Net cafes are the pusher in my ever straightening life. All in all, this is the cheapest addiction I’ve ever had.
I was riding the number 7 from my parents house back down town. We were getting in to Kits when I heard my name and looked up to see Rory Johnston, my first friend in high school. He stayed my friend for about a year – as long as it took me to realize the only thing we have in common is a vague likeness in appearance. I immediately recognised him. He looks exactly the same as when we graduated. He talks the same. If there’s one thing I hate more than total loneliness and despair it is awkward small talk -“catch-up” as some people call it. I honestly pretended to seem interested in his discription of his lame ass life as he unfolded it to me… He lives at home still, went to UBC engineering straight out of high school but got booted cause he stopped going to class. Then Australia for a year – how fucking cliche, I think I’m gonna barf. Now he’s taking economics at Langara. In grade 12, when I thought my next five years would be like Rory’s actual life, that was enough to make me get addicted to hard drugs in a quick hury. Poor blokes like Rory never get that chance of redemption. They have to live through it. Then it was my turn… What am I up to? “I make art,” I said. I listended to the words as they were coming out of my mouth. I immediately felt the way Rory probably felt about it. That my life sounds about as insignificant and meaningless as a resident in a retirement home. I tried to cover my tracks… “I started getting in to the Vancouver Art Scene about a year and a half ago and have been showing in a few gallery’s… Yeah, it’s good!” I said, as if I was saying it was good to convince myself more than him. I couldn’t believe I had actually just said “the Vancouver Art Scene” in a sentence and was serious about it. How fucking pretencious of me. I hated myself more as I continued to speak. As he listened he kept doing that fake yawn thing that people do when they are socially nervous. I kept telling myself ego-boosting thoughts… like, “well, atleast i’m not still living at home,” and “well, atleast I’ve had a vicious drug addiction and managed to stay off drugs for sometime… every once in a while…” and the lame consolation prize thought of “well, atleast my friends think I’m cool.” Thankfully our conversation died after our social obligations to share about each other’s current lives. I went back to readin my book and otherwise ignoring the world around me. Yes, I’m a professional at that on drugs or clean. It’s my mode of survival. I wondered when I would feel like “making something with my life”. And by this I mean, doing something with my life that I would feel proud to boast to ex-friends from high school slogging through the intellectual jerk circle that is university. Sometime I want to be proud that I am studying some really intellectual topics in a respected school. Political Science. Philosophy. Pscyhology. I still get impressed looks when I tell people I did that for a year at Uni. Whatever. I will go back someday. Someday I know the urge will be stronger thatn my current urge… To neglect my guilt-driven feelings of obligation to go to school just so i can fit in with what everyone else my age is doing. I feel justified to myself. Sitting here, writing, about to play Counter-Strike, then off to paint things on walls downtown that make people amazed and intrigued. I feel great about what I’m doing with myself. I feel ahead of myself. Of what I could be. Of what I very easily could be if I stop thinking what I’m doing is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.
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