Alcatraz Reject

I was in a park one day with a friend. We weren’t sitting in the sandbox area or the waiting pool area. Instead, we were in the bench-hangout section. That’s where all the badass teenagers kick it.

I was talking to my friend, telling him about my pathetic existence and how life doesn’t really have a purpose, even if you pretend to have some short-term goal or some lifelong ambition, life is just a joke. A series of bad jokes, one after the other. I was going on about the boredom I’d been enduring and the redundancy I was basking in, when he looked at me and said it so succinctly, “Joy, think about it man. There is no point. The world doesn’t exist for our prosperity and we don’t need to exist for the world to go round. So, if that’s the case man, then there is no point. Just have fun man.”

Barak was a cool guy. He was a little older than me and so he had more experience with this kind of stuff. I mean the whole existential crisis was new to me, but Barak said he went through it when he was younger and that it was normal. I trusted Barak. He was a smart guy.

Barak passed the joint and continued, “Joy, what makes you smile everyday?”

I took a swig from my flask and quickly replied, as though I were waiting for the question, “Doobs and drinks.” I was only kidding, but it seemed arbitrary enough as an answer to fit the conversation. “No, no. For real man, my art is the reason I want to get out of bed when I wake up in the morning. My art and music. I love music,” I said as I swayed back and forth with my eyes closed.

“You’re a cool chic, you know that Joy.” Barak was staring at me in wonderment. I always knew he kind of had a crush on me, but I never gave it much thought. “Now pass the doob.”

“You know what Barak? If the world would exist with or without us, then what makes you wanna get out of bed everyday and do stuff?”

Barak looked at me, eyes widening. His face began to turn upward and his mouth smiled. “I don’t know,” he said as he pulled the doob with his lips. “But this right here Joy, this is pretty chill.”

We had our first kiss that afternoon. It smelled like rum and marijuana. All the right ingredients for a good time.  

(ART by CLIO LUNIA)