Insanity – Save Yourself

Chapter five

My mother came home and was trying to talk to me as I sat in front of my computer. I was playing a game of strategy and wits, a first person shooter. It was the only thing at home that could keep up with my fast pace mind and somehow reach me inside a flurry of mental frenzy. The game would bring me down slowly from light speed to a relaxed trance. It must be what a hyperactive kid feels when he takes a stimulant like speed to slow himself down.

I was playing a fast pace war strategy game where two teams fight against each other in a physics environment that made the fighting feel like the players were all super human. We played over the Internet against other people throughout the world. Everyone who played these games had similar issues to mine, though we never talked about them, but we all knew. Sometimes I would play until 1:00 in the morning refusing to end the ping-pong tournament of reflexes and wits.

Sleep was bad. I tossed, turned, and rolled usually all night. I had a wave machine I would turn on that made the sound of waves. I turned this on in a pathetic attempt to lull me asleep. For some reason white noise such as a fan or ocean sound has always put me in a trance and made it easy to fall asleep. To this day, however, the sound of that exact looping ocean sound makes me sick to hear it. Every time it came on it was torture. The sound came to embody my strange surreal and empty sentiments of trying to sleep in a world that had no foothold to stand on.

            At school I was forced into the average social games of fake smiles, witty comments, and jokes that evaded everyone’s ears. It was my hope that maybe someone would get these witticisms and take me in and maybe I could have a real friend. Instead I was stuck with a group of oaf-like “amigos” that were constantly joking around about everything that wasn’t funny from someone who said it that was cool and what not and blah blah blah.

 There was nothing of any stimulation in these kinds of environments. They talked about people at the school as if they were super stars, as if people in Italy would know who they were if you mentioned the popular kids name at Dana hills high school. Everyone acted like this. I never met one person who didn’t. I camouflaged myself to fit into their little clan activities, but always felt less then them for not feeling the ability to participate in these cultural acts. Standing on the outside, alone, feeling that I was stuck on the inside, however I wasn’t. The inside was yet to come.

            These friends that I felt compelled to spend almost every hour with were a tight group of people, but they really weren’t all that tight. The only thing that kept our bond was the fact that we all saw groups of teenagers our age on TV making groups of friends and acting as if they were close. There were four of us, me, Ron Gummy, Sid Franklin, and Corey Dunce.

            Ron was a tall heavy guy who was constantly enthralled with his lack of looks. He would sit and look at himself in the mirror for hours and try to get his hair just right. He longed to be within the crowd of popular kids at school however, he just couldn’t do it. He would buy all the new clothes, and he knew exactly which size for every brand would fit his body size the best to make himself fit in properly. One time he got me to drive him around for hours to find a special pair of Converse (shoes) that would be sure to set himself apart from the crowd. He was humorous and was kind in many aspects however he would steal your last drop of food on a desert island if it would bring him glamour and prosperity.

Inside I was jealous of him because he somehow conned the girls into going with him. If any of us had a girl he would make fun of us in front of her in order to make himself look good. I never realized it but he fancied himself the leader of the group and never really valued anything I had to say because he felt like he created me.

Before I hung out with this group of friends, Ron was the one who invited me over to hang out. After that we had gravitated towards each other on a ski trip with a church. Ron was the only one who didn’t care for the rules and I didn’t either, though I pretended or thought that I did. After the trip I hung out with him and he introduced me to Cory and Sid.

Sid was a rat like character that looked up to Ron and thought of him as his best friend. Sid never realized Ron was running the show and telling him exactly what to do. Sid would have shined Ron’s shoes if he asked him too. They would always joke around and Corey and I would always end up being the butt of Ron and Sid’s jokes.

            Every once in a while Corey and I would turn on each other and end up joking with them but we were never in the cycle. Corey was a tall nerdy looking guy that happened to have a bad temper and a lot of muscles. His jaw was elongated and almost looked like he had an under bite. He looked like he was older than the rest of us yet he looked like no matter what age he was he would look older which made him look younger. Corey was the only one that would actually listen to what I had to say and thought it through without laughing or making fun of my thought process. But sometimes Corey would get mad thinking so much and he would recklessly argue with me for no reason at all.

 Ron and Sid had other things to do besides think about this strange life we lived in and this oxygen we breathe in our lungs that makes it possible. Corey and I were on the same track we were both going to church and not understanding the craziness of life and trying to find it in the Christian religion. But like the saying goes ‘you can’t punch turkeys out of a billboard.’

            The so-called friendships continued through the craziness. Ron and Sid were on their way to becoming rock star gods in the twentieth century and me and Corey were attempting to carve our own paths. One night for Corey’s birthday we decided to go to the motorcycle races in Corona Del mar, the speedway. Driving all the way up there which was only about thirty minutes from my house was a real trip, I felt so lost and swallowed up by the mouth of infinity screaming in the chaos trying to find this ground that everyone claims to be standing on.

I was quiet in the car. I was in a car with a girl driving and my good childhood friend Austin Fieldcrest was with me. I felt comfortable with him being there because I knew he was uncomfortable too. The girls were playing loud music and taking me into their world which was a disgusting compulsion of beauty magazines and loud hypnotizing rap songs of black guys singing about their bitches. I sat in the back of the car the entire time wondering what was wrong with me, and why I couldn’t sit in these situations without constant obsessive confusion. Finally the rock sank in and my palms got sweaty. ‘How am I going to make it out of here alive,’ I would think, and I would begin looking for the exits of the speeding car while traveling 80 mph down a freeway. ‘I can’t really jump out now, or can I?’ a little voice wondered in panicked derision. Little did I realize at the time that no one makes it out alive.

            At the speedway it felt good to get out and walk around. Ron, Corey, Sid, Austin and I walked in a lateral line towards the ticket booth. These times felt good to be walking with this small barely bonded band of brothers. I always felt they were better than nothing.

Walking to the booth we paid for our tickets supplied with cash from our parents – a luxury that was somehow never understood. We sat in the booths and watched the motorcyclist travel aimlessly around the tracks circle. I felt bad that the highlight of the night was when a motorcyclist crashed and was run over by his own bike.

Sid Corey and Ron walked away after they saw some girls that they thought they saw eyeing them. I felt compelled to go with them, however, Austin was sitting up top and I didn’t want to leave him alone. The two girls that were with us were also sitting up top and I began talking with them.

“What’s your names again?”

“Laura,”

“Stacy,”

Awkward pause.

“I’m Matt… So how is everything going tonight?” I said.

I talked to them even though they were fairly disinterested in me. I think it was obvious that there was too much going on in my head for me to handle.

“I’m doing good, just that smell is nauseating,” I commented about the bikes.

The smell was loud, however, I actually liked it. It was the smell of the alcohol the motorcycles ran off of. I could tell it helped them to accelerate at a much faster rate than common gas. The alcohol in the motorcycles’ engines was exploding and making loud high-pitched explosions that sounded like dynamite and a microphone strapped onto a zipper tied to a pair of blue jeans.

I looked back at the loud human engineered beasts and watched the end of the race. Two guys were battling it out for first. A man on the side of the starting line was waving a checkered flag from the booth. The two rider’s eyes were green with red flames bursting off of their heads – vacuum mouths sucking for the checkered love. If it were permitted they would have kicked each other off their bikes. They rounded the turn the man on the outside slid his bike around and skid around the last corner. The biker on the inside did a little turn but came out of it quicker and shot straight in a diagonal line in front of the other rider and crossed the finish. He did a little pop o’ wheelie as he rounded the turns. I sat watching tired from the day and wary of what other activities the hoodlums would decide to do tonight.
After watching a few stunts from dirtbikers jumping over some cars, we got some food and made our way back home. I had this paranoid feeling the entire time that I was teetering on the edge of a giant cliff about to fall off the entire night. Luckily the cart I was in that was balancing on a tight rope somehow made it to the other side, and I found myself at home in bed once again, tossing and turning into oblivion with motorcycles and angry rappers in my head fading into Roman carpets and jungles and sleep.

            The next day at school the games and dramas continued. I thought they would never ever end. I met people and talked to them but was never really myself. I was constantly inwardly thinking about life and God and how I was separating away from the religion that I was told meant everything from birth and how only evil people don’t go to church and follow the rules. I felt like Satan had somehow come into my mind and was directing me away from the path of the righteous. I was trapped I didn’t want to be evil and I couldn’t lie to myself about reality because I was slowly realizing how rational thought leads nowhere. The holy rational thought was crumbling before my very eyes. At night I would sometimes sit outside and look up at the stars and wish I were an Indian (Native American). I wished I could live in a time where confusion didn’t abound, but trees and animals abounded. I was in a white man’s world and I was a primitive man on the inside. I wanted to go for walks in forests that I knew as well as my room. I wanted to sit on rocks and meditate by streams and listen to animals rustle through the bushes while I thought about the meaning of it all and the spirit behind everything, but instead I was stuck with power hungry individuals who fed off of the crippling of busy minds.