This story was written with the intention of reading alongside listening to the song 'Numb' by Gary Clark Jr. It has the right number of words for an average reader to finish it just as the song ends and thusly should be enjoyed as such. For the best possible experience use headphones. Thank you. iHeartradio, jack, headphones into my android. Buzz starts, rasp of the shit FM radio in the morning. Baseline, drum-beat, step out of my class. Walk down the hall, throw my hood up. I feel like an idiot, throw my hood back down, feel cool flippin the hood, feelin like I got power over my body. Woman, I can’t feel a thang. Ain’t that the truth. Can’t feel since the last time I saw you, now I’m just some hooded dipshit walking down a hall, only able to feel powerful through a heavy baseline and the sounds of Gary Clark running though my veins. I pass someone, recognize their face but not their style. They’ve never talked to me and I’ve never talked to them. Would I like them if I did? Probably not. They look like a tool.
Numb. I feel it, I am it. Man, ain’t that unfair. She gets off Scott free, watching Doctor Who or something. She gets to pick up her feet and throw her shoes on in the morning, no music necessary. She sits in class, somewhere out there today, taking notes. She’s got silk hair and a high brow, she’s not numb. She’s living. Probably not. We dated a year and a half, she’s probably just as dead inside as I am.
Someone I know, hey, I can’t hear myself over the speakers. He waves. I could stop. I could’ve stopped a hundred times before, in this faded tan hallway. I didn’t though. She yelled and I yelled and now here I am, listening to some feel-sorry for your own fuck-ups blues and saying hey to a kid I knew but didn’t care for. Did I care for anyone at this point? Am I just another emo kid who says that or are my feelings genuine? What sort of sociopath wouldn’t care about his friends? I never did stop for him though, that kid in the hall. Saw his satchel and green tee, knew his name, and never stopped. Just waved hey and kept walking to the class I wasn’t even going to pay attention to. Wouldn’t it have been better to stop? Stop and wait. Have some patience. Didn’t know if I’ve ever truly cared for my friends anyway.
Patience. Is that what founds a relationship? I could’ve had it, I know I could’ve. She might’ve given me a hard time. Hard time in the day, hard time at night. Clark gets it. Still, I didn’t have to throw it out, numb or not. She just wanted me to go somewhere, be someone. I wanted to spend the next few years of my life drinking away my degree. Work for four years and sleep for the next four, that’s what it seemed like I wanted. She just wanted a house and a dog, she just wanted someone there beside her who wasn’t— who wasn’t numb.
No. She wanted to ego-centralize her life. She wanted to forget that the universe was ending one day, that her life would be just as meaningless eating her sorrows away and drinking her degree down the shitter as it would be with any color painted fence. I knew that and she didn’t want to know that. Bury your head in the sand, that’s the motto, just ignore the pressing absurdity of life. Do whatever feels right to you, guess that’s what she’s doing. That’s all I want to do too, but she couldn’t take it. That’s fine, I get it. Who wants to live in a van and fuck up their life after so many years spent getting a piece of paper that says you’re not a fuck-up.
Who am I to say. I broke her, couldn’t handle her idealism anymore. Had my head up too far in my own to take hers too. I want to hitchhike, and I’m going to. I want to live in Spain, Germany, Italy, man, all the big names. And I would. She couldn’t though and I knew it, can’t blame her but can’t take her. I broke her and now I’m complaining. Guess that’s what they mean by privilege. Ignore the problems of your fellow men. Ignore that they struggle too, that they die too, that they love and loss too. What else is there for me to do?
Phone buzzes, I’ve made it to the central English building. At least in about ten minutes I’ll be able to write. Phone buzzes again. At least in ten minutes I’ll be sitting behind a desk and doing whatever task it is that the professor thought would help me learn. I can’t think about her so easily then. I can just sit there, judge the people that walk by in the hall, kinda love and kinda hate the people I’m sitting around, and ignore the rest of my life. Phone buzzes, mom’s calling. No way, I hate phone calls. Makes me think something terrible is happening, something desperate. How desperate could it possibly be? Death is about as bad as things can get and that was inevitable. There are hallways that punk-ass kids walk down as we head to school and there is death that awaits all of us at the edge of tomorrow. Get over it, bury your head, do something creative, and move on. That’s what life has to offer and that’s exactly what I was going to do.
Dodge into the bathroom, music don’t quit so I don’t quit. Who cares anyway. I’ll make it to class even if she doesn’t work with me, even if it hurt like hell, even if I still love her right now more than I ever loved her while we were dating. Take a swig out of the flask she gave me. I head out, into the tan ass hall again. I walk for a few more steps, I get to the class. My professor is already waiting, scribbling some lesson on the board. Maybe I wouldn’t be the perfect student today, but I’m here anyway. I sit down, put up my hood again, put down my bag. I lean back and wait for school to start. Squeal of a stereo as the song wraps up. Thank God for gin. Thank God for tears. Thank God for fleeting moments of love in-between a cesspool of miserable numbness. Thank God I’m still moving. Thank God I still make it to class every day. Thank God for Gary Clark Jr.
Everything burns in the end...