The time is after the peak of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The two men walk the streets of Downtown Denver aimlessly, so used to these types of days and nights, so used to the extensive conversation that comes with them. Cars buzz by, the drivers hardly visible through the bright orange glare against the windows. To the drivers, Kenneth and Ramirez are invisible. They don’t exist on these streets. To Kenneth and Ramirez the drivers are like zombies, moving through the dips and rises of life as if pulled by a invisible string. To these two friends, they fail to see the bigger picture.
Ramirez tosses the stub from a joint just before he speaks. His words come with a stream of white, winter smoke thanks to the cold October air.
“I can do better than being a zombie,” he tells Kenneth as they walk. “That’s what most people continue to accept and what most people continue to be. But I can do better than being a zombie.”
“Can you though,” Kenneth asks, his dark brown eyes, seemingly black in the night, latching onto him. “That’s what most people say, but they don’t do anything about anything. The world is built to make them act that way, for the most part. To an extent, even me and you are victims of it.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Ramirez says, stopping in his tracks. “So you’re saying that I’m a zombie?”
“What I’m saying is to a certain extent we both are.”
“How so?”
“We don’t work for ourselves. Homeless or not we still have to work for someone and do what they want us to do to get what we want. And we’re not making shit for it either. So we work for this so called, mythical ‘man’, we’re both ethnic, and we follow his orders just like good ‘ethnic’ people in society ought to.”
“But, wait,” says Ramirez, putting his hand up another time. “That’s—well that’s how the world functions. You can’t just say we’re slaves because we take part in a system of work.”
“Shit,” Kenneth says with a smile, and takes a giant swig of the paper-bagged can of beer he holds. He wipes foam from his lips. “We don’t just do your regular old work. Me and you, we both don’t have jobs, so what do we do? We do the backbreaking shit. Now think about that. What do you think that says about us? That any old dude could ask us to strain ourselves and if we don’t we don’t eat.”
“The idea’s ridiculous. We have to eat Kenneth. Come on man. Seriously. What else can we do?”
Kenneth starts walking and Ramirez keeps pace with him. “You’re talking about being a zombie and how you’ll do better than being a zombie, yet you work like the other people—when you absolutely need to but you still work nonetheless brother—but the difference is you get paid less for it. How does that make you any less of a zombie than they are?”
Ramirez doesn’t have an immediate response, and instead takes a minute to consider what he had said. He fixes his beer drinking friend with a dark look as they pass in and out of orange pools of street light.
“I’m not a zombie dude,” Ramirez says. “I’m not a zombie and I’ve never been a zombie. And neither are you Kenneth. Try having some more respect for yourself man.”
Kenneth only chuckles and shakes his head. “You can tell yourself that, and the fact is, if you don’t want to be a zombie you don’t have to be a zombie. But I’m just saying that based on the way things have been, that we both have been a couple of zombies. Nothing more that I can say than that. Just know this. We still have a congress that wants to take opportunities and a president battling against it. Still doesn’t change the fact that we are failing due to the system in place. Even if the president gets what he wants it’s not going to stop rich people from being rich and getting richer, it’s not going to eradicate homelessness. People like us will still exist, in part, due to the expectancy for people to either be in the workforce as a zombie, out of the workforce and be half a zombie, or above and beyond the workforce and own the zombies. Either way, we can’t win.”
“That sounds very anti-capitalist.”
“It’s just an observation my friend. Nothing more.”
“And anyway Kenneth, we have a place to stay tonight man. The abandoned building. No one’s coming inside. So it’s going to be like we have an apartment.”
“If that was the case we would just be closer to being part of the system, now wouldn’t we? Bring a couple of girls into the picture, then we’ll want to better ourselves. Have families. Get our own places. Then you’ll be hitting me up to come to your barbecue on the weekend. To say hi to the wife and kids. Don’t act like that won’t happen brother. And boom. You’re sucked in.” He finished off his beer and tossed it into a nearby trashcan.
“Bull,” Ramirez says.
Kenneth doesn’t say anything and as they walk Ramirez continues to consider what he said. Then he asks, “Okay, let’s go ahead and say you’re right about how we’re inevitably going to be part of this zombie-making society. Then how do we not become zombies? That’s what I want to know.”
Kenneth smiles. “Uh…to uh…to be happy. That’s what you do. If you can be truly happy, if you can do that I think that you can avoid being a zombie.”
“So being happy is all you have to do to keep everything that you said from happening, huh? Really, that’s all you have to do, is be happy? It’s that simple.”
Ramirez’s tone was a mocking one, but Kenneth didn’t seem to notice.
“At the end of the day everyone wants to be happy,” Kenneth says. “If you can keep from being lost along the way, than I’d say you’re doing all right.”
And with that, Ramirez lets it go. The friends head to the abandoned building to sleep.
(For questions email me at JMarshall@autumnaircraft.com)
