Jonnah Z. Kennedy - Of Absolute Happiness, Part 1 lyrics

Truth is, nothing ever changes. The thing about change is that, there has to have been something to change in the first place, and there was nothing that was going to change the fact that, even ten years on, the cloven-footed vixen Stacy Jackson still won't speak to me. Her back is to me, as her bouffant bobs with her head, as she rants, and her laggies, which she's cliqued up with again, mirror her exactly, an acute, mechanical calculation of subconscious worship, of the b**h variety. I look away before I give myself an aneurysm. Here is orange, artificially flavored fruit punch in a red Solo cup, under flashing lights, in the ambiance of live music courtesy of one of our Success Stories--Bill Clark and the Rad Boys, Phil and James Hart (twins) on the guitars, Carson Vincent on the drums, and Eric Dawson on the keyboard. I remember Bill Clark. He sat behind me in history, and instead of paying attention, he was always asking me for answers. He failed the cla** with flying colors. And here he is, playing live music to us in the midst of his world tour. Someone said he's going to be in Macau tomorrow. He's been there four times now, and every time, he's brought back sixteen new geishas with him. It's all in the news. His evening selection, they're all sitting in a corner with some Blondes, chattering incessantly in that weird language of theirs, made up of syllables, talking about how great s** is with a rock star. And here I am, staring at artificially flavored fruit punch that might've been spiked. Nothing changes. Prom all over again. Homecoming all over again. The winter ball in eighth grade, all over again. The devil in a new dress, essentially. Everyone's getting along well with everyone else, having a blast trying to figure out who's who. The funny thing about decade's that, everyone grows a beard. Even the football players, they grow beards too and they get a beer gut. Except Marshal Smit, he went on to play for the Giants, I heard. And Dean Termino, he's been playing professional hockey in Canada. Who plays professional hockey? I take a sip from my red Solo cup and keep looking around. I have no idea where my friends are, my best buddies, pals, the guys I used to sit with at lunch for four years of my life, because I had an erratic fear of strangers. I still do, and tonight, under these strobe lights, which are bound to give me epilepsy, I'm surrounded by a whole new cla** of people. The banner, on the other side of the room, it says WELCOME CLASS OF 2000, but all that I see is WELCOME FISH. Looking down at the slowly dissipating ice cubes in my cup, I wonder why I even came. You get an invitation that says “Cla** Reunion” in this cutesy, stock font courtesy of the reunited Student Council (who haven't aged a day, as you'd have it), and your first instinct is to take a big sh**. All these memories, they well up inside of your stomach, like they've been sitting in your large intestine for the past ten years, just brooding, bubbling, and turning into the kind of big, hurts-to-push-out stool you get after attending Thanksgiving courtesy of our mother. I sat on the toilet for three hours, just staring at the little, plastic silver card, listening to my own steaming excrement seep into the bowl, tee'd off by the infamous sploosh that signifies diarrhea of the fourth kind. After you take your Shock sh**, you just feel insulted. How dare they invite me to a cla** reunion? How dare they pretend that I, for whatever reason whatsoever, want to see all these hundreds of people I hate, in a place I hate, breathing air that breeds hate? It's almost a primal aggression, one which is reserved for these special occasions of potent outrage. So I tore the invitation up, pissed on it, and flushed it down the toilet. I felt no remorse. Yet, the way the mind works, things like this aren't easily discarded. Especially because it was shiny and silver; it flares up in your mind and dances there for a little while; a slow two-step tango set to the beat of a cold moonlight crescendo. What they'd call a temporal haunting. As you walk around, all these spirits, that are embodied in that silver flare, they cease to recede, rather they emerge and emerge out of each other, bringing with them the fog of torment's past. The embarra**ment, the failures, the crippling put downs. “You're a f*ggot, and you know why?” You are so inclined to say why? “Why?” “Because your dad's a f*ggot,” And they'd go on, snickering, the Great Apes After the first grade, it just doesn't bother you anymore, after those first few occasions of running to the teacher, tears painting your rosy little cheeks, and her looking down at you, and, in her voice of supreme dominion, also calling you a f*ggot, to just grow some balls, why don't you. You start to anticipate it, sort of like you anticipate the last bell of the day, the shrill cry of a teacher to do your homework when you get home, your just barely missing the bus home; your parents, asking why you're so late, your friends asking you do you want to play Xbox. The whole of it, it hangs over you, this haunting cloud that drowns you in your whole self. The bathtub. This is the only suitable place to capture all this water--all these tears, all this sweat. There I was, in my bathtub, remembering the time I had my nuts kicked so far up my abdomen, they had to cut me open just to pull them back down, saying that it was unlikely I was ever going to have kids; remembering my Algebra teacher staring me in the eyes, all soulful like, and telling me that I had no future; remembering all the times when I sat in the cafeteria, surrounded by the glow of my friends, and thought wouldn't it be a great idea if I just offed myself tonight. I'd tell my councilor these things, and she'd just tell me I'm getting so much better while she asked for suggestions about wedding menus. Boy, Boy, could I tell you about the fun I had. Truth is though, it hurts too much. You understand that, happiness is temporary. Why do you think they've made a whole industry on the very idea of it, the aspiration of happiness? You see these Coke ads, and they're all about how drinking coke will make you happy; these pharmaceutical advertisement propagating depression, showing you the black-and-white before-and-after and the, yellow brick road to your suffrage--that is more sugar pills. All these distractions we have, to keep us happy. It's just good business. It's even there in the Declaration. Well, here's my dissertation on the solemnity of sadness. It's in the third stage that you finally make a decision. Most people. Most people, they get to this stage and they say I'll go. Me, I regressed, rolled back to stage 1--denial, anger, insulted. And then I moved up, sad and in turmoil. Looking at my life, Looking at my life, With the shag carpet from my parents' basement, With the futon couch from my parents' basement, With the mini-fridge packed with lukewarm soda and microwavable meals, Half melted, soggy, With the cracked, rabbit-eared TV set sitting on milk crates, Console wires choking each other about the base, With the neighbors who think I'm a junky, because all my clothes are three sizes too big for me, You get what you can in salvation, With the rent guy asking twice a day, “You going to pay your rent, or what?” And it's been going on like that for the past three years now. I can't pay f**ing rent. You ever work a gas station? That sh** doesn't pay well. Having the courtesy of writing the Hitchhiker's Guide to sh**, Because that's all you do all day, cleaning other people's sh**, It doesn't sell very well, my friend, O my brothers, It's just another piece of sh** you've had the honor to put your name on, And you can't pay the f**ing rent. Looking at my life, Looking at my life, How much worse could it be to have everyone I've ever known know, that I'm bottom of the barrel. That I'm nothing, nobody? Was I ever to begin with? . . . I RSVP'd. That's why I came. That's why I came. To humiliate myself, to wipe myself all over the walls of this noble gymnasium, where so many a home game were won, where so many a young horny virgins lost their religion behind the bleachers, To show everyone how much of a mess I am. My artificial orange fruit punch, it's all watered down now, the ice is melted. I decide that I'm hungry, and see that there's still my cake sitting there with my name on it, in blue frosting: DEVAN WILKERSON. You had to go and find your name, a fun little icebreaker to get people talking again. From the beginning of the night, all you're hearing is— “Caityln? Caitlyn is that you?” “Brody! What have you been up to, man?” “Jeff! Oh, you look so thin!” “Michelle! I love your hair!” “Alex! You haven't aged a day!” “Michael! Is that your car outside? I've always wanted one of those!” XO XO XO. I found mine's swiftly and quietly, bumping into a few random bodies who blinked at me twice. There are a couple of unclaimed cakes that, as Bill Clark introduces the next song—“A little number I wrote for number twelve,” wink—I make my way over to the punch bowl, where some of the black kids is gathered, hooting as they spill punch all over the plastic covered gym floor. Some of the unclaimed graves: Susan Dawson Eric H. Roland Whitney Carson Mark Burr Horace Ent And half a hundred other names I don't recognize. May they all rest in peace.