Bizarro

IndieInk, Whatnot Comments (1)

Dear Steve Kawasaki,

My shrink felt that it might be beneficial to send a note to someone from the outer circles of my acquaintanceship describing a recent breakthrough I had in my latest rectal shock therapy session. I think my therapist is giant douche, but he assures me that I’m making progress on his buying a boat, so there’s that.

Allow me to slay you with some background prior to unleashing the terror of my psyche upon your face: I wonder daily what the person in the mirror is like. Does he have my fear of everything? My crippling doubt? Fear of the unknown, the future, dogs wearing sweaters, death? Does he rest his self-worth squarely upon the opinion of others as I do? I look into his eyes every day and see something different from what I see in myself, but I never understand how that’s possible. Today I found out.

I blacked out after the second round of shocks. Evidently there was something wrong with the car battery, but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is that after blacking out, I found myself completely lucid and standing in front of the bathroom mirror. The dude on the other side (we’ll call him ‘he’ in order to be unoriginal with pronouns) looked back at me with the same indifference as usual, except this time he said, ‘Ask’.

I was all, ‘Holy shit, dog!’, and he was like, ‘Ask me the question’, all straight faced and serious and acting like he had anywhere else to be other than manifested by my reflection. So, I said, ‘OK, me, let’s do this. So, like, what’s your deal, man? How is it that you seem so calm and collected and unafraid and unbothered by the world and everyone in it? How is that even possible?’

He lit a cigarette real cool-like and I was all, ‘WHOA! NO! LUNG CANCER! HALITOSIS! NO! I WILL NOT HAVE IT!’, and he, sensing my trepidation, looked back at me like I was gum on his shoe before flicking the cigarette into the toilet. Then he spoke: ‘The secret to being unafraid is hate. Hate people. Hate their petty injustices and hypocrisies. Hate them and you take away their power because you realize they’re not worth taking seriously.’

‘Gosh,’ I replied after regaining my bearings. ‘that’s a bit dark.’

‘Truth,’ he muttered.

Then I heard through the ether someone shout, ‘CLEAR!”, followed by a surge of electricity, a flash of light, and POW, back in the therapist’s office, pants down around my ankles and an EMT kneeling over me with two paddles. My therapist is king of the jackasses. Seriously.

The fact is, Steve Kawasaki, you’re neither Japanese nor a rider of motorcycles. You’re my reflection in the mirror. You are my temporal penpal. My acquaintance in the outer circle. Help me understand me. We need to find a middle ground before my therapist kills us. Our ass is begging for relief.

Affectionately yours,

Lance Grossweiner

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Lance challenged me with “Create an alter ego (first and last name) and a penpal or family member to write to (also an alter ego, first and last name). Deliver 500 words in the form of an email desribing your life as that alter ego.” and I challenged Grace O’Malley with “Envy those who die, for their race is run and the test is complete.”

Sir @ March 29, 2012