--(y0lk)---------------------------------------------------------------------

y0lk #113: "i'm a tough guy with a hard lust for nintendo" by kreid

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        uh, i'm not going to introduce this one.  it's a pretty crappy story

about THE REAL WORLD.  i wrote all this stuff this summer with nowhere to

publish them, so i have quite an abundance of fiction stuff to release.  can

you even stand the pleasure?



--(<squealing noises>)-------------------------------------------------------



        fuck fuck fucky fuck fuck, said i, nothing on the television.  never

anything on six channels of t.v. at 4:00 in the morning.  so i sat there and

flipped through the six channels, watching scraps of television, until 4:02.

fuck.  i said it out loud even though nobody else ever came into my room.  i

figured i might as well speak once in a while or else the room would never

hear a word, me being alone the way i was.  is it cruel to raise a baby

without teaching it language?  i didn't know.  so i spoke to the room.



        fuck you, empty room with one mattress and hardwood floor and

expensive 21 inch television set.  i remembered cable.  i remembered having

cable less than one week ago, and i knew, i might never have cable again.

almost eighteen years of my life lived with cable and nintendo, and now, no

cable.  only nintendo with six games and two broken control pads.  fucky fuck

fuck.



        with cable, there was always something on at 4:00 in the morning.

something stupid enough to hold just enough of my attention to lull me to

sleep.  and if not, i could flip through the sixty channels a few times and

soon enough, it would be 4:30, and there would be a whole new batch of

diversions, a fingertip's press away.  now there were six channels.  two,

four, five, seven, eleven, thirteen.  and at 4:00, the city slept, and so

did the television.  i turned it off.  what could possibly lull me to sleep

now?



        i had six dollars in my pocket, and a big stupid black car parked

outside the motel i happened to be staying at.  i was in jersey city, i

think.  just a few minutes away from the big ugly city.  there had to be a

nintendo controller somewhere in the city, i thought.  something to divert

me for under six dollars.  something to spend just enough energy to push me

to a point where i could sleep.  i ate too much that day, that was the

problem.  i had put too much energy into me and now i couldn't get to sleep.

fuck, fuck food.  fuck me.  tomorrow i would get a job and be making my own

money and i would come back to my motel barely awake enough to prepare the

food i would need to live.  today i stole a kitchenful of my parents' food

and ate to make my stupid self fat and too damned energetic.  fuck me.



        nintendo seemed to be the only answer.  a key to keep my youth and

sanity and sleep all together in this motel room.  i would need to go out and

get a controller in the big rotten city, i knew it.  otherwise i was never

going to sleep, and i would have to rest another day before getting a job.

another day would leave me with five dollars.  or no dollars, if the motel

owner found out that i had broken into this room.  the future was bright and

intimidating.  i needed nintendo.  i needed to be five years old again,

wearing shorts and smiling and staring at a television which i was amazed to

be able to control.  so i put on the only pair of pants i had.  thick, black

jeans.  tough pants for a tough guy.



        it then occured to me that it would be very difficult to find an open

store in new york city which sold nintendo control pads at past 4:00 in the

morning.  i looked for a clock to check the time again, but there was no clock

except the one on the television.  fuck.  okay.  i walked out the door anyway

but i decided against going to the big city in search of nintendo control

pads.  i decided to sit in my car instead.  since i was only going out to the

parking lot, i decided not to put on my boots.  i was barefoot and barechested

and barefaced heading out the door and down the stairs and into the motel

parking lot.  i remembered to stick one of my boots in the door so it wouldn't

close and i wouldn't have to pick the lock again.



        on the way to my car, barefoot, i noticed everything in jersey city

(or wherever i was) seemed to be made of cement, and, although it hadn't

rained in a few days, everything seemed to be slightly wet.  i assumed the

wetness came from the urine of one thousand bums who were once like me but

ran out of luck and lost the will to break into motels.  it was dirty and

used; it felt like living in this motel was like fucking a sixty-year-old

whore.  i knew this feeling even though i had never had the privilege of

fucking any whores, or even any girls over twenty.  but i was a jersey city

fuck-up now, so anything could happen.  i had a few more hours ahead of me

before dawn.  i was pretty sure at that point that i would not be sleeping

on that night.  i opened the car door which i had intentionally forgotten to

lock, and then i hopped in and shut it.  i locked it from the inside.



        my big stupid black car was actually a lot more comfortable than the

motel room, but there was nowhere to plug in my cheap nintendo or the

expensive t.v. i had stolen from my parents before i left.  i looked around

the car and found only a bunch of my cd's and a sleeping bag and a pack

of camel filter cigarettes.  i did not smoke.  the cigarettes belonged to a

friend which i might never see again, so i decided to take up smoking in his

honor.  i should get in the habit of doing these things now that i was a

jersey city fuck-up.  tomorrow was my eighteenth birthday, and i would be

able to buy more cigarettes, legally, with my remaining six dollars.  being

eighteen tomorrow also meant if the cops found me that they would probably not

be able to return me to my parents.  hooray for me.  hooray, even for the

cops.  well, no, i take that back.  fuck the cops.  and fuck me, too.



        i would probably never graduate high school, and i would not fall into

the fortune that my parents would have died with.  oh, well!  i would not have

minded completing high school and becoming wealthy, but i was eighteen and i

knew what was best for me.  i had to live a life.  otherwise, money would not

be worth anything to me.  and as an artist, i would be pretty damned

worthless.  artists had to be poor, they needed to live within an arm's reach

of death.  somewhere between death and utter failure.  hemingway was rich, i

think.  i never read hemingway.  i don't think i would have liked him anyway.

fuck hemingway.  i smoked a cigarette and then i threw it on the wet

piss-soaked parking lot, all in one split second.  boom.  past 4:00 a.m. the

sky got a strange purple color and you could break all the laws of time and

nature.  even nature couldn't keep awake.  all the clocks were asleep, gravity

was drifting off.  and me, i couldn't sleep because i didn't have

cable.



        the night was long.  very long.  i did a lot of thinking, but didn't

come to any revelations.  or if i did, i don't remember them.  i don't know;

i was tired and i couldn't sleep.  i smoked the whole pack of cigarettes,

each one hovering in the air, falling to earth with incredible slowness.  the

sky was getting pink and gravity was dozing.



        i checked the gas gauge.  there was none.  i knew there was none,

that's why i stopped at that particular motel.  the needle had been down at

"E" for an hour before i got there.  i would be surprised if i could make it

to the nearest gas station, which i glanced over at.  gulf, 92 cents a gallon.

92 + 9/10ths of a cent per gallon.  cheap gas in jersey city.  i could maybe

even drive the city tomorrow.  no.  fuck it, i thought, the car was not part

of my future.  stupid black car.  i unlocked the doors and decided to leave

the keys in the ignition tomorrow morning while i looked for a job or a

nintendo control pad.



        finally, like magic, i looked up and i saw the sun was beginning to

rise.  the clocks woke up, gravity laughed in my face.  nature didn't get much

sleep, and i thought, neither would i, a jersey city fuck-up.  i looked out

and stared right out at that sunrise over the industrial skyline.  it was

amazing, magical.  i refused to take my eyes off it.  i was mesmerized.  it

was one hundred times more interesting than anything cable t.v. could have

offered at whatever hour it was now.  and i watched it, attentively.  a

pivotal moment of my coming adult life.  but within a few minutes of the

spectacle, i was asleep.  i got a taste of it, maybe, but i missed out.  maybe

the sun always rose like that over jersey city.  i hoped so.



        when i woke up, i found my boot had left the door where i left it to

keep from shutting.  i picked the lock that night again (i wonder why the

locks are so easy in a town like this?) but the room was empty.  no boots, no

t.v., no nintendo.  it was official.  i was a man now.  a pair of pants and

six dollars worth of a man.

