Reality Boy

But what’s crazy and what’s sane when everything is possible and yet nothing ever happens?

Voice mail was invented by confident people to make unconfident people say stupid shit that gets taped and haunts us forever.

Maybe most other people are messed up, too. It just wasn't aired on TV.

Only you can allow yourself to be angry.

Because it's true. Isn't that the only reason to ever say anything?

In nature, crying is okay. Waterfalls cry all the time.

I want to be the joint that she smokes so that we can finally talk about everything without having to use words, because I will be a drug in her brain.

I used to love school until everybody got old enough to point and laugh.

What occurs to me at this second is this: There is a huge world out there. I only know my dumb family and my dumb house and my dumb school and my dumb job. But there is a huge world out there…and most of it is underwater.

She looks at me as we walk under a streetlight. “You’re really handsome, you know that?” I don’t know what to say. I don’t think anyone uses the word handsome anymore. I feel humbled by it. Because it’s old and grandmothers say it, it seems classy and real and I feel…handsome. It makes me smile.

I never realized how uncomfortable I am around happy people before.

Then I walk away because she’s irresistible, and I am on a mission to resist her.

Maybe if we all saw ourselves as nature, we’d be kinder.

As they doled out punishments, I felt like I was floating through the deepest parts of the sea, holding my breath. A whale swam by and brushed against my back. A school of fish swam around me in a fish-cyclone and then swam away again. I could see the surface and the vague brightness of life above the water, but I was tied to something by my ankle. I was five years old and I already knew it---that the day I inhaled would kill me.