Community was illusory. I realized this last night when I was at a party for a friend of a friend. Sitting on the couch – taking up the space of two people with my legs – I looked at them talking, gabbing, gossiping, spitting.
They had no souls.
Nobody had one.
They thought they were connecting on some deeply spiritual level around the subject of obscure 45s from the 1980s. Selfish banter, a means to an end – whether it’s to sleep with this or that person or to unload their loneliness as a means to feel better or to peacock their knowledge so they appeared smarter than they did in the outside world.
Every interaction fulfilled a selfish need.
Kat, my sister, admitted to as much – she said that she has roommates because she was afraid of being alone.
That’s why we had pets.
That’s why we pretended to have friends.
That’s why we bother to get drunk.
Sudden like a finger flicking switch, all fear was gone. How could I be afraid of these empty vessels, these transient objects, these meaningless bags of flesh.
They were not worth my time or my energy.
So I sat up and started talking to one of them, one of them flesh pods.
Soon I found it to be very, very entertaining.
