun until I realized your questions were serious, so here’s the finger in the window as we walk away.”
How many times do I call you special? What amount of privilege do I grant you in opting for you to read between the lines versus writing for a form of popularity contest?
Brass tax, you’re special because I respect that I’m special.
I can’t pretend anymore. Kendrick says, “Be humble.” I can be humble about facts. My perception isn’t just different, it’s actually special. My friends aren’t just circumstance, they beget possibility. My phrasing and pathetic little individual window into the world is a degree of difference that warrants the word “special.”
And fuck you for fucking days, I don’t want to believe it. I’m a student of history. We’re all little ink farts in the story of myriad cliches that came before us. Your god fucking forbid I crawl far enough into my ass to denote a measure of difference.
Except…
No matter what I do, beyond even my awareness, I do it different. I just learned tonight that, even with taking days off, I’m the number one driver for ClusterTruck. I’ve spent more time, made more money, than everyone who’s worked for the Bloomington branch. I did not know this. I did not suspect this. It took drunk dispatchers to hi five and hug me as they explained my position in the hierarchy.
The point of bringing up that example is to tell you it was a mother fucking accident. How the fuck do I get off being number one taking days off? Well, I didn’t aspire to be. I’m accidentally at the top of shit I never even fucking meant to be. That shit has to mean something. That has to fucking matter. Right?
::Break down sobbing for 20...35 seconds::
I don’t simply want to piss people off. But I don’t know what to do. In reality, I’m closer to 50 people I would grant special status to. They don’t respect themselves like that. They don’t believe.
Yesterday, I was talking to another Bloomington entrepreneur. He’s had the extreme highs and lows. He recognizes that he is always trying to give back and prop up and afford the people in his life opportunities they don’t deserve. I feel like I have the exact opposite problem. I have people who were smart enough to get hitched or find the job that pays the bills. They are solidly middle to upper class white and rich regardless. Their dreams and goals are empty, “We should meet up!” sentiments once a year. Broke ass asking for a dollar and quasi-content rich white asshole have the same thing in common. They aren’t going anywhere.
My buddy Andrew’s phone decided to call me accidentally. We talked for an hour and a half. That wasn’t because we’re living terribly interesting lives that need that much time to explain. It’s because Andrew is someone you should always be able to talk to because he’s thinking. He has goals. He’s an individual in spite of himself or his circumstances.That’s what I miss. You can’t “recapture” the past, in some perverse sense, but you can respect the players involved that shaped your perspective about what you want in the world. I want conversations with Andrew, and Amber, and Tony, and Corbin, and Chelsea even if she doesn’t like me, and Brett, and Nick, and Alex, and Smash, and Davis, and Kristen, and Hatsam, and whatever members of their drunken families want to show up to celebrate some dumbass meager achievement together.
Time is running out. To one degree or another I’ve managed to live my preferred degree of “freedom.” But I know I’m a failure. I don’t want to see you once a year. I want to see you when I want to see you. I’m like a solid month away from that, but the point remains. I know when the people in my life have materially changed my perception of myself and my place in the world. Me “struggling” by myself in my ignorant corner “doing the best I know how” is not enough. It’s not right. I’d be broke as fuck being able to joke like I joke around someone before I’d have a million dollars and no one with enough vacation time to enjoy it with me.
My heart is broken. I think about me and Kristen for example. It’s really not up to me why we broke up. Shit was real for me. In her words there was more good than bad. She said she ran. Obviously some random hookup means little in the light of the person you just want to “be” with. But if something that dope and that real can go to shit, who am I kidding about our friendships in lieu of parties and outings? I can’t see you once a year, if that, and think we’re really on the same page. I get why the dynamic would have to change or die, but that doesn’t mean I’d respect it.
You have to conduct your life as if everything matters. You have to believe that you’re taking in words from a balls out special mother fucker who wouldn’t date or fuck with your eyes were you not something keen and different from the world at large. You have to. You have to fucking get it.
What's important for me is that I get it. My life is a series of, “I’ve never heard that before” and “You’re number 1” even without my fucking knowledge or endorsement, let alone my best effort. By extension, the different, the, by the numbers number fucking one, says you need to fucking fix something you defacto different people who apparently only have my ass barraging you.
We get to die anyway. Try. Work. Own it. Scare and surprise me with your enthusiasm. My worst few days is leagues above the rest. Combine fucking powers like the Power Rangers. Play in my field. Own your status and get fat white kids to flick you off in the window on their way out of Steak N Shake after they’ve failed to answer what their goals are.
I miss you hard. But more, I miss who I figured out I was when you came into my life. I miss seeing myself as an extension or piece of a greater whole. I miss wanting to be less Nick P. so I could introduce new people into “my crowd.” The goal remains the same. I’m after a mindset, not a dollar amount. I’m after an atmosphere. It’s impossibly easy to lose.
