Bitter Dust

you're tired. you just want to have some fun after work. you want to stop thinking. you want to enjoy yourself.

At a typical sports bar, there's the television. no, scratch that. there are televisions. lots of them. then there are the conversations. lots of them. they are inflated with words like fuck, asshole, shithead. everyone is the man here. someone begins to speak louder than the others as to be heard. it's amazing. it's almost music to mozart's ears. both of them. you try to be polite. you try to unassuming. people think you're weak then.

you order chicken wings. hot ones. you're polite. you want really good chicken wings. they are just not there. what are you supposed to do? they just taste so yucky. can you return them? can you say, can you please take these back.... you don't wanna be rude. It's a sports bar. you wanna be cool like the others. not bogged down by petty, little things in life. you want to fit in but somehow the environment doesn't fit in with you. for you, the environment is a stranger. you hate it. it breathes, it lives off of something malevolent, something violent, something indefinable. what are you going to do?

you see some students playing pool. they seem composed. you decide to play pool. you haven't played for a while so you're still rough. you need some honing, some focus.

YO YO, YOU WANT TO PLAY FOR A 100 BUCKS.

it's so loud, his freakin' voice. he's the man. he's the man. around him are an unattractive drunken woman and a stressed out man.

TELL ME WHEN YOU WANT TO PLAY. YOU A HUSTLER?

i just want to forget about everything. i want to be calm but something uncomfortable rise to the top. i hit the ball too hard and it rolls off to another table.

i'm sorry, i say.

i just wanna play. i want to do my own thing. i know that it bothers someone sometimes but that's not my problem. that's just the thing. i'm bound to be annoying to someone. after a hard day's work, someone wants to pick on me but i just don't care. i couldn't care less what other people think. i'm floatin on my cloud nine and that's all that matters. or is it?

there they are sitting there, acting like big shots, like they are something. here i am trying to ignore everyone and do my own thing. there's something about tampa florida that i love. i love the warm, salty waves of the sea at CLEARWATER, college buddies, students, and vacationers cruising or flying off to CLEARWATER to experience the warm green-eyed sea which folds and folds and foams and floats, it's really something else... it rolls, summertime really rolls as perry farrell once said and the waves create stairs of waters as they fall on the shore, leaving lines, marks of fingers, rolling and rolling with many many fingers the doe of the sea, and spreading it wide... it's really something to see and at night it's majestic... the pink of the hotels during the night becomes majestically warm and shades its guests from the heavy, humidity laden air of tampa... little stars have fallen from the sky, real Venuses and they charm the air and create haloes all around, the sky above all stars and darling rings of night, diamonds are fore'er and all the planes which almost seem to glide down on airports, it's really something to see.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO PLAY WITH ME.

no i didn't. why did i hate him though? was it because they acted like hustlers or swingers or both. was it an affront to my private space? i had done some wrong things in my life, much more harsh than that. i was playing better now, even feeling better. i would walk home tonite.

i left the sports bar, loaded with hostility. i just wanted to walk it off. the anger inside of me wanted out. it was sick of being bottled up, grounded, shut in, locked in. the anger wanted to open the door and be free. so the guy was a loud-mouth. why did i hate him so much. was it because the anger inside of me had been building and building inside of me? little experiences that had made me angry, bit by bit, had been building into a skyscraper of anger, cutting away at my sanity, becoming much stronger than my ability to contain myself. i thought about Freud. we were all under the spell of the pleasure principle. we did what was pleasant for us in the end. even our hard work would pay off when we married a beautiful or classy wife. The ID was the winner in the end. except... what were we supposed to do when something really unpleasant happened to us? did we seek even a dirtier, sickly pleasure? oh, i want a dirty woman. oh, i want a dirty girl. and what of repetition compulsion. why did we revisit painful traumas that had occurred to us. was it an attempt to understand those experiences, to find meaning in them, to know oneself to a certain extend? why was i talking of us or we. was my primitive ID self and my rational ego separating? is that why i needed the superego... in order to counter the primitive forces of the ID?

i was walking through the streets of tampa, looking at the openness of it all. strip clubs, penthouse clubs. everything was out in the open, it seemed. i was a northeasterner. i tried so hard to repress what i thought was evil. this man though. he was something else. i felt violent almost. what was it that lay under me? a deathwish... it was hard to tell. i crossed the street. i was heading back to the Marriot. I saw the sign lit up. I saw the begunning of late night. would this be all?

Freud would have said that humor helps us laugh at ourselves. our primitive drives helped us to reach such lofty heights. Nietzsche remarked that it is often the worst in us that brings out the best in us. Humour or comedy shows us what twisted sexual & violent roots our civilized masks hide, our personas hide. Humor, through its word-plays and striking coincidences brings our primitive motives to our conscious level and we laugh because we transfer our disappointment with ourselves on the comedian. we love & hate the comedian. the clown, on the other hand, is for young children and old folks. the clowns does humiliating little things but makes it funny. we feel that we are triumphant. the comedian is a joke on our sense of insecurity.

so what was i supposed to do now. was i supposed to go back to the hotel and sleep. was i supposed to find the whole incident comedic. after all, he was funny as an afterthought.