STEPS

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT Over 28's

Crap. A simple question asked years ago now encompasses everything. Everything! Now a million questions have amassed in my mind; vying for attention, pulling in this direction and that as I seek solutions. There are none of course. They disappeared long before I ever appeared to ask them. Too far gone now, this world. Copious time invested in its destruction, its subjugation. My tiny voice, what the hell? I expect it to change anything?

Sure, I remain confident my boys are well-prepared for what is to come. I believe them far better equipped to handle the imminent upheaval I sense. Technologies merging, becoming one giant test-tube of innovation. By-products once assumed horrific science fiction... now commonplace. The future too freaking bleak, what use is anything, especially knowledge afore-hand? Everything offered at University - this too becoming obsolete, irrelevant even before my sons will finish the bloody courses and receive the pieces of paper.

The once hallowed professions: doctors, lawyers, scientists? Now mere prostitutes to the system, bought and paid for by corporations too large to fail - ever - this infallibility frightening, the spread of their influence demoralising. My sons don't want to prostitute their minds. They don't want to enter a system of corruption and greed offered up to them in exchange for the means to better consume. What can they do? Who can they be? I pulled them out of school. They lack the ability now to tread the assembly line leading to the cubicles and submission to the corporations.

Somehow they must survive this emerging chaos. Live, experience... attain certain things without which life is pointless. How to do this? I spend hour after hour thinking, researching. Looking for an answer for them, one they are unable yet to determine on their own. Regretting too, because I once had the financial means to offer greater possibilities yet fed it to the machines. Would their futures have been more opportune? Otherwise, less constricted?

Ah but the steps. I'd be different. They'd be different. Like their cousin - like any other boy their age. They'd be too bloody caught up in the structure; there'd be no pulling back, no rescuing them from the assembly line. And I wouldn't recognise it because I would be the same too. I wouldn't know! This unknowing scaring me more than the impossibilities knowing is offering up.

The purpose? Life? Children born, raised by the State because two incomes are needed to reach the measure of financial ease? Educated to fit in unquestioning, expected to follow increasing levels of consumption. Debt a requisite; prescribed patterns of behaviour expected else medicated, deemed anomalous, flawed. Every moment of their living recorded, data collected and analysed. Permits and payments needed for everything. The family unit dismantled, divorce producing single mum syndrome offspring. A fucking hell. And to procreate in the midst of this, bring forth yet another child indentured from the moment of birth? Doomed to follow in the footsteps?

Leading to what? A fine house, a decent car, some holidays and dinners out? There can only ever be one percent. For the rest, there's this broad impenetrable ceiling. All my sons can aspire to is the house, the cars, the holidays, the dinners. The debt... Dangling overhead the entire time the proposition, the luring promise: retiring some place finally, where they can rest and spend their hard-earned savings... The relevance? Who bloody cares? Too busy surviving life to ponder its significance.

"Mortgage belt, mortgage stress, curious terms for couples watching dreams die. I drive and stare at passing estate hell. Who made four bedrooms, two bathrooms, study and a garage the ideal? Mushroom houses popping out of landfill and sub-dividing lives. Mothers at full-time work too tired to romp and roll, kids swaying in tune to cartoons on the large wide screens. Hours killed in traffic and young lives shrouded in hurried disconnection. I see a new estate ahead: This has a lake for recreation. Couples to walk around on weekends and fake contentment - no time to mourn where love has gone and wonder how the future stolen and owed, ever became this slavery."

Life backwards... What use these retirement packages? The finally getting off the treadmill when you're too fucking worn-out and slow to enjoy anything they afford you? The buses full of grey-haired folk I'd see down on the coast. One face really, multiplied a few dozen times. Staring out of windows; guided here and there, herded en-mass to 'scenic attractions'. A few minutes voicing "ooh" and "aah" some pictures to document their being there and finally delivered to four star motels, communal dinners and some old-time dancing.

Or caravanning on the foreshore, for months on end, year after year. Same bloody location, there being no other place on earth to explore. What? Working forty years to end up in a caravan reliving the same year over and over? Or communal and secure corralling in a village with a frothy name, indoor pool, hairdresser, cinema, clinic and some weekly bingo? No need to ever leave; everything an effortless walk for arthritic joints?

Awful gloom, foreboding. Yeah. When did I last offer a genuine smile? Have I ever found reason to feel contentment? A lifetime almost gone and I can't say I've ever really felt joyous. Tiny moments here and there sure, brief bits of elation. Sustained gratifying periods? Never for me, always not quite right, something missing, something else too much and happiness presumed a balanced thing, everything proportional. For me always the struggle to find this perfect harmony.

"Come out, it will be a fun night!"

How many times have mouths aimed these words at me? Pushing, cajoling, and aiming to place me among them - separate me from my isolation.

"C'mon! We'll have a few drinks, dance some... maybe you'll meet someone?"

I did go along a few times. The 'Over 28's' nights... A polite way of saying "You're too fucking old for our regular nights, we have to create these special ones for you so you don't look too out of place - you know?"

Where you get to hang out with your crowd: Middle aged, overweight blokes; women over-dressed in too tight and too flashy costumes, overly made-up and pretending they're 18 again, gathering in groups on the dance floor... rocking to 80's music - the men drinking enough so it becomes easier to just pick one from the crowd and hope the night ends in some semblance of a fuck.

Dispersed amid this farcical parade, the small group of prostitutes; petite Asian girls overseen by a couple of burly dudes, nodding at potential targets. Their faces blank; the same fake smile painted on, honing in on these targets and returning a little later - lipstick re-applied after the quick blow-job in the car park in exchange for a twenty.

This then is a typical night out in search of companionship and a potential 'mate'. This dark and alcohol reeking environment... pausing my breathing. Sitting alone at a table and studying the attempts at connecting, the ludicrous aspirations, the sea of eyes, searching, searching, their vision getting blurrier as the night wears on...

Now, I say "Been there, done that." Standard response and never varying, because I am unable to let go of this present - however bleak - and lose myself in the illusionary past-present facilitated by these nights.

Maybe the best approach is to cave in after all. Climb down from the superior place I've occupied for decades. I think I am special? Yeah in my mind. Maybe it's better I concede I am no different. My best opportunity for peace, some semblance of joy found in this relenting; admitting I'm no different to everyone else. I might contain more information in this mind, sure. Still a clone though.

I cling tight to my lofty unreachable place. Why? What comfort does my assumed supremacy provide? Self-satisfaction? What? Claiming my screw-ups a means - steps necessary to reach this now writer-slash-philosopher? Churning out discontent page after page; bitching, ranting - looking for some other, new excuse to question. Bullshit aside, if I ever had a shot at some measure of success - if it ever presented to me - I'd fucking grab it and run, like everyone else. I'm no different. The lofty ideals held close because I can't ever hold the real, the tangible. Huh.