Strategies for fulfullment

Okkultokrati - Loathe Forever

It’s hot out. Probably 90 degrees farenheit. Your cousin is in front, leading you both down through the backyard, out into the wooded gullies and dried creek bed that makes up the acres of property your aunt and uncle live on, and where you normally spend your weekends. He’s older, close to a year, but you feel he’s much older; more mature, more daring, more lawless. Everyone wants to be him, or be around him. It’s a small town.

You get to a clearing and he pulls a baggy out of his jean pocket and pinches out some of the dry, low-grade Mexican dirtweed and rolls a pinner; gotta conserve to make it through the weekend. You smoke the joint and talk about the new Wolverine tattoo he’s gonna get next time he goes to Houston. Then, with your heads fuzzy, you make your way to the barn on the property, where he has a friend’s drum kit that you jump on. He plugs in his Ibanez guitar, with the maple neck (his Gibson SG is cooler to you and you make no secret about wanting him to sell it to you even though you have no job), and you count off 1, 2, 3, 4, and start your version of Slayer’s South of Heaven. You’re both too stoned to realize it sounds terrible.

Later that night you both go to a party out on Gun Hill Road. Everyone’s there, including Jody and Regan, and some of the other older guys who moved to Houston when they turned 18. You talk music, and even though you’re barely in high school, they treat you like more; a year later they’ll take you to your first hardcore show, and be the first ones you see with cocaine. Tonight, you’ll all drop acid and sit out in the middle of a field full of cows, looking at the stars while you all talk about bands with names like Christian Death and Crucifucks. You say hi to a few girls that come out to see what’s happening out there, and your cousin leaves with one of them. The stars and moon are really bright and everyone has a blue cast over them.

Everyone around you is white, it’s a segregated town. People who you used to play with when you were 12, you now sometimes get picked on by. It’s a redneck town, and all your parents know each other. People may leave for a while, but they always come back. It’s a cycle of generations. Your dad did it. So did your uncle.  You’re not coming back. No way. In the meantime, you and your cousin get stoned, go out to the barn and try to figure out Metallica’s The Thing That Should Not Be, counting down the time until you get the fuck out of this town.