The Clink

The day it happened didn’t matter. Neither did the month. The place and time were as relevant as being airdropped into the middle of a train platform situated in an unrecognizable albeit geometrically perfect Midwestern planescape. The life of a twenty something past the time of college could be best described as a pearly purgatorial state of prolonged amnesia; sinners and saints alike culled into their barbed wire senses of security that the trip which issued an origin on their golden ticket would automatically provide them with a destination. With goat horns and tattered monk’s robes, they would shuffle and amble in a semblance of respectably Western queue culture, murmuring inauthentic pastiches of aggression like the dog that growls at the doorbell without knowing why.

From the windowsill of an apartment, one unique and precious snowflake was melting as he occasionally leered at the street; his computer screen projecting an oxygen deprived sky blue onto his pale skin in the darkness. Outside a cat pranced into an alley with a mouse twitching in fangs imperfectly perfected by millions of years of evolution. Under the unrelenting star shine in the Catskills town, a police siren howled into the night as red and blue reflections pulsed against fashionably plain colored minimalist coffee shops, dog boutiques, yarn shops, and the blue collar Fox fanatic pizza shop which provided the town with local color and contained it to appropriate levels like a zoo.

The boy-shaped man in his natural habitat (Fili hominus) gawked at the buildings, vainly looking for where the police cruiser was going or where it was coming from. Born in captivity, the man-child’s trainers had given him the name David. As the sirens grew louder, David clutched his grinder filled with a barely criminal amount of weed.

Would I still have to pay off my student loans if I’m in jail or is it more of a free pass?

Don’t think that! If we know anything, it’s that the universe had a great sense of irony

Drown it out with Smash Mouth

Hey now, you’re an all star, get your…radon?

That’s not right

I bet the rape doesn’t happen as much as TV

It might be like a less rewarding, less expensive grad school

I hate that most of my cultural knowledge comes from TV

Get your gay on, yoplait?

You should be ashamed of yourself

In the clink, people would kill to have the kind of freedom you have

Who calls it “the clink”?

You’d be stabbed in the first five minutes of being there

If I can’t enjoy that freedom, maybe I don’t deserve it

Maybe I need to earn it

It’s get your game on, that’s what it is

In the 2 second marijuana fueled span of panic in which this exchange took place, the siren had wailed sorrowfully into and out of existence as it faded into the distance. His heartrate returned to the standard pace recommended by 4 out of 5 cardiologists for the average American consumer between the ages of 18 and 25. Fully relaxed, David returned to his online forum catered to the needs and wants of white male libertarians between the ages of 18 and 36; a place where he could be accepted and heard if he chose to voice his opinion and it didn’t happen to be already posted.

Why am I so weird?

Why can’t I just be like everybody else?

With another link, David gave another click and into the comments he went. Control-F for “social anxiety.” 75 hits. He deletes what he’s about to post.

Good to see everybody else feels this way

Outside a bottle could be heard shattering, followed by mischievous laughter. It could have been the girl with the sunflower dress and the pin-up girl tattoo but it didn’t matter. Outside a story was happening. Outside one could see in through a warm window the silhouette of a man, outlined only by the search for people in the wrong direction. Around 2 AM, David closed his laptop and locked his door. Proud and ageless, the trees outside would dance and talk as they creaked and swayed. Against the light of the moon, a lattice of shadows would cover David as he shut his eyes.

Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as TV