It was 2002, I remember it well

"It was so cold that year

It was colder than hell"

First year of college I took a placement exam, along with most of my incoming class, to try getting out of an introductory course. I was disappointed in getting only a mid-B... and crestfallen at seeing the next-highest grade out of dozens was a 59/100. Where the hell was I?

 

"And things hadn't been good for you for a while"

I had been a ghost in high school. At least I was never seriously beaten. Sure, I'd been slapped upside the head a few times by the bullies, but they tended to steer away from me for the most part. Something about my flat affect and refusal to grovel when cornered made them nervous. But I did not exist. Things like me were not permitted to exist. I spoke too clearly, learned too quickly, hedged too little, had no interest in their idiotic pissing contests. Homework both bored me and made it hard to breathe for the anxiety of getting any detail the slightest bit wrong, so I didn't do it.

 

"Eager and keen to please"

Graduated as a C student. Tested well though. Reaching university age was supposed to be my big break. Free from the idiots at last. And I was thrown into a dorm full of subhuman degenerates whose idea of freedom was not reading existentialism and learning how to culture microbes, but re-enacting Animal House. Slapping me upside the head for being a nerd, marching to sport fields and playing the same exact 3 pop/hip-hop songs as all the rest at a louder volume.

 

"And we were both laughing

'Cause we know how you are"

A few years ago, in my late thirties, I applied for a job only to be derided by the interviewer for not having my Master's degree "and what, you still think you're a 'science guy' right?" he scoffed, making his enmity obvious until I nervously misremembered a procedure, so he could shove me back out the door. You know your kind and I ain't it. Who cares about personal quality when you can stomp around and badger and undermine those you dislike? That's how you build a professional workforce.

 

"We never thought you'd quit on us good"

And I never did, probably never will, yes you can keep beating on losers all their lives, keep satisfying your sadism. You can kill me over and over.

 

"We thought that we knew you

Well I guess that we don't"

But they all knew each other, their own kind. One day the janitor had to go down our dorm hall and wipe down the doors. One or more of us had marked territory, the old-fashioned way, over most of our doorknobs. This was me? This was my great aspiration, to become one with such? And then you go to class and you're told to get into groups for group assignments, so you can make that piece of retard filth look good on his report card. The professors just cheered them all on, all of a kind calling me unkind for noticing it. They forced a roommate on me. He had parties and I wandered the streets at eleven for having no place there.

 

"We called you the black penny, remember that?"

That's the line that got me, playing one more turn muted until 3 a.m. hoping the songs would save my life, terrified I may hear a knock on my door, panicking over each day to come until only cutting myself made it possible to breathe. Would anyone regret the tarnished?

 

"The sea is wide

The streets are long"

No. Noone would write any song about me if I killed myself. Why waste the effort. You've got eight billion redundant replacements. A worker's a worker, so long as he's obedient, not one of the freaks insisting on truth and fairness and improvement.

 

"There's blood on all our hands

With the catalyst gone"

It's not a story of suicide, it's a story of murder, and though I'm still here writing, it succeeded. Over two decades ago, you eliminated me. The world has one fewer researchers, one fewer writers, one fewer dissenters. When it happens you always ask why, seek a singular cause, a defect in the departed. But an event can be overcome. The overwhelming evidence of a lifetime's worth of days cannot, the unchallenged glass-eyed gaze of every monkey on the street. Challenges can be met. The repeated discovery that nothing lies past each mire but more muck, that you can never be more, well...

 

"Are you heavenly or

Just like the past?"

Tall tales from times of yore? Do you delude yourself that society has improved? Check the vocabulary, the clarity of thought, the nuance, the integrity of speakers from past generations against those born into Facebook addiction and hashtag re-linking. Dysgenics is an endemic with many faces, none of them very expressive.

 

"history built on dust"

You win. You won long ago. Take whatever prize you imagine you can find, because you've chosen to get nothing from the likes of me.