THE FEAR

And then one day you realize, that figure that lurks at the foot of your bed when you awake late at night is now sitting next to you on the subway. His eyes are coals. And, unfortunately for you, he does not disappear when you turn on the light.

The floor of the subway car is the same type of linoleum that is in your kitchen and bathroom.

The people around you are all dead. You are slowly dying, too. Each and every day your teeth crumble a little bit more on the hard bread of a shitty deli sandwich.

There's never enough mayonnaise.

Beer rots the roots of your molars, and your breath is constantly stinking of stale day-old sugar.

SAVE DOMINO.

You see that same fresh-faced NYU couple get on the Subway few stops after you in the morning. They grab each other and pull on the fabric of their new clothes. His stubble is neatly trimmed and manicured. Her eyes are blue. You stare at them and they pretend not to notice.

You are now old and creepy.

You see an Ad in the Subway for a trip to the Caribbean and for the first time in your life you actually want to get away. When ever before did a photo of turquoise water nearly bring tears to your eyes?

The free daily papers promise continued downturn for the economy, fare hikes for transit travel, rents that rise with crime - none of the charts seem to make sense. How can this thing be going up while this goes down? Does it all add up? What about the Law of Equalization? You need Al Gore to spell it out with a documentary. Otherwise your understanding of economics is limited to being able to baffle people in social situations with bullshit.

BAFFLE WITH BULLSHIT.

Every once in a while, a golden light floods down between the chasms of buildings and just for a second, you think that this is all worth it, you really made it and somehow you might just be better than the rest.

"This must be the promised land."

"It's a filthy, yet beautiful place."

Other times, the ringing in your ears continues long after the brakes stop squealing.

This is the symphony of the city which drove Brian Wilson insane. A symphony in which invisible strings connect all inhabitants. There plays the brass band of taxicabs. The baton falls out of your hand and the music continues. Someone else picks up the baton from the sidewalk. The dancing bums seem to be the only others who can hear this shattered song.

This fear, this irrational fear, is what makes you pound the pavement underneath your feet from the Subway to the front door, minimizing the time among the hyenas. You spin around the tourists who are always checking their maps in the middle-of-the-fucking sidewalk and cuss them out under your locomotive breath. Your jaw is clenched and you can't wait for some motherfucker to bump into you. A long stream of cutting witticisms is locked and loaded, ready to be released in a rapidfire of vengeance.

"Whoa, buddy."

Are you the Evil one, or is it some maniac that emerges out of the subterranean levels of the city and enters your thoughts late at night?

Has a mind gangster slowly wrapped his hands around your neck as he slowly squeezes your larynx so that breath is an impossibility?

The mind gangsters are still everywhere, and years later, they cannot be escaped. As far as one may travel, there is a network and in all it's vastness ("Vastness: that's a weird word to say. Vast-ness".), those creatures of the mind manage to find YOU.

"Ah, I moved to the Big City to find myself. Well, and to escape my demons from before."

I'm still of the firm belief that PEOPLE DO NOT CHANGE, only circumstances do. If you'd like an explanation of said theory, please tune in next week for a better, more in-depth rendering.