Loneliness

Hmmm, right, yes. Good one. Right. Let me light a cigarette before I answer… Yeah. Smoke helps my brain, you know? Watch the road, will ya? So… yeah… Your question was: ‘what’s loneliness?’ Yeah. Great question. Especially coming from a happily-married 28 year-old. No, really. No sarcasm. I’m callin’ it as I’m seein’ it. Anyway... So… Loneliness. Shit, I don’t know. If you gotta ask then you can’t know, that’s pretty much it. But okay, I don’t mean to avoid the question or dance my way around it or whatever. I’ll tell you what loneliness is. Sure I will! Will you understand? Probably not. Do I care? Probably not. So we’re even, Steven. It’s all cool, Raoul. It’s the shiat, biatch. Anyway. Yeah… So, loneliness, for me. For me, mind you, not for other people. But you asked me, so I’m guessing it’s my answer you want, my wisdom, my point of view, right? Right. So, loneliness, let’s see… Okay… Yeah, okay: it’s going to get a haircut when you don’t need one, hoping an at-least-mildly-attractive woman will do it. Because, you see, when you’re lonely, you’ll take any kinda contact you can get. Physical contact. So if a so-so girl, who happens to be wearing a skirt and boots and who happens to have a stomach flatter than Belgium starts fondling your scalp, well… For the next 50 minutes you’re almost content. Because a woman who would not give you the time of day in an overcrowded bar at two in the morning now massages your skull. Yes, you’re paying her, but I’m guessing that money is better spent on this than on the empty moans of a cheap whore. But that’s just my guess, I’ve never paid a whore. And what about that? Loneliness is when you feel so overwhelmingly alone that you know that a so-called ‘lady of the night’ won’t do it for you, because: what’s the point? Sex isn’t the answer. Meaningless sex is definitely not the answer. Because, even if you pay the hottest girl in the universe to straddle you, she’s still just your employee for the next hour and at some point you’ll have to walk all the way home and you’ll have to shower, hoping you don’t have some weird STD, and you still have to get in your bed; and you have to fall asleep. Alone. And even worse: you have to wake up alone, drag yourself out of bed for god-knows what reason, shuffle your way to the coffee-maker, force yourself to not look out of the window, knowing that if it had snowed the previous night, things would be just a little bit worse. And a little worse, at that point, is a lot. It’s the thing that might push you over the edge. So you pray for non-snow, you pray your coffee will be strong enough, you pray a friend will call you at some point during the day to invite you for a drink. But if it happens, and it seldom does, if it happens, you’ll turn it down because you just love wallowing in your self-pity. You say you hate being alone, but you live for it. How’s that for a paradox? Loneliness is when you wanna call a friend and you flip your phone open and realize that all the numbers saved in the phonebook are work contacts or, at best, mere acquaintances. Loneliness is getting a thrill when you start using a new stick of Chapstick. Loneliness is taking up smoking just so you’ll have something to unwrap every once in a while. Loneliness is when you start hating, I mean truly hating, your shower-curtain rod ‘cause you know there’s no way in hell that it’ll hold your weight dangling at the end of a rope. Loneliness is when you’re pissed off ‘cause you don’t know where to get a good rope and you don’t want to ruin your best belt… Loneliness, loneliness: it’s dreading the weekends because then there’s no reason to go to bed early, you simmer in your thoughts, sipping a lukewarm whiskey, feeling abandoned by the world. Even worse than having no reason to go to bed, it’s having no reason to wake up. Tomorrow will be another long, lonely, sad day. And then there’s still Sunday. And on Sunday you’re not only sad ‘cause you’re alone, you’re also sad because you have to work tomorrow. Another paradox for you! And… And… Anyway... Yeah. Shit… Sorry, I kinda went off on a rant, here. Sorry. Really. But I think I answered your question. Being lonely is being alone for so long that you can’t interact in society anymore. Loneliness is the most addictive of drugs. It’s when you’re with someone and talk non-stop because you’re so used to talk to yourself that you forget that other people also want to talk. It’s when you’re with your with friends, having fun, and you’re already dreading the end of the night because while they’ll all return home to their loved-ones, you’ll go home alone. In the morning, they’ll have breakfast with their significant others and you won’t. And you’ll think about them. Them: the ones you left, the ones who left you. The Lenkas, the Petras, the Annas, and all those other names that end with an ‘A.’ Loneliness sucks. Loneliness is great… Anyway, that’s my answer. Now, if you don’t mind, keep driving and shut the fuck up. ‘Cause if you ask me another question like this, I swear to God, I’ll punch you in the neck so hard I’ll end up squishing your aorta between my knuckles and your window.

Just kidding, of course.

Now gimme another cigarette and focus on the road, we still got a ways to go.