“So there’s this club,” says a shadowed face underneath a baseball cap, “and it’s huge. I mean, it’s gigantic. There’s a whole industry catering to the every whim of this club.”
This whole interview had an uneasy feel to it. The man I spoke to never once revealed his face, nor did he speak in his natural tone.
“No one wants anyone to know they’re in it, you see. Because their wives, their kids, their neighbors would flip out. All they did to get in was let their imagination wander, then think, ‘Hey, one look won’t hurt.’ Next thing they know, they’ve been looking at porn every day for 6 years.”
The ambiguous nature of the club was soon revealed, while the man sitting across from me hung his head and twiddled his thumbs.
“Here’s the real kicker, no one knows anyone else in the club. You could be in it for all I know, but I would never tell you I’m in it, and vice versa.”
Hopelessness radiated from the hunched body.
“We’re a generation of ‘I am’ not ‘I will.’ All we see is ‘I am a pornography addict,’ not ‘I will make something of my life.’ That’s how society is as a whole though. We say ‘I am a rich, suburban, white male’ and ‘I am working class.’ We don’t notice that it could be ‘Sure, I may be homeless and poor, but I will be a better person than my parents,’ or ‘I may be stuck in this suburb, but I will find life.’ I grew up thinking ‘I am too good to be like those perverts.’ But now I am one. So now I think ‘I will get better.’”
When I asked how that was working, a short scoff escaped his lips.
“Not well. See, I can think ‘I will’ all I want. But thanks to 43 years of saying ‘I am,’ I’m going nowhere fast.”
He left my office in tears.
Filed under: Interviews--fiction, Pseudo-Nonfiction, Socio-fiction | 2 Comments
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crap, youre like on a writing frenzy.
keep going!
Hahaha I’ll try but I leave tomorrow!
Wouldn’t Mr. Jackson be proud of this work of art?