Night Report: The Descent

If it’s meant to be I’ll see you again soon. See how I brand myself? I have the nerve to challenge God.

Horrified, gnashing my teeth, I’ve stripped away another layer and recognized another way in which I have been indoctrinated: I think that I’m better than death. And that I am owed a life. In fact all this time I believed that one should work less and earn more the more education they accrue. Still I yearn for status. I’ve read until the sun came up more often than not, I’ve taken on over six digits of student loan debts to finance my advancement, and what has it all been for? I grit my teeth and work 50 hour weeks and barely make enough to save a thousand dollars. I have contempt for myself, I consider my value lowered because I’ve always had to labor and I’ve never profited in accordance with my effort. I’m just as entitled as my old Ivy League peers. Every relationship is a mirror: what I hated of them, I hid inside. I’ve got in my head this idea that I’m special, that I should dominate by sheer exceptionalism, that everyone should listen to me.

And the world usually agrees with me. I get what I want when I need to have it. Another night we descended into the club all three of us with the urgent luxurious haste of VIPs, because I overheard and then used the name of a promoter while we stood in line. My boss never has critique for me in our supervision meetings, only awe at how packed my schedule is. By now she stops asking how, mainly why, and I don’t have an answer for that.

Nor do I know what to say when client after client asks me: why shouldn’t I kill myself? In my head I want to dance it all away like Bowie in 83, before the hopelessness had its panopticon eyes on us, there was still somewhere to hide. It bites and eats at me when I reach my hand out and they don’t take it. They’re pained by how everyone else is swaying and singing along but they don’t know the words, they can’t find the beat. I know the pain because I’ve been there before myself, I used to hide too, and I remember so clearly how I found my place in the dark — Just dance! — and they believe me but don’t, they refuse, they resist. The truth is, I’m an oppressor too, I want my flock to resist but not that way, in the uncomfortable way, just in the method I know best, I know best!

But I don’t really know a thing at all. Not even myself. And I promise you don’t know who I really am.

I swear it. All there is to know is what we all have within, namely an instinct — towards what depends on your species. Because we are not all human. Some of us are more. More than anything else I am absolutely dedicated to survival and submersion into the haze at the heart of my soul. I’m an artist because I’m dedicated to living. What makes this life an art is how different it is from anyone else’s. I’m becoming and always have been what I call a desire body, an individualized Ubermensch, a posthuman: I’ve excised out common sense, morality, ethics, gender, traditional religion, and fear. Yes, and — the cost of living outweighs the fruits of working to live, it’s clear now that just living isn’t enough. We really have no choice but to live excessively, to exceed in every sense of the word, and so I’m exceeding my tolerance first. I’ve been intoxicated on something for the past three days straight because sober is too close to being mortal. You’re starting to be able to see the bone under my eyes.

If it’s meant to be I’ll see you again soon. See how I brand myself? I have the nerve to challenge God.