Breaking Young Divinities

Chapter 19

Freud said, in his more spiritual moments, that sex is all that we think about as a species. No matter how bad or how good things get, all that we really ever think about is sex. We have our friends dying of cancer, our neighbours living in poverty, our parents languishing in warehouses for the aged, our leaders leading us into that self-righteous masturbation called warfare, and amidst all of this, we think mainly about sex.

With everything always falling apart around us, instead of goading ourselves into action to accomplish our goals, we tend toward inaction – to sit on our haunches and chew the fat – and not do anything particularly productive. Our loved ones die, yet we do not think that maybe we should start attaining our goals before we run out of time ourselves. Our society becomes more ruthless and more insufferable, so we respond by retreating to the simple pleasures granted by the libido.

This is so wasteful, so disturbing, yet it seems to be the full extent of our nature. We must rise above our slavish devotion to sex if we are ever to turn any of our childhood dreams into reality. Sadly the middle and lower classes devote most of their creative energy to sex, and leave control of our society to those ruthless elite who have gained at least rudimentary power over their desire for petty gratification.

If you're poor, it's all about sex.

I was thinking about sex as I lay at home in my bed. I still can't remember how I got home. I remember leaving the park, walking out from under the trees and onto the street. Then I was in bed, just lying there, feeling no more unwell than usual.

The apartment was quiet. All the lights were off. I think it was around nine at night. I felt confused, frustrated and perplexed about everything. My mind was a swirling mess of senseless thoughts in a brain full of mucus.

So I unwisely went out again, out into the night, out into the cold. I went down Parliament Street, down past all those neon signs, down past all those dilapidated boarding houses. Parliament Street: where Tamils lounged and white drunks staggered about; where drug dealers slithered along the side streets – streets like Ontario, and Sumac. I was lost here, here on the margins of society with the browns and the blacks and the city reds who cast their lot and lost, down here at the border of one of the richest neighborhoods in the city.

I was mad in my head, steaming about my dead-end life, about what I didn't have and what I wanted. I was quiet on the outside, but on the inside, just under the skin, I was seething and ready to blow. This was how I felt as I walked back in to that same bar that I had got kicked out of before.

I went in. The bartender didn't seem to recognize me. He handed me a beer, and another, and another. My stomach was awash and bloated, and I had to pee.

Some arrogant blowhard sat beside me and started with his drunken opinions about politics and other senseless crap. It quickly got worse.

"Hey buddy," Blowhard said, "What do you think of what I just said?"

"Sounds fine," I said, without looking at him.

"Hey," Blowhard said. He put his arm on my shoulder. "Look at me when I talk to you."

"What?" I asked while staring at my beer bottle.

"You should respect your elders," he said, as if he were important.

"Leave me alone, man."

"You have a mouth on you," he said, squeezing my right arm in his hand.

I grabbed my beer bottle with my left hand and swung it at him. It smacked hard against his chest. He crashed down to the floor.

"The guy fucking hit me!" Blowhard yelled.

The bartender jumped over the bar and pushed me to the ground, and then someone else jumped on top of me and held me down.

"I was defending myself! Get the fuck off of me! What the fuck is your problem! Get off of me!"

Somehow I managed to sink my teeth into the guy's hand, and he jumped up yelling something about getting a disease from me.

A pair of police officers came in, I guess as part of their regular beat, and quickly noticed the commotion. They both sat on me, and held me down, and handcuffed me. I got thrown into the back of the police car. I started crying and vomiting. One of the cops turned around to take a look.

"Oh, that's sick. I'm not cleaning it up," he said.

Next chapter should be online 11/30/2015.