Commercial Misery

Commercials kill. Like Peter returning home for Christmas and Folgers, which still brings a tear to my eye, although more recently it seems like a bad eighty's dick joke. Or the noir mouse tackle that left me breathless and no more interested in Doritos than I ever was. Even the ever-expanding Quizno’s lineup featuring R.O.U.S.’s and a sexually charged, ciabatta banging OILF has brought me to tears of laughter. These were life-influencing moments brought about because some white guy wanted to make a buck off of America’s obesity and the ad affected me.

Then along comes an ad that asks the hard hitting questions, and does so repetitively, haphazardly, and in a way that you’re surprised if it actually moves the product. But one day, the very day you realize life isn’t going the way it should be, that you have been held prisoner by your inefficacy, you see the commercial again. The day you realize that you are entering into your thirties in the worst shape of your life mentally, physically and emotionally, the question is asked again and this time you are forced to shelve the amusing retorts for a real answer.

Today, I answer. Where does depression hurt, Cymbalta asks? Grab a chair, you achy broad. We’re gonna sort this mess out. And by the way, the curled-up-on-the-couch-in-sweatpants look doesn’t translate to depression. Feminine-odor-and-itching claimed that nugget a decade ago.

For starters, in my wallet. Every time I go out to eat because I’m too tired to cook. Every time the boredom consumes me and I blow good bread on bad movies. Every time I sit alone in my head, not even driven enough to put pen to paper, floating in my mental shark tank with regrets and poor choices nipping at my feet, and I reach for the bottle and drink liquid money until I piss clear and think cloudy.

It hurts in my compassion. Now, to read my writings is to assume I hate everyone. This assumption would be correct. But along with my loathing there was always a balancing affection for kittens, family and people I wanted to wear like a hat. It kept me friendly and polite. This affection, however, seems to have gone the way of the buffalo, leaving in its stead an almost rabid narcissism and compulsive reclusiveness that, were I famous, my publicist would blame on “exhaustion and a vitamin deficiency”.

I have been bitter on and off for years, but this somehow gave way to a low-grade empathy and now manifests only as apathy. It is often hard work for me to care about anyone if there isn’t something in it for me. Maybe it comes with age. Maybe it’s chemical. All I know is that, throughout the years, one of the few appealing aspects about me was my compassion and ability to act on it. Now the world only has my dark wit and knuckle hair left to find endearing.

It hurts in my blind faith, worse than the day I learned God wasn’t real. And by “real”, I mean a mortal man behind a curtain actually righting the wrongs of the world and physically hearing my prayers. Blind faith is essential to our societal structure because our growing cerebellums eat questions and observations and shit intelligence into your brain. It allows us to trust our lovers, to not curse during dinner and to believe that not all black people will rob us.

My mind, however, is bloated from too many questions with no answers to help them pass. Not only do I barely believe in my fellow man, I pretty much only assume the worse. I don’t trust my lovers and I fucking love dinner conversations. I haven’t been robbed yet, but I’m sure it’ll be by a minority when it happens. Is all this my ignorance talking? No, because I’m smarter than you. Is this my self-esteem crying out? Maybe on the ‘lovers’ thing, but it doesn’t help to have painful references in your past. As far as I am concerned, it’s a deadly cocktail of bad judgment, failed goals and escapism I drink every night before I lay in the bed I have made.

The point of the commercial is not the problem but the solution, which to them is a pill, but for me may be more complex than fooling a few neurotransmitters. It hurts the sex-life, the nightlife, the easy life and blah blah. What they don’t tell you is that maybe you’ve been fucking up all your pathetic life and that your depression is being supported by your bad choices and is not the result of a chemical imbalance.

Where a rut kind of tickles, depression is a gaping sore that oozes needed energy. Although some people need your stupid drugs, Cymbalta, I don’t. I don’t need your bench-warming soccer mom stereotypically portraying an emotionally ravaged introvert. I’m not asking my doctor shit about you. What I’m going to do is work on it one day at a time. And the next time I see your commercial, my answer will be “in your wife’s black, syphilitic, gang-bang filled mouth”.

Man Of The (Bus) People

I am a man of the people. This isn’t new to me, rather it’s a rediscovery. Considering my history of traipsing city streets like the Scottish country side, and riding public transit into the sunset like a horse with no name, it’s become obvious that my recent years of comfortable living have rendered me socially infertile. I have pretty much driven everywhere I’ve needed to go for the last decade, save a car-less vacation. So, having not spent more than a collective hour a month on sidewalks, walking and stopping, watching and conversing among the common folk, my world has slowly rotted into a slimy, pessimistic bubble of me and mine only, justified through grave cynicism and enforced by walls of vehicular security.

I have recently shed myself of the financial burden my automobile and it’s weighty East coast insurance brought. Armed with a bike and a bus pass, I have forcibly thrust myself into the city’s loins to navigate my way to and from work and anywhere in-between without the comfort of a modern day transporter. The liberation has been thrilling, letting what little trepidation arises to be doused by waves of fresh air flowing through my mane while awaiting my transfer at Kennedy plaza.

Riding the bus is part of being a minority. This is my heritage. A custom, if you will, passed down through generations. There are hundreds of people riding the bus each day, many of which wandering this vast plaza that all routes pass, like an exchanging of pollen the buzzing buses require to survive. The riders, all unique and beautiful, almost none of them white. Those few who are caucasian fall easily into either the “college student” or “white trash” classifications. This is the place where we of pigment sometimes pass, sometimes nod, but always reunite for loud, busy-handed conversations, in the dialect of choice, regarding everyday trite.

Because I am way too tired from constantly walking to write a wonderfully descriptive parable, I’ll keep my newest insights concise and bulleted.

* It has occurred to me that some people talk merely to hear the vibrations their vocal folds make turn into shit. Loudly, because no one else talks on a bus, they force unnecessary questions at the other person to assert to the rest of the riders that they know someone and have what all doltish and mentally disturbed people consider a valuable commodity: company. I’m all for chatting randomly, however I rarely fling the poo sound all over others comfortable silence.

* If you haven’t worked out in a year, it’s harder to do things as easily and painlessly as you did back then. Thank you, new bicycle.

* Female back tattoos are alive and... alive. Americans have a long, storied history of getting stupid tattoos. This won’t be my soapbox for ribbing tribal wraps and cartoon characters. But, I must say, some people will put anything on their body permanently. ANYTHING. You see, your body is your business, but when your lack of clothing and tact force me to witness your ridiculousness, it becomes my business. So, instead of bitching I’m actually thinking constructively. How about a sudoku tramp stamp? Or a crossword puzzle lower back tat with clues drawn on your also-exposed side flaps? Just trying to make you more useful. Either way, I made a Facebook gift app to help come to terms with that which I can not control.

* The bus driver is not an authority, merely a tool. They vary in intelligence, patience and congeniality. Keep your words few and your movements behind the yellow line.

I am a man of the people and now I walk amongst the people, unprotected by the vehicular shell that I use to rely on quickly escorting me from these very places. Walking and stopping, watching and conversing. Sometimes passing, sometimes nodding. Always with my people.