CHRISTIAN DOYLE - POINTS OF ANXIETY

Christian Doyle is from Staten Island. He recently obtained his Master's in Irish Literature at University College Dublin. 

​Points of Anxiety

Karl:     what is up my tomed companion 
    how was your aunts
Carter: dude 
    we NEED to start doing something with our lives
Karl:     yeah
I napped all fucking day
    it sucked 
Carter:    as soon as she saw me she started talking about her high school and college years
    I think I was smiling too much and it confused her and made her think when you’re in your twenties you’re happy all the time
    but how happy could I have looked in my emotionless fucking outfit 
    grey tshirt
    dark grey hoodie
    dark jeans
Karl:    overall, between my twenties and my teens, I’d say my twenties definitely have a higher happiness quotient 
    if I graphed it you would see that there’s a positive correlation between drug-use, socializing, and happiness
    my teens have a way higher academic success
    but that’s been steadily on the decline since my freshman year of high school tbh
Carter:    but yeah man
    I pretty much just spent all day listening to her reminisce and tell me all her theories about life 
    she talked about good and bad memories 
    it was pretty bipolar man
    like she’d be talking about something nostalgic from her childhood and get all teary eyed
    but then like five minutes later she’d be grinding her teeth in anger talking about this asshole guy acting like a cunt 
    it sounds kind of fucked to say but it was
    >entertaining 
Karl:    no dude she sounds cool
    tfw no interesting bipolar relatives to amuse me with personal anecdotes
    I feel like my family is incapable of engaging with their past retroactively like that
    which I mean I don’t know how useful that really is
    I think we applaud it because it’s something we do regularly so we think that anyone who thinks that way is in our league
    but yeah
    I’m the most schizo person in my family so I guess I’m the talkative winey aunt of my family
    >h-haha
    only instead of talking about how fulfilling my formative years were 
Carter:    when she was our age she was definitely like a loose, artsy girl
Karl:    I talk about how I wasted the most constructive years of my life
Carter:    the type of girl that would wear overalls, smoke cigs, and listen to Courtney Barnett 
Karl:    dude
    your aunt sounds like my ideal gf
Carter:    and then would go to concerts seem disinterested the whole time
    she made me feel like such a pleb
Karl:    >Courtney Barnett
    I USED TO HATE MYSELF
    BUT
    NOW
    I
    THINK
Carter:    because I kind of thought people had to fall into certain cliques and I put myself in the “smart kid with no social life” bracket
    which I was okay with
Karl:    I’M
    ALRIGHT
    dude I used to listen to that song
Carter:    because I literally remember justifying it to myself
    >this will be worth it because I’m going to get into a really good college
Karl:    and when she said that I used to think ME TOO
    but now it’s more like 
Carter:    but it turns out the actually smart kids were maxing out on grades while maintaining a healthy social life
Karl:    >I used to think I’m alright but now I hate myself
    which is way less melodic tbh
    yeah man
    why did I think being totally void of personality was a good social move
Carter:    yeah that’s more accurate than the actual lyric
    lmao
    dude my aunt called me “demure” which is just a polite way of saying “bland as fuck”
Karl:    our aversion to people whose entire personality was built entirely on trends conditioned us to avoid people who were outgoing
Carter:    “you leave no impression on anyone”
Karl:    and that resulted in us becoming socially incompetent losers
like I’m physically six foot but socially I’m 5’2 because I act today the same way I did in 7th grade
    for us, interacting with people is just a hurdle we have to jump so we can get back to our rooms, sit at our desks, and jerk off
Carter: why is it that whenever we’re in a public forum 
we huddle in the corner and pretend we’re invisible 
but if it’s a just like four or five people
Karl:    dude when we get intimidated, we just shut-off
    it’s a huge mental block
Carter:    we’re super talkative 
like it doesn’t matter who they are they could be strangers and you and me would still dominate the conversation
Karl:    yeah but that’s bad dude 
we’re way to punchy and spastic, we need to chill out
Carter:    yeah
    and we talk about ourselves way too much
Karl:    it’s impossible for us to be civil and just have just a normal conversation with people
dude I KNOW
    and dude I talk to everyone with the same dismissive, casual tone
    it’s awful 
    I’m never gonna get a JOB
Carter: yeah having that jaded tone while talking to people gives off that “I don’t give a fuck” persona but we’re not actually like that
Karl:    and the problem is I got so much positive reinforcement for treating other people like they’re not special at all
    dude all the time
    my friend will introduce me to a girl
    and then he’ll walk away and it’ll just be me and her talking and she’ll say
    >“I love how you talk to me the same way you talk to your friends”
    and dude people like it because they think we’re not ashamed of being ourselves, that no matter the circumstances we’re not gonna change who we are and if you don’t like it I don’t care
    but that’s not it at all
    eventually you realize “oh it’s not that he’s unapologetically himself all the time, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to express affection or any other emotions organically”
    and the novelty wears off
Carter: jesus lmao
    I hate how accurate that is
    dude in high school your voice was so deep and the only other kids that sounded like that were the kids the smoked weed
Karl:    yeah I know everyone thought I smoked weed
Carter:    and you were like laid back and into music
Karl:    dude this is how retarded I was I didn’t even realize that everyone around me was baked all the time
    like dude it wasn’t until like my fucking senior year that Rayan invited me to go smoke with them before band practice
    and they told me that they’ve been doing this like every week for four years
    and I didn’t even smoke with them then
    because I was an anxious and neurotic melvin four eyes
Carter:    even if I could go back in time and talk to my high school self and be like 
    >“dude listen, when you get older you’re really going to regret that your whole high school experience was nothing about worrying about grades and jerking off”
Karl:    dude honestly
    our biggest mistake was not smoking weed in high school
Carter:    he wouldn’t even take it seriously he would just be like “yeah I know lmao”
    there was no saving me
Karl:    like I don’t wanna say that smoking weed makes you cool
    but honestly
    it does
Carter:    if I ever write an autobiography I’m gonna skip the first eighteen years of my life
Karl:    the only thing I’m proud of from high school is my yearbook quote
    it was literally “I’m ready”
    attributed to Spongebob 
Carter:    nothing notable happened during then and the person I was then has nothing to do with the person I am now
    lel
    god 
    I wish I had done something funny like that
    my yearbook quote was a fucking John Green quote
    I thought I was smart so I thought my yearbook quote had to be something like serious and meaningful
Karl:    tbh I’ve kind of just always thought I sucked
Carter:    which honestly just makes it way cringier because I used a John Green quote
    as if John Green was some venerated sage whose writings are dense with wisdom
    no he writes shitty YA lit
Karl:    we’re just contrarians man
    the last thing you or me wants to do is be reduced to simple pleasures like reading on the train or sipping hot coffee at our desk
    we just don’t ever want to enjoy wagie life too much because that feels so much like giving in to everything 
Carter:    99% of my life could probably be edited out and then the story of my life would just be a six minute video essay on youtube about getting tomed and listening to music
    that gets demonetized because it mentions kratom
Karl:    and it means fully admitting to ourselves that our dreams of being any type of artist will never actually happen
    we’d rather get tomed and cycle through King Gizz’s entire oeuvre than go to some normie bar with our coworkers and spend thirty dollars on two vodka sodas
Carter:    dude Tao Lin published his first book of poetry when he was 24
    I need to at least stay on pace with Tao Lin
Karl:    our ideal lives would be us just mooching off our rich friends
    where they support us financially
    and all we do is fiddle around all day
    toming and smoking and trying to be creative
Mac Demarco was 24 when he released salad days
Carter:    if I cant even do that
Karl:    which means he did all od that OTHER shit BEFORE that
Carter:    kms
    yeah that would be perfect
    because their autism makes them really proficient at building robots but it also makes them socially inept 
so maybe they’d be so starving for human interaction they wouldn’t even mind paying for everything for us 
    dude 
listen to a clear distinction between my aunt’s power level and mine
Karl:    dude it’s so fucked how we feel a kinship with actual creative types just because we’re into unpopular shit and australian prog rock
Carter:    she started talking about Richard Yates 
and when she says Richard Yates she thinks about the acclaimed American author of Revolutionary Road
but when I hear Richard Yates the first thing I think of is a Tao Lin novel 
yeah I know
Karl:    tfw
Tao Lin is for people like us who wear the same hoodie every day
Carter:    I like to pretend that within the heavily distracted mind of a kratom addicted esthete is an embryo of genius 
    but in reality I’m just a substandard fuck-up
Karl:    yeah man
    fuck you
    lel
    our whole lives have just revolved around grades and classes and not getting in trouble
    we never actually explored our interests until NOW and we’re like 23 and it’s honestly too late for us to even start
    we’re
    OLD
Carter:    dude it actually makes me feel bad when my mom or someone tells me I’m smart or capable or something
    like my aunt said a bunch of stuff like that today
    >“you have a good head on your shoulders”
    like I’m sensible and have good judgment
    but it’s like
    in college man
    I made so many bad decisions and got in so much trouble for just doing dumb shit without thinking
    when she said that I couldn’t help but like roll my eyes 
    because she really has no idea what she’s talking about
    she’s just projecting because she really wants to believe that I’m gifted and prudent
    but it’s like
    >lmao
    >no
Karl:    my family doesn’t really dump compliments on me like that
    but I know they think I’m the one who should be the most successful because I got a high SAT score and got a scholarship to high school
    but they’re just setting themselves up for disappointment
    like I lost that scholarship lmao
    and a high SAT grade doesn’t translate into anything in real life
    all it is is for bragging if you do well
Carter:    but that’s the kind of thing any sensible person would like to hear
    but I do NOT
    it makes me feel BAD
Karl:    god dude
    every cool or proud memory I have is punctuated by anxiety or shame that even going through all the highlights of my life just makes me wish I was a different person
Carter:    that pathetic feel man
    I can’t wait to just get home and get tomed
    I’m going to read the sound and the fury because my aunt was talking about it and I said I read it but all I did was cram the sparknotes before class so I feel guilty
Karl:    based Faulkner
Carter:    because she definitely read the whole thing probably more than once the way she was talking about it
    like she definitely hasn’t touched it in years but she could like refer to specific lines on specific pages as if she just finished it the other day
    and it’s like
    I cant even remember the name of the guy from catch 22
Karl:    cmon man
    Yossarian 
    lel
Carter:    but dude 
Karl:    >me being smug about that even though catch 22 is one of the few books I’ve finished in the last seven years
Carter:    trying to think back on a book from high school
    which was only like 5 or 6 years ago
    all of those books I barely even feel like I read in the first place because I was not giving them the attention they deserved
Karl:    I actually really have a problem of not finishing all the books I start man
    like
Carter:    so it all just kind’ve blends together
Karl:    I STILL havent finished blood meridian 
Carter:    it’d be impossible for me to sit down right now and write an essay on any one book 
but man I bet you my aunt could write a lengthy, beautiful essay on a book she read 20 years ago and it would be so detailed and accurate you’d think she WROTE the book
Karl:    I could maybe write something on Paradise Lost 
    actually no I definitely couldn’t
Carter:    dude at this point blood meridian is a lost cause
Karl:    thinking about sitting down and having to construct an essay like that gives me a headache immediately
    I’m so glad I’m never going to have to write any papers like that ever again
Carter:    finishing it now just to finish it is pointless and does the book no justice
    you should honestly start it over if you actually want to read it
Karl:    writing philosophy papers in college was actually pretty fun
    >because I knew I was GOOD AT IT
yeah I know
    I definitely won’t though
    I probably won’t even finish it tbh
    I’ll probably just sit here
Carter:    I at least want to make a dent in the sound and the fury tonight 
Karl:    get TOMED
    and listen to
    salad days demos
Carter:    because it probably wont ever come up in conversation again but I at least want to get to the point she assumed I was at when I said that I had read it
Karl:    dude 
    Faulkner is to Hemingway the way King Gizz is to Tame Impala
    where there’s a rivalry just because people always compare them
    Hemingway and Tame Impala are both entry level
    and Faulkner and King Gizz are complex and prolific
Carter:    Faulkner is an absolute mad man
    like this first part is from the perspective of a retarded guy and obviously Faulkner knew it’d be confusing for people to read and a lot of people would probably drop the book before they even got to the second part
    which is the Quentin Compson part
    dude my aunt said something like
    >a guy like you probably relates a lot to Quentin Compson
    but Quentin Compson is a 22 year old suicidal virgin
    so what did she mean by this
Karl:    LEL
    Faulkner was a manlet so you know he understands socially inept neets like us
Carter:    there’s no better feeling than unsheathing your bag of tome after a long day of wanting to kill yourself
    oh and dude guess where my aunt used to hang out
Karl:    where
Carter:    the thirsty memer
Karl:    wtf
    did you tell her that that is our shitty meet up point that we go to way too often 
Carter:    or she’s at least has been there a few times
    the way she described it made it sound like she went there a lot
Karl:    and that one time I got laid by playing darts badly with a girl 
Carter:    she was talking about meeting this douchebag she hates there once
    I think she was sitting right across from the picture of Bill Murray that’s behind the bar
    no dude I didn’t say anything
    for some reason I feel awkward acknowledging that I go to bars and drink in front of my family
Karl:    >douchebag she hates 
    do you think they pumped
Carter:    lel
    I don’t know
    maybe
    she talked a lot about that guy and how he was just a huge dick in general
Karl:    >Bill Murray
    dude did you tell her about that theory with like
Carter:    but it was weird she kept saying how he’s probably old and alone now and she felt bad for him
Karl:    Pynchon and Bill Murray
    that’s probably gonna be me tbh
    if I don’t kill myself and actually end up growing old
Carter:    oh that’s just from an old thread on lit
    where this guy who just keeps posting pictures of bill murray presents these theories about Shakespeare’s identity, Finnegans Wake, CoL49 and then he has all these insane anecdotes about playing pool with Pynchon at a gas station or something
    and he’s really tongue and cheek about his identity that he’s just bill murray
    the running assumption is that it was Pynchon making all those posts
    and it’s really weird that there’s this unexplained picture of Bill Murray prominently displayed behind the bar at a cheap Irish bar on the lower east side
    so I think Pynchon designed this whole thing because he’s looking for his protege 
he made those posts and then put that picture of Bill Murray there and now is waiting for the right person to put all the pieces together
it’s actually perfect because in Bleeding Edge Pynchon makes fucking Kojima jokes
I bet browsing was literally how he conducted research for that book
those posts were from 2010
he was definitely writing BE then
Karl:    dude it would be so sick if we brought it up to the bartender and then were escorted to an underground hidden chamber where Pynchon and a talking bandana possessed by the ghost of David Foster Wallace were hanging out, smoking weed and listening to dopesmoker 
and they congratulate us and invite us to sit down with them
and we introduce ourselves and then I pull a bag out of my backpack and say
    >”Have you guys ever heard of kratom?”
Carter:    god
    >you will never casually discuss music and literature with Pynchon over a couple of joints
    why haven’t I killed myself yet
    dude actually at one point my aunt started talking about Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Karl:    >Hesse
    based german literature  
Carter:    we have to read that book man
Karl:    god I’m such a pleb
why haven’t I read Goethe
Carter:    it’s about this depressed guy that knows one day he’s going to kill himself
Karl:    I waste all my time playing fucking video games and then when I finally decide to sit down and read I pick shitty American lit when I should be reading something patrician
Carter:    but because he knows that that’s going to happen it makes him want to make the most of his life
Karl:    like RILKE
    or Lessing
Carter: doesnt that sound exactly like us
like we think about killing ourselves all the time
and we’re pissed off that we havent done anything worthwhile 
Karl:    we do talk about killing ourselves a lot
    that’s definitely not good
Carter:    and that’s making us want to do something creative, get something out there with our name on it as soon as possible
    my aunt said that if you don’t take risks you’re letting your life live itself for you
our whole lives all we’ve been doing is avoiding risks 
because we’re too afraid to make a decision and bind ourselves to something we might not like
Karl:    yeah man
    and it only takes a few minutes of job searching to realize
    >“wow there’s no job out there that I actually want to do”
    everything good about being a neet is undone by us still living with our parents
    I wish we just had some shitty apartment in queens 
    if we were just on our own man 
so much of our pent up frustration would just melt away
Carter:    it’d honestly be such a relief to actually live like that
that’s the way two dudes in their twenties who don’t have anything figured our about their lives SHOULD live
Karl:    dude we’re delusional 
we think if we lived on our own that would unlock something and all of a sudden we would spend all our free time pursuing creative interests
but dude 
that wouldn’t happen 
we’d just be really stressed out about money because we don’t have any stable income
like I have all this free time right now
and all I do is blast king gizz
jerk off 
and message you 
about wanting to die
Carter:    and then self-medicate with tome
so that we can withdraw and feel indifferent to our lives that are not going anywhere we want
Karl:    man we are so SPOILED
Carter:    the second we think about doing something cool like devoting ourselves to being artists, we feel the need to correct ourselves
and get “““““realistic”””””
because we know that getting a regular job is really the smartest thing to do because it’s secure and guarantees us at least a semi-comfortable life 
but I know if I don’t even try to be a writer the “what if’s” are gonna haunt me for the rest of my life 
so even though there are a ton of options for what I could do with my life
I can’t permit myself to consider anything unorthodox as an actual possibility for me
so it feels like there’s no way to avoid my life being miserable
Karl:    before I was just sitting here listening to Firth of Fifth in the dark
and like at the three minute mark when it became that mysterious, contemplative melody I was imagining myself standing on like the edge of the Williamsburg bridge 
like on the outer trellis with the crisscrossing I-beams ready to just plunge into the water and never resurface 
    I’m there staring down at the water
    and behind me there are a bunch of cop cars with like the red and blue lights flashing
    and there is like somebody with a megaphone calling out to me trying to reel me back in
    and there’s a helicopter with a spotlight pointed at me
and for a second I actually think “I can’t actually kill myself what am I thinking” and I start to walk back and the people are relieved 
but then when the four minute mark hits, and the song changes and starts ramping up to a climax
I stop walking and think “wait, why am I letting other people decide what I do with my life”
and I start backing up
and the guy with the megaphone is saying something 
and then I turn around and sprint towards the edge of the bridge
and right when the music explodes into a happy celebration that’s when I leap off the side and go cascading through the air to my death
Carter:    there was this part she said where Steppenwolf
who I was picturing as being like a demon or something until I looked it up
he was getting ready to hang out with people and he was dreading every second of it 
all he wanted to do was stay home
that reminded me so much of Courtney Barnett lyric
    >SHOULD’VE STAYED IN BED TODAY
    >I MUCH PREFER THE MUNDANE
Karl:    neither one of those things are actually helping us progress towards where we want to be in life
I’m literally just sitting here looking up guitar tabs for king gizz song 
it sounds like I’m being productive but dude it’s seriously like
becoming a musical artist has almost nothing to with actually being good
there are so many people who play guitar way better than me and they get less than zero recognition for it
it’s literally all chance, that hopefully your hat will get picked up from the ring
but I don’t even know how to get my hat into the ring in the first place
Carter:    yeah man that’s exactly how I feel
my aunt read me like parts of books and all of them were so incredible I was thinking that there’s no way I could ever write something deeply provocative or that powerful
and there are definitely a ton of people who write all the time, who can express their ideas so freely on the page and have interesting techniques to cluster and present information in engaging and intriguing ways
it makes me think what chance do I have of really standing out
Karl:    it’s not even like we don’t have drive or ambition
    we really aren’t lazy 
but it just feels like even when we finally are ready to change our lives in a big way, it ends up involving months and months of waiting for anything to happen and it hardly feels worth it
90% of doing something is actually just sitting around doing nothing
even on days when I’m really productive and got a lot of stuff done, it doesn’t feel satisfying at all
it just feels like I wasted the day
Carter:    even my aunt man, she was talking about how she had had literary aspirations and she had written some stuff here and there but never finished them or fleshed them out into anything significant
    she’s read infinitely more books than I have and she must spend every minute of every day thinking about those books and just writing in general
I bet the things she wrote were insanely good
but that’s just how it is man
Karl:    tfw
    those people are the real artists
    who like don’t even want glory
    who just make music for the direct joy and happiness it brings to their own life
Carter:    yeah
our idea of artistic creation is perverted because it hinges on financial stability and recognition 
like if I write a book but it doesn’t get published in my head it won’t really feel like I wrote a book
and dude I have like a bunch of stories that I just haven’t finished for some reason
which is so bad
like it’s never going to be perfect, but I just need to declare it done so I can move on
Karl:    yeah
    it’s better to release a shitty album and then start on the next one thinking 
    >“This one is going to be way better”
than to abandon it when you find you’re still unsatisfied with it
or to just keep working on it and working on it for an indeterminate amount of time, expecting that there will be one day where you’re entirely satisfied with it and don’t want to change or add anything
because that’s never going to happen
just like
listening to something over and over again
or staring at something for a long enough time
it just gets stale
you’re never going to be able to look at it with fresh eyes and have the experience of taking it all in for the first time that you want other people to have
but it’s hard because you don’t want to purposely put something on your record that you know isn’t that good
everyone wants to be like that genius artist where everything they produce is gold plated
diamond studded
and especially if its your first record you want it to be really memorable 
memorable for all the right reasons
or something that people go back and discover after your third record gets some acclaim
but wanting everything accredited to you to be perfect puts so much pressure on yourself
we gotta curb our egos man 
it’s the only way we’re going to make it
like the first book you write is not going to be as good as V.
the first album I write is not going to be as good as Nonagon Infinity 
but that’s OKAY
Carter:    dude my aunt said she never ended up writing anything 
    because she didn’t want to put her name on something that later on she’d think was be embarrassed of and thought was like mediocre 
    she didn’t want to just write something regular because she knew that if she just put in the time she could turn it into something really poetic and interesting 
    but it’s like
    dude nothing’s gonna hold up as much as you think it will
    even Pynchon in Slow Learner is embarrassed by the stories he wrote in college 
    but that’s just part of it
    making anything
    you have to
    idk
    dude
    it’s weird how like if you make something you like you’re actually kind of fucked
    because then you just don’t want to ruin it 
    and then anything you add just detracts from it so you 
    so then you can’t do anything 
    my aunt wanted to write like intellectual stuff
    which I think just means putting a lot of pointless allusions to things people don’t know about
    so you can feel very smart and chuckle when people read it and don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about
Karl:    that’s retarded
    but fashionable 
    because people won’t admit they don’t understand it
    and your aunt wants to be in the position where she can be like 
    >“Oh well explain it to me if you understand it then”
    and then they’ll squirm and she’ll feel ingratiated 
    that’s why music is better than books man
    everyone knows “““““intellectual””””” music is garbage
    but people take intellectual books really seriously
Carter:    dude no
    like the sound and the fury
    people think it’s scholarly because it has a lot of Shakespeare and bible references 
    but that’s wrong
    it’s scholarly because of the way Quentin Compson’s thoughts are delivered 
    it demands that the reader do extra work to figure out the new form the text is taking on, how it relates to the initial form of the text, and why this distinction is necessary
    and all of that, understanding the book, is a mental exercise
    that has a lot more to offer than thom yorke moaning for 6 hours
    and then playing one note for eight measures from every instrument in alphabetical order 
Karl:    >thom yorke
    who is the radiohead of literature
    Tao Lin?
Carter:    lel
    well if Faulkner is the King Gizz of literature
    then
    dude no Tao Lin is definitely like Animal Collective 
Karl:    >dude 
    >PSYCHEDELICS
    >lmao
Carter:    yeah basically
    but dude we gotta just start putting stuff out there 
    we’re not always gonna have the urge to create like we do now 
    and we’re taking it for granted and wasting it
    we need to take full advantage of our 
    YOUTHFUL 
Karl:    yeah
Carter:    AMBITION 
Karl:    honestly we should just make a shitty album as fast as we can
    and you should write a cringey YA fiction book
    and then we just release them
that way our reputations as artists are completely soiled before we even have a chance to develop them
and then society as a whole will have given up on us and we will have absolutely no pressure on us to be geniuses or really make a difference 
and we’ll be able to make stuff we like freely and easily without thinking we’re going to be letting ourselves down
and then ironically enough we’ll start producing stuff that’s actually good
Carter:    lel that’s not really how we think man
    we’d release those shitty things 
and then we’d be so embarrassed that people would read it and bring it up to us  
and then we’d feel even MORE pressure from OURSELVES to create something good people completely overlook the first thing
and we’d stagnate completely 
Karl:    dude if we spent half as much time actually working on stuff as we do talking about working on stuff
    we would have written like three albums by now
Carter:    lel that’s like from the german DFW interview where all those reaction faces are from
    where he’s like
    >I spend about 6 or 7 hours thinking about writing for every hour that I spend actually writing
Karl:    >DFW
    tfw you will never go to the AVN Awards, write Infinite Jest, and then kill yourself
Carter:    now that’s a feel
Karl:    we could live in queens or brooklyn south of prospect park 
    like parkside avenue 
    or even we could try all the way uptown on the upper east side 
    like on 1st ave far from the train
Carter:    I want to get out of this city man
    I have only been to like a handful of states 
    and I’ve never even been outside the fucking country
Karl:    same
    well, I’ve seen a lot of states
    but the only time I left the country was to go to Canada
    which was shitty and doesn’t even really count because we didn’t go on a plane
Carter:    my aunt quoted this guy who said travelling was the only way to learn 
    so I guess by his standards I’m functionally retarded
    because I’ve never been anywhere
    she was saying how she still wanted to see new places 
    even though she was like
    >it’s too late    
but I doubt she really wanted to do like poor, scavenger type travelling
like backpacking
where its really a lot more about the journey and surviving and not so much a vacation
I mean it’s a vacation but like it’s not supposed to be relaxing
Karl:    yeah man and if we were gonna travel that’s the way we would do it
Carter:    it sounded like she just wanted sit on the beach and be pampered    
Karl:    we’d stay at cheap hostels
    eat cheap food
Carter:    she mentioned going on the trans-siberian railroad
Karl:    like the premade wraps at the grocery store and stuff
    dude we’ve got to go to eastern europe
Carter:    but I don’t think she realizes that that means you literally live on a train for multiple days
Karl:    and just do a tour through the Balkans 
Carter:    and she would not be able to handle that
    even that’s too rugged for her
Karl:    and then head to Germany 
dude Germany would be perfect
they have the Goethe monument for you
and the WIENERSCHNITZEL for ME
YES
Carter:    god man I would love to see Berlin
    man isn’t it so depressing 
Karl:    yeah
    what are you talking about
Carter:    that for us, a trip like that would be the adventure of a lifetime
    a week or like ten days seeing the bottom half of Europe
    getting lost in the streets
    meeting locals and other travellers from even more distant parts of the world    
    we would talk about that trip for the rest of our lives
    there are people our age who aren’t just talking about it
    they’re actually DOING it
    RIGHT NOW
    why isn’t that US
Karl:    because our middleclass upbringing has taught us that leaving your comfort zone is irresponsible
    and we like the security of knowing we could do something if we felt like it more than the experience of going out and doing it
    we don’t want to give up the ability to maybe do anything for actually doing something
Carter:    dude when my aunt pointed out a small, intimate detail from a book or something
just from the way she talked about it you could tell it that it really affected her
that it changed the way she thought of herself and viewed the world
she had so many revelations whose lifelong effects she can still ruminate on fifty years later
fifty years from now I’m not going to be thinking about how listening to mac demarco while tomed at my desk fundamentally altered my worldview  
Karl:    yeah man 
we are just losers who frantically stir a green opioid surrogate native to southeast asia into either coffee or tea, or grapefruit juice because the citric acid potentiates the stimulation of our mu-opioid receptors 
hopefully fifty years from now I’ll have been dead for 46 years
Carter:    trying to make the same songs we’ve listening to hundreds of times feel new again by listening to them in a different order
Karl:    tfw our playlists are just mac and king gizz echo chambers
    actually dude we’ve been pretty good lately at finding new stuff 
Carter: I cant even imagine how I’m gonna look back at my 22 year old self when I’m that old 
    it’ll just be like 
>“I spent most of my time trying to figure out exactly why I felt so shitty when the reason I probably felt so shitty was because I spent most of my time trying to figure out why”
Karl:    lel
“to some unstable, deeply pessimistic kid with an addictive personality who spent all his time reiterating that lsd saved his life and diagnosing himself repeatedly with various psychological disorders”
Carter:    actually knowing me
when I’m that age I’ll probably remember that I spent a lot of time in my twenties wondering how me in my sixties would remember my twenties and I’ll probably be puzzled as to why that was such a big deal to me
I’ll probably remember this exact conversation honestly 
I really don’t anticipate age distorting how I understand myself
Karl:    dude when I’m your aunt’s age I hope I’ve forgotten the way I act now
imagining the old man I’m gonna become one day watching me interacting with my family at the holidays makes me want to kill myself
going into a room alone and anxiously pacing in it like an absolute schizo 
then going out to show my face because I know if I’m gone for too long it’ll be weird
my uncle saying hi to me and then me immediately dropping eye contact and scratching my fucking arms
    and I blame my dry skin even though it’s my timid personality more than anything
    dude even around my family I’m such a fucking beta
    my uncle asking me what I’ve been up to is enough to make me curl up like a pill bug
I know they’re just asking because it’s polite
they don’t actually care
that’s just kind of what you do when you see your family 
but it’s such a waste because nothing really changes from year to year 
no one’s ever going to have any real exciting updates because every person’s life is stagnant as fuck including my own
the most exciting thing I could report from now on is that I have a job and all they’re gonna say to that is 
>“Oh yeah? Doing what?” 
and I’m gonna say
>I sit in an uncomfortable chair for seven hours a day glancing at the clock every five or so minutes
and they’re gonna say
>“Wow! Do you like it?”
and I’m gonna say 
>d-didn’t you just hear what I said?
Carter:    lel 
I mean that’s better than the arrogant thing people our age do 
where they’ve had a job for 3 months but they talk with this phony air of professionalism like they actually have a vested interest in the company
Karl:    yeah man but you realize those are the people who are going to run the stock market and become CEOs
Carter:    >“Officially, service clients and telecommunications operators, but on a daily basis mostly what I’m doing is conducting and compiling research from various insider journals directed at industries like ours”
Karl:    yeah
    that’s literally what you have to be like
Carter:    it’s like alright dude, you fucking sit on excel all day like the rest of us
Karl:    that’s why you and me are going to be lucky to make 70k
    because we’re too stubborn to play that game
    so those guys are gonna trample all over us
    because it’s literally all about image
Carter:    I guess a lot of guys our age really do idolize the image of the white collar executive and are just really desperate to become that as soon as possible
but it’s like nobody thinks a 23 year old is a cutthroat shark 
nobody’s impressed
people just think you’re obnoxious 
Karl:    dude why the fuck 
    do we idolize 
    trashy, slacker musicians from the commonwealth 
    and
suicidal and reclusive authors from the tri-state area
our image of success is totally warped because of that
Carter:    god dude
    we are such fucking frauds
my aunt had an interesting, adventurous life that just made her more cosmopolitan by nature 
and it feels like we should be that way since we got an expensive education
like we’ve been engineered to be high brow
or not even high brow
    just well-informed and intelligent enough to take an interest in like world affairs and contemporary art
    but we don’t pay any attention to any of that stuff 
all we really care about is pushing headphones deep into our ears and pumping music directly into our heads
Karl:    dude it’s whatever
    being ordinary is sick
    instead of taking vacations to like Europe or something
    we’ll just take more tome and go on a mental vacation at our desks
where our thoughts become a movie montage
and the soundtrack is king gizz
it’s a million times cheaper and equally as relaxing  
Carter:    you’ve got to be joking man
    it’s not about relaxing 
    it’s about finally maturing 
    actually becoming independent by putting ourselves in a situation where we have to be
    my aunt talked about feeling trapped in New York at our age
Karl:    dude no wonder you’re anxious all the time
Carter:    she felt constricted and like she couldn’t accomplish anything she wanted to by being here
Karl:    you’ve gotten into the habit of using theoretical scenarios to willingly overwhelm yourself
Carter:    which dude that’s how WE feel
and then she said when she finally went to Europe she felt like life opened up and for the first time she felt like she could do whatever she wanted 
Karl:    it honestly doesn’t make any sense that we feel so restricted by nyc
    literally the only reason why we feel like that is because we still live with our parents
    like dude I bet you if we got a shitty apartment on the lower east side tomorrow
    we would start to love new york
    we don’t need to fly to some far away country to find ourselves
    we just need to MOVE OUT
Carter:    that’s definitely part of it
    but man
    idk
    I feel like still being in this city
dude there’s not a corner of this city where we haven’t had some weird story or bad memory that occurs to us the second we’re somewhere familiar
Karl:    yeah
    that’s true
Carter:    and it’s inescapable man
like I don’t think I will ever be able to walk by the Angelika without thinking of going on a date once there in high school
I’ll never be able to walk around the upper east side without thinking about how we used to go into central park up there and drink beers on the rocks near the baseball fields
our embarrassing lives are splattered all over every inch of manhattan 
we need to get out just so we aren’t constantly reminded of the thousands of missed chances, wasted nights, and retarded decisions we’ve made 
like dude there are so many stops on so many trains that we used to go to all the time
and when I get off on them now I can’t help but remember the thousands of juvenile incidents that started with me getting off at those stops
and I don’t think that’s ever gonna go away

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