Noah Cicero - The Collected Works of Noah Cicero Vol. II

He’s a lot better at poverty than me. He knows that getting scrap metal will get him cigarettes and crack.

I don’t know these things.

I’m giving my scrap metal away for free.

He knows it’s dumb to hang out with co-workers who wear Nikes.

I don’t.

I’m sitting here thinking it is a great idea.

This is a bad idea.

Everyone in there terrifies me.

It can’t be that bad.

They are just people.

I can’t be so terrified all the time.

I must open the car door and walk to the door of the bar and be a human being.

I wore a nice shirt, I’m presentable.

I got the shirt two years ago at Christmas from my parents.

Everyone looks down on me.

They invited me so they could look down on me.

Because they are all snobs.

I hate them.

No, I don’t.

They’ve never done anything to me.

There’s no reason to hate them.

They are just people.

They walk around and worry about things.

We have a lot in common. We worry.

I get out of the car.

I’m walking to the door.

It is terrifying.

I wish I would have a seizure right now.

A seizure would be good.

It would be a good excuse for not showing up at a bar.

‘Why didn’t you come?’

‘I got there but I had a seizure in the parking lot.’

‘Oh Vasily, I’m so sorry.’

That would be a great excuse.

But I’m not going to have a seizure because I’m not epileptic.

I’m actually in very good health.

I enter the bar.

There are people everywhere.

Not as crowded as a Friday or Saturday.

But still a lot of fucking people.

Someone is yelling “Vasily!” at me.

I look over. It’s Beth and Gina.

At least two people like me.

Beth is sitting with her boyfriend.

Gina is sitting by herself, drinking a Long Island Iced Tea. She keeps hand-dancing like a raver.

I wish Chang or Sasha were here. Without them I feel defenseless against the masses.

I wave my hand, go to get a drink.

It takes like ten minutes because there are a bunch of assholes standing around the bar.

I get a drink.

I sit down at the table.

Beth says, “So what’s up?”

“I’m excited to be at the bar.”

“It’s quiz night!”

“Yeah, I’m pumped.”

I have no idea what to say.

I sit next to Gina.

Gina is severely drunk.

She keeps touching me, which makes me happy I chose to come.

It is also karaoke night.

One of my co-workers, Diamond, goes up and sings some emo song I’ve never heard and never want to hear again.

Everyone claps.

Some guy with a mullet is putting on quiz night.

He tells everyone to list as many movies as possible that John Travolta was in.

John Travolta.

Sometimes I wish I was back in Russia eating cabbage in Siberia.

I start to panic about all this John Travolta excitement and start drinking rum and Cokes.

Life is getting better now.

I start dancing with Diamond.

I’m not even sure who Diamond is.

She never speaks to me.

She’s a bartender at the steakhouse.

She looks really weird.

I know she has two kids and lives in the ghetto of Warren.

And she says she is twenty-six, which is the same age as me.

She is my age but I feel no relation to her.

She even looks quite a bit older than me.

Diamond and I dance.

I can’t dance.

I’m tone-deaf and have no rhythm.

It is going badly.

Someone sings a ska song so I skank.

Everyone starts staring at me.

They are wondering what I’m doing.

Nobody knows.

They are confused about my skanking.

I am a joke.

Humanity hates me.

The song is over.

Then “Inside Out” by Eve 6 comes on. Diamond is my age, so she is a late 90s douchebag like me.

Diamond and I drunkenly scream the song at each other.

We both find

faith in nothing

.

Faith in nothing

does not unify unless you’re drunk.

Faith in nothing

does not create revolutions or unionize the masses.

It creates a good profit margin for bars, liquor stores, and drug dealers.

I sit down next to Gina.

Gina is so drunk she can’t even talk.

I feel like I’m floating in a spaceship.

There is nobody here that I really know or can relate to.

Nobody here even really knows who I am.

I don’t really know who anybody else is either.

I feel like I have no identity and they have no identities.

It is kind of nice, this drunken spaceship.

Beth gets into a fight with her boyfriend.

They are having text message wars.

They are sitting next to each other though.

Text messages cost a dime.

They have spent like thirty dollars to fight each other in the last ten minutes.

I don’t know why they don’t just talk.

I’m not even sure what they’re fighting about.

I ask Beth, “What the fuck are you two fighting about?”

“As a joke I wrote, ‘I hate you,’ in a text message and now he thinks I’m mad at him.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I know.”

She knows it is stupid but she is participating in the argument anyway. Their whole relationship is like that. They see each other for one day and fight, which means they have a huge text message war. Then for two days they don’t speak, then they have a text message war to make up. It is insane. They seem to enjoy these pseudo-fights. These breakups and make-ups. Like it is part of having a normal relationship.

I really start to drink.

I get drunker and drunker.

I feel stupid for even coming.

I just fucking feel stupid and drunk.

I look around and Beth is gone. Supposedly she is fighting with her boyfriend outside now.

Gina is drunk and everyone is asking her if she needs a ride home. This makes Gina happy. It makes Gina feel like people care about her.

Then I’m sitting in my car, driving home.

Regretting that I ever went.

I’m happy that it was fun.

But when you’re drunk and no one is in the car with you, driving home from the bar is fucking sad.

I should unstrap my seatbelt.

Slam down on the pedal.

Look out the window at the moon one more time.

And then slam the car into a rail.

Oh that would be nice.

I don’t slam into a rail.

I don’t do anything but start crying.

I feel so lonely.

People were not meant to feel this lonely.

People are pack animals.

I’m so alone.

When I’m with people.

They seem not like me.

Chang and Sasha are there.

But they only help so much.

I’m still the one who has to decide what I must direct my body to do.

I’m always responsible.

Others, they don’t mind letting some person tell them what to do, they don’t mind some old book dictating their actions and beliefs.

I don’t know, but I never could.

I’m alone.

Alone on the highway, heading to the Waffle House, not because I need or even like Waffle House eggs. I have eggs at my house. But I don’t want to go home and sit alone. I can’t do it.

I’m so drunk.

I’m so lonely.

I’m so afraid.

I was shot going over the Berlin Wall for the American Dream.

But all I got was drunk.

And very very lonely.

I pull into the Waffle House parking lot.

I’m sitting in my car, looking through the Waffle House window. Isabella walks around in her server uniform, looking young and pretty. Looking so beautiful to my drunk eyes.

Isabella stood me up.

She left me to die.

I don’t care.

I go in.

Isabella actually smiles when she sees me.

I sit down and say, “I’m fucking drunk.”