I had planned to spend Saturday evening masturbating in all the rooms in the house and drinking a beautiful toasted coconut porter from Hawaii. My best friend from childhood invited me to a barbeque and to buy me food and chocolate milk and beer, so I did that instead.
The night consisted of sitting around a kitchen table with a bunch of guys (and a token girl) eating food cooked by our host and drinking beer/cider/whisky. We all went to primary school together and I hadn’t seen most people gathered for several years. The last time I saw our host was when I had an proper place to actually live.
It was a nice evening. They were nice people. They all had names like “Thomas” and “Alexander” and “Benjamin” and “Reginald” and “Daniel”. My friends are all called “Thomas” and “James” (hawhaw) and “Frederick” and “Benjamin” and “Peter” and “Robert” and “Edward” and “William”, though, so I don’t know what my point about the names is … I don’t know any girls?
When I’m with my friends and we make jokes and comments about black people and brown people and poor people, there is no actual feeling behind it. Yes, we all are secretly bigoted and racist and prejudiced, and the jokes are funny because they’re true. Sitting around with all these middle – to – upper – middle-class young people who are desperate to become The Establishment, there was real vehemence in their comments about black people being a joke, and Chinese people being the worst, and poor people being shot. I didn’t ask them, but I can only assume that they/their parents vote Conservative. This isn’t necessarily bad, it just helps build a picture.
When we weren’t discussing sports (with facts and statistics being nailed down all night by the resident Aspergers chap), or watching sports, there was a lot of talk of joining The Establishment. A few people have just finished their degrees in law/architecture and were discussing becoming a barrister/joining a practice and all of that kind of professional stuff that you do. Bleurgh. I didn’t realise that this mindset existed any more. It seems to belong to certain groups. I thought our generation was mostly different, but nothing really changes does it?
Work hard at school, do well, go straight off to university to study something employable, work hard, do well, get a job, find a spouse, buy a house, contribute to the destruction of the planet through procreation, work on, have an existential crisis and realise that all the hard work and effort and achievement has been for nothing that can be adequately described as “real”, fuck about a bit with looks and motors and money and sex before realising that you’ve got to just get on with it until you die, with little enjoyment and a sucking sense of failure and disappointment and a feeling that life wasn’t made for this.
I know I am in a very similar boat, and these people will at least have lots of money and few worries about rent and the mortgage and accommodation and going nice places and everything nice that goes with a nice, well-off, middle-class life, and my life won’t be able to match up to theirs when using their standards, but I also know that I am simply not as dull as them. Thankyou Mum and Dad.