A Simple Question

“I don’t know. Life’s been a little rough. I guess it’s been rough for everyone. It’s hard all around, you know? My job has been kind of shit, lately. It’s not even the work. I’m not that big of a people person; you know that. But even I can slap on a fake smile and turn up that customer service voice like it’s my second personality. It’s not the customers that are the problem. It’s the people I work with. 

    “It’s insane what I put up with. There’s one manager I can stomach. She’s fine. I can respect her, though I can’t respect her views on some matters. Let’s just say if I met her outside of work, we would not be friends. Regular friends and work friends are very different things. But whatever, she’s fine. But she’s the only tolerable manager. I was telling you about that one manager a few months back. He was super racist and entitled and sexist; just the worst. He left a few weeks ago. He said he had a new job offer or something. Whatever, good riddance. So now we have this new guy, and he’s just as bad! The guy’s like, thirty, but he talks like he fought in World War Two or something. He’s always going on about, ‘back in his day things were so different.’ He acts like I’ve never seen a landline phone. He’s only about 15 years older than me. In the grand scheme, that’s not that much. And his attitude towards me and the other women; you wouldn’t believe. 

    “The guy is a total ass, but he’s always rambling about, ‘being respectful towards women,’ and how to act ‘properly’ around them. The guy says you should never swear around women because it’s ‘improper.’ You’re around me a lot. You know I swear like an Aussie. I’m the same at work. Obviously when there’s no customers around. But I do swear. I say shit that’d make a nun pass out from shock. But you know, women are sensitive to ‘improper language,’ I guess. 

    “I would leave if I could. I’ve been looking for different work, but there’s nothing out there. I don’t know what to do. I drive around the city looking, but everyone says to go online. I go online, it’s the same three listings that I don’t come close to qualifying for. I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried asking around, but there’s nothing out there. It’s discouraging, you know? Like, is this it for me? Is this my peak? It’s not like I’m just waiting for an opportunity to present itself. I’m looking. I’m trying. And if I can’t find anything, that’s my answer, right? There’s nothing there. I don’t like thinking like that, but it’s the only way I can. 

    “That’s how it’s going for everything. I don’t want to think like this, but I do. My job, my family. My God, if I start talking about them we’d never leave this table. Oh, I got a story about my family. One night, a few months back, I was with my mother. And we had this family friend over. We’ve known her for years. She and my mom worked together at the theater in my hometown years ago. We’re close. Anyway, she was in town and we all were hanging out. We were playing Cards Against Humanity, I think. Something like that. It doesn’t matter. And we were drinking, you know? It was late in the night, and while we were playing, we started talking about gay people. It had to be from one of the cards; I don’t know what else could’ve prompted it. And I’m making jokes about it or whatever, and I can’t remember what I said, but it made my friend—the family friend—say, ‘I thought you were Ace.’ 

    “Now, I am. I wasn’t lying when I told you. But at the time a lot of people didn’t know. And she was bi, so I felt confident telling her. She could understand it. But I didn’t tell my mom. She was always saying she’d support us no matter what, yadda yadda. The same stuff that every parent says. But I knew she was lying. I don’t know why, but growing up, my entire family made fun of me by saying I was a lesbian. I guess because it was a cheap and easy insult. But over time I started to roll with it, and whenever I made jokes about liking women, she’d always have this look. She’d never look at me with this look, but I saw it plenty of times. And the comments she would make. I’d say I didn’t want kids: ‘You don’t know what you’ll want in the future.’ I wanted a man’s wallet instead of a purse: ‘You can’t. People will think you’re a lesbian.’ Same reason I couldn’t cut my hair as short as I wanted. Same reason I couldn’t say women were hot. 

    “Just always this passive aggressive bullshit. So I never told her. So you can imagine how it felt when I was outed. Now, I guess I got lucky. Out of all the things I could be, I’m ace. That’s the luckiest sexuality besides straight there is. At least it seems like it, in my opinion. And she told me she supported me when she saw me freaking out. But even after admitting to her who I was, she never stopped her comments. She still tells me I don’t know what’ll happen in the future. Apparently I don’t know what I want, despite being a grown ass woman. Now, I don’t care that she doesn’t support me. I really don’t. I couldn’t give a shit if she supported me or not. I can’t change myself, and she can’t change me, either. So who cares what she thinks, right? No, what bothers me is that she’s constantly saying she loves and respects me. Loves and respects me. She doesn’t respect shit. If she respected me, she wouldn’t tell me I don’t know what I want. She wouldn’t make these stupid fucking comments about my future, or the men I hang out with. She would stand up for me when my family talks about how the ‘fags’ are ruining the country, and ruining TV and movies and all that bullshit. But she doesn’t. She just sits there and says nothing. It hurts, you know? I would rather her look me in the eye and tell me I’m going to Hell, then look me in the eye and tell me she respects me, when she clearly doesn’t. 

    “I know these aren’t real problems. I know. There’s so much shit going on in the world today, I shouldn’t have the right to complain. Sometimes I think about how if I was born 50 years ago how different my life would be. Ignoring all the shit women back then went through to get me to where I am now, what if I came out during that time? Even as an ace, what would’ve happened? What if I wasn’t shy about my ‘appreciation’ for women? I could’ve been killed. 

    “I don’t even have to go back in time. What if I was born in Afghanistan, or Egypt, or Morocco? There would be a chance that I would be imprisoned, or killed, if I came out. That’s happening right now. And that’s happening to real people, right now. Somewhere in the world, there is a person hiding who he or she is, just to keep from being punished. They have to hide who they are, so they aren’t punished for being who they are. How fucked up is that? And here I am complaining that my mother doesn’t respect me. 

    “This whole thing is shit. Life, and the game of life. Bullshit. I hate it. I remember when I was 17, and I had that first realization that I hated my life. It wasn’t that, ‘Oh my God, I hate everything,’ kind of moment; though I had plenty of those, too. No, this one was real. And I know it was real because I feel the same thing now as I did back then. I hate life. It’s true. I can’t lie about it anymore. I hate being alive. What is there to live for? I haven’t been happy since I was like, 12, if even. The world keeps going to shit. We’re killing every animal on the planet. We’re filling the oceans with plastic. There is literally an entire island of trash floating in the ocean, and we still do nothing about it. The constant hate every day from every side, arguing about everything and anything. The rich keep getting rich while the poor keep dying. What’s to love about that? 

    “Sometimes I wish I was never born. I really do. If I’m not miserable, I’m numb, and if I’m not numb, I wish I was dead. But I’ll never kill myself. No, I’m too big of a pussy. I’d never be able to bring myself to it. My religion also encourages the, ‘don’t kill yourself’ rule, but that didn’t stop my Dad, so, who’s to say? 

“I’m just tired of waiting for things to get better. I tried working to fix it, but that doesn't work. People like me don’t get to change their lives. We’re born from people that shouldn’t have had kids, we live in poverty, we work, inherit our own poverty, and we die. That’s how it is for millions of people. It’s not a new concept. And yet we keep living like there’s nothing out of the ordinary. We do it because this is the ordinary. This is our society. This is our life. And we’re okay with it. I fucking hate it.” 

    “So… You haven’t been good?”