Can you understand where Michael Primrose finds himself in his life?
Right now what he's doing is stepping out of the small plastic shower in his parents' basement, and he's getting dressed for his part-time job on the ground floor of a local restaurant. He's thirty-one years old, and the newest piece of clothing he's wearing is the shirt he always wears to work: two and a half years old, and considerably stained and frayed. But it fits right. All of his old clothes do, even if they're a little looser than they used to be.
He used to eat his feelings; now it's even worse.
It's not a conscious thing, but he almost never looks at the college diploma on the hallway wall he always passes on the way out the door, and whenever he does he feels embarrassed for himself and sad for his parents.
His university's alumni association has never once tried to contact him about a donation.
Knowing when to leave for work so that he'll have five minutes alone in the parking lot before his shift, today he parks in his specially chosen spot—the most secluded spot in the lot—like he always does if it's available.
When the rumble of the engine is wrist-flicked to an occasionally ticking silence, he finishes his prayers and sits there in the sudden void of sound. In that moment, the realities of his life all scramble for position in his consciousness—a loathing and aggressive army suddenly everywhere—and he literally says out loud, "You should just fucking kill yourself, you idiot. Why the fuck are you still alive?"
A statement and a question that have followed him around since he was twelve years old. And yes, he's been to therapy. And yes, he's tried that medication, but he found he'd rather feel everything too much than nothing at all.
After all, the feelings have to be there for a reason.
In the wake of his grim self-assessment, the horrible feeling is temporarily gone. The opposite of Beetlejuice: If you say it out loud, it disappears.
He just has to be careful where he says it out loud.
Michael is now on his own time for the next five minutes, and he turns on some music: a sundry compilation he made around five years ago, back when he was still living on the islands, and which he rediscovered about a month ago. He reaches into a small cardboard box in the backseat and pulls out what his best friend Justin often refers to as "The Three Wise Men": cannabis, one-hitter, and lighter. As he listens to a song called "Futterman's Rule" by the Beastie Boys he absorbs the pounding, groovy waves of the music's funky composition, and he smokes the glorious green goddess and watches the invisible wind interact with the reflective green leaves of a tree whose arms reach out to hug the car on both sides. As an unapologetic stoner, every step of it is as much of a ceremony to Michael as the celebration of mass is to Catholics.
This is his time between two worlds: the one at his parents' house, where he is a horrendous artistic failure, or there, in the restaurant, where that horrendous failure bears its proof in public labor. Right now he's not even really stoned yet and yet he's floating in a way that is not the absence of gravity but its opposite—he's lucky he's still wearing his seat belt. This is the only time of the day that's his. He's floating because he's alive again. At home he toils in the womb, and at work he tidies tables in the tomb, but while he's alive he floats to the ceiling of a car that was paid off a very long time ago.
If he weren't getting high, he'd still be floating, or perhaps only levitating, but weed, to him, is the candles on the birthday cake of the hot-air balloon. If one is going to be a battered mess in this life, one might as well go safely up high and gain some perspective—might as well try to see the world one can't see otherwise, right? That's how he sees it, at least, and this is where he begins his shift: the music, the goddess, the glossy leaves, the happiness in the solitude. The ceremony.
