A+Portrait+of+Despair+from+the+Sidelines


 * A Portrait Of Despair From The Sidelines**

//By Joel Auerbach//

When he got home, he always followed the same routine. He would step onto the front porch, fiddle around in his pocket for his key, put the key in the door, open the door, step inside, take off his shoes, hang up his jacket, walk to the bathroom, relieve his bladder, walk to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, hunt around the refrigerator for unsuspecting leftovers, walk to the living room, grasp the television remote like a hand swearing on the Bible, and turn on the television before his eyes could catch his hands’ clever play. “Coming home from the trenches”, he called it (to himself), and this ritual marked its daily occurrence. He casually flipped through the channels, pausing if one frequency or another caused him to resonate. He ran through the fragments of his day; that Sam that plagued him incessantly at lunch – really, what was that guy’s deal? It was the same every day: he would take his lunch to some inconspicuous, virgin corner of the room, and within 45 seconds flat (he even timed it once) there Sam would appear, with some inane comment about his workload – talk so banal that it seemed to rattle in the brain awhile until it mercifully departed, along with the shock arising from the stench of this fellow’s breath. God, his breath stank. And then, in an offering of cruel respite from conversation, Sam would begin to eat. Slowly, at first, as if inspecting his fodder for signs of decay, or poison, or some otherwise unthinkable travesty, but then accelerating rapidly, unleashing the voracious masticating power of his odorous mandibles, and splattering himself (as well as the occasional onlooker) with the debris from his catch. It was unbearable. He changed the channel, skipping past a vibrant rainforest, and narrowly ducking a low-budget ad for a rotund used-car salesman sporting plaid suspenders and a bolo tie. He finally settled on something he could understand: the news - plain and factual, and delivered directly to the triumphant American home by a clean-scrubbed fellow with teeth so white that they seemed to make glisten every horrible truth, or untruth, or ignorance that passed between them. And this evening was no exception. The winged messenger was giving a sermon that was equal parts sobering and pre-packaged; some narcotics-funded radical group in Africa was beating up on a smaller faction because they didn’t interpret a book the same way, or else they didn’t care for the particular shade of brown in their skin, or were jealous of their wives, or all three. It really was a terrible bloody mess. “Someone really ought to do something”, he thought, and shifted his sitting position. Onscreen, pictures of mangled children, wailing wives, and husbands on fire trying to gather their herds. But as much as he was appalled by the grotesque scenery flashing staccatoed and detached before him, as time wore on an unsettling notion began to surface in his mind and broke his reclining peace. He found himself bothered more by the reporter himself - his antiseptic half-smile, his hair that had never been fur, and his carefully constructed facial stubble that desperately tried to balance his otherwise sterile housekeeping. If this shelled-out mockery was to be his conduit to the rest of the world, even those places and people that he despairingly wished to identify with, then he would take no part in it. There could be no place for him in it. He would go to hell to get away from those drooling ghosts. But this was no statement of misanthropy… or was it? To be sure, he had started with nothing but good intentions – sympathy, at least, if not altogether altruism – but it was these damn reporters, these middlemen that got in the way of his blood-brotherhood with his fellow Man, tainting all hope of unity. And yet who was he closer to? All told, with whom did he have more in common – the stern, emaciated, and now incinerated inhabitants of a land he’d likely never set foot on, or the uncannily polite, well-fed, and forever safe man who spoke his language, paid the same taxes, and knew who had won the World Series. He felt compelled to offer help for and in the name of humanity, and yet which was the humanity that he experienced? No, the only ones who would rush in for the patch-job would be the Sams of the world, and even they had their own prey. Well that was it. No more reporters; he knew what they were. No more crimelords; humanity begets inhumanity begets false humanity begets inhumanity. No more goatherders; save yourselves; he could see what they would become when they grew up. And he knew, unequivocally and with his first taste of conviction, that he must stop this cycle at all costs. He would smother the beaches with spilled oil, torch every rainforest and send all those bright exotic birds bursting forth like a confetti cannon, and shred through the ozone with his bare hands. He would take a wrecking ball to every library, hospital, and opera house. He would walk to the closet, grab his baseball bat, run stumbling into the kitchen, and find a target: the refrigerator. And he smashed, and smashed, until there was a huge gaping tear in his reflection on the fingerprinted stainless steel door, and he could see the wasted abundance inside. Pickle jars gave way to milk cartons gave way to Chinese take-out, and he continued to demolish them all. Within moments, the kitchen floor was covered, draped in a mosaic tapestry of condiments, impossible fluids, and heaps of broken glass, becoming the canvas for his sketch of the new human race… Silence. And then from upstairs: “Dennis! What was all that noise?! Are you alright?” “Yeah, mom.” “Well get to bed, it’s far past your bedtime and you have to get up for school tomorrow.” “Ok, mom.”