This century started off like a bed-shitting, head-splitting cocaine hangover 21 years ago today and never regained a scintilla of the normalcy those of us alive or old enough before it remember. Since the still shakily explained terror attacks of 9/11, we've had two long wars of dubious justification and consequence, an historic presidential election that validated one half of the country and infuriated another into a psychological apoplexy, leading to the presidential election of someone almost anyone who read newspapers, magazines, or ever lived in New York since the 1970s knew was a crook, a con artist, and a gauche, self-deluded fool. The wake of his influence leads to the most egregious act of domestic terror by the most privileged Americans in the country and yet people that look like me can't even go take their garbage out without remembering to bring identification a step away from their own residence. And then a pandemic that killed I don't even remember how many millions that some people don't even believe is real. That, on top of all of our individual burdens, losses, crises, has made the last 20 years almost not worth preserving myself for. Terrified of AIDS and naturally risk-averse, I spent the great part of my 20s doing every thing in the world to live a long and healthy life. Even in my wildest party-hearty years, I was the most conservative and lightweight participant of recreational drugs that I've ever met. And for what? Some great reward its been. That said, others have lived through far worse. I guess the fact that I had 28 years before the beginning of this apocalyptic epoch is something I will always be grateful for. It wasn't always easy, but it wasn't this. This century was supposed to be evolved, futuristic, magical -- and in many ways it has been: we've evolved to the point of being satellites of technology; our curiosity about space travel and cryptocurrency has replaced our interest in regional crises, the suffering of our fellow humans who are starving and trafficked and raped and all manner of hell across the globe; and, most curiously, no one seems to make a lick of sense anymore. Suddenly, people you've known for years have values that are either so remote or diabolical that you wonder if you are capable of truly knowing anyone at all. The contradictions in ideologies you were once so impenetrably sure of make nothing to the intelligent among us seem certain at all, and are given to blind leaps of one-sided, black-or-white credulity to those of us less nuanced in that department. We've come to a point where it's perfectly normal to send a complete stranger a picture of your dick or you ass and it's harassment to flirt in the office or at the grocery store. I'm supposed to believe a man is a woman and a woman is a man -- or some unverifiable but suddenly legitimate space between -- and that a child is not the sex on their birth certificate because at 8 years old said child says so and when I introduce myself I have to qualify my pronouns. And if not, I'm an anachronistic bigot. Oh, and after 40 you become a celiac -- or that's what your waiter is supposed to think when he orders your food. I don't about you, but I won't miss it if this is where things are going to keep going for my next score and ten. I'm not saying I'm ready to meet my favorite rock stars, rather I'm just here because I am. But I canceled my colonoscopy, probably won't quit drinking or smoking cigarettes any time soon, and am frankly doing my best to simply hope I'm young and able enough in heart, mind, and physicality to enjoy the end of this nightmarish early 21st century in the hopes that some semblance of decency returns. Otherwise, I could honestly take it or leave it.
