How to be Unhappy (unfinished)

The ring of his tiny alarm clock seems to reverberate in his head long after he has turned the alarm off and attempted to roll back into the familiar stupor of a fresh hangover. It’s 9:00 A.M. and a light breeze brushes his forehead, hitting him like smoke off the warm breath of last night’s hooker, bouncer, cab driver. If this were a movie, his hair would flutter majestically in the wind. But his hair does not flutter in the wind, as it should, for he applies hair gel every morning, quite routinely; his hair just sits there, uninterested, uninteresting, still black, still graying, needing a trim. Satin bed sheets lie in a golden tangle near his hairless feet. Brooks Brothers pants hang dejectedly, lopsidedly from a wooden chair near a queen-sized bed. A black belt coils on a marble floor. Apart from the bed, a simple wooden structure backed by an unnaturally large, elaborately, ornately carved, gold-rimmed headboard, the only other furniture in the room are an armoire, a mirror, and a small table to hold the aforementioned tiny alarm clock. Grayness pervades. The morning is dead. The king is dead.

Usually, Aaron has no trouble falling back asleep with a hangover, but this particular morning is different, an unwelcomed anomaly in a life wanting anomalies. He sits up, rubbing eyes, cracking fingers one at a time – painstakingly – reaching arms up towards the yellow ceiling, probably trying to remember what happened last night, or deciding how to waste another day. He stumbles. Out of bed, and color infiltrates his eyes, blinding him. He stands – blinking – for a second, dazed, confused. In his mind a fat man with nose studs and a leather jacket pats sultrily dressed women and disgusting men on the back as they jostle into a crowded club. Club X. Back to earth, looking out of his window, God-like, Aaron watches a young couple strolling along the sidewalk five stories below him, linked inextricably in the middle by black and white hands. They are at equilibrium with the world, and he is not. He is abnormal, unbalanced, cornered into a life of inflexibility and perfectionism, and they are not.

Aaron shuffles through his hyper-clean fifth floor flat, sweaty feet in sweaty socks leaving a trail of wet on the marble that dissipates as he moves further away, like the tail in the computer game, Snake. The apartment is all metallic walls, hard marble floors, glassiness, emptiness; lifelessness incarnate. In the kitchen, white cabinets meet white walls meet white refrigerator – from which he procures a bar of dark chocolate (85% Cacao) and a carton of low fat milk. The granite countertop onto which he places these items is spotless, unnatural. He perches himself on a black leather stool – one of five congruent black leather stools, four of which typically remain unused – a model of solemnity, despondency, posed stoically at his countertop, living his black and white life while the rich, colorful world whirls past him on the roof of a sightseeing bus.