Blue and Generic as the Lines on a Notepad

Sift through stacks of newspapers in your basement you never found the time to throw out; you'll learn about what is currently referred to as "The American Sub Prime Mortgage Crisis". For anyone who has a blue cable of the liberal media drilled into their skull, your enlightenment is nigh.

In 2004, the unfortunate financial state of millions of Americans punctured a hole in the Utopia that once was the system of loan and mortgage payments, offered by your run of the mill Multinational Conglomerate Bank. People were able to borrow a cool mill for little more than a flick of a pen and a standard 25% interest rate, a win-win if there ever was one. As the years passed, the financial word became a ticking time bomb, until one business day it finally exploded. Account holders start defaulting on their loans and woke to the sound of Repo men kicking down front doors. They were robbed of their homes, their hopes and their first born males. 

This process started happening so frequently that eventually banks got the hint and stopped opening their cheque books to every starry-eyed American that tip-toed nervously through their lobby. Eventually, asking prices took a dive, men on television spoke of the rapture and banks liquidated their oceans of stock. Heavy-lenders like BNAM and Stanley Morgan (to name a few) fell into market oblivion like dead weight from a low-flying aircraft. Companies limped into the second quarter with a “Cut your losses” mentality. It started with a bang, massive corporate downsizing and a light rain of stock brokers as they fell from the skyscrapers. 

 Over the next few months every media outlet in the world asked the same question:
“How could the elite of the corporate world make the same disastrous miscalculation? The geniuses, the visionaries, the stock jockeys, were they all asleep at the wheel?”
It was almost as if they were all completely incompetent, like they knew no more of their chosen field then you or me. But how could this be? They all look so damn successful.

I was at sitting alone at a table for two in Midtown, surrounded by people with the money to change hemispheres every Winter. The restaurant was French cuisine-based, and didn’t print the prices of its meals on the menus. In all my years as an empty vessel, I’ve noticed the omission of price to be the best indicator of merit, newspaper reviews to be the worst. I was waiting for Lauren, my long time accountant and only friend. She was currently seven minutes late, but would likely make me wait longer. Lauren and I had a rich history of embezzlement, after all these years I considered her friendship tax deductable in itself. Through no fault of my own, Lauren has been secretly in love with me since the day we met, a footnote that used to invoke guilt when I would manipulate her for my own financial benefit.
 
Across the restaurant, I could see that Lauren had finally arrived. She was personally escorted to my table by the owner of the restaurant, a fat middle aged man with greasy hair and a name like a James Bond villain that I couldn’t quite remember. On my arrival ten minutes earlier, he made a point to shake my hand and engage me in small talk; much like a Casino owner would a wealthy oil tycoon.

“Mr. Stern, might I compliment your lady friend on how she beautiful she is looking this afternoon?” he asked, as if seriously waiting for my approval. I considered that I should probably introduce the two, but not knowing the man’s name nor his intention, I simply replied “By all means, my good friend”. He proceeded to kiss her hand, all the while mumbling some French sonnet that probably had no meaning. I found this man’s desperate display of warmth something to be pitied, like a divorcee father trying to squeeze a week’s worth of bonding with his son into a court-decided one hour a fortnight.

“What a sad sap of a man”, she said as she wiped her hand. She spoke of the restaurant owner, but she could have just as easily been describing me. Lauren was wearing her hair pulled back to an excessive degree, with almost enough designer perfume to thrown off the scent of her own naivety. Her ring finger bared a scar from the poorly-fitted suitors that constantly came and went. She used to be a lovely girl-God knows what she does with her time these days.

“Hello Bradley, it sure has been a while.” was her warm greeting. “I’m surprised you look so good, considering your situation”. There it was, the patronising flattery that only Lauren could give.
“You look good yourself, how have you been?”
“Oh, fine I suppose. I’m seeing this guy but I don’t think it’s going to work out...”

And this was the way the evening went; i’ll spare you the details of her droning complaints and cynical anecdotes, for I can remember none. It was however a perfect condition to survey the room for any high-rollers that might be worth giving my card to. To be honest, the only reason I bothered to “reminisce” with Lauren face to face is because of her encyclopaedic knowledge of my Swiss bank accounts, which I have become more and more reliant on in the past month. I would have done this over the phone like every other stoic encounter I have with Lauren, but lately I have become increasingly paranoid of the powers that be and their possible investigations into my illegitimacy.

The topic of my finances came up after some less than subtle topic changes on my account. I asked her if she had brought what I had asked her to bring, to which she gave me a yellow folder and the information “The place is about thirty blocks from here, ask for the Swiss Delegate”. I couldn’t help but notice a hairpin on her collar, which looked suspiciously unlike a surveillance wire.
“Thanks, i’ll call you if anything goes wrong, assuming you haven’t changed your number again”. And with that, I stood discreetly, like I wasn’t trying to foot a two hundred dollar bill, and took off down 57^th Street.

As I began my long walk towards the European Holding Department on 21^st and Maple, I couldn’t help but think about the last time I had spoken to Lauren. It was almost exactly two years again, when the economy was thriving and I didn’t need pills to convince myself I was happy. After all, I was, and still am, completely addicted to my corporate lifestyle. The only difference between now and then is the means for sustaining such a life, which currently are non-existent. As you may have guessed, I was one of the billions of executive sperm that didn’t find an egg when my firm went belly-up two years ago. I lost my salary and my stock options, and since then have been living off my savings and off-shore holdings. The suit I am wearing now I stole from the coat room of a fundraiser event. The priority member credit cards in my wallet were cancelled months ago, but I still pull one out when there is a dispute over who gets to pay the bill. The Manhattan loft I used to lease is now undergoing “an extended period of renovations”, or so is I tell my friends and colleagues. Nobody knows that I sleep in a medical waste dumpster in Brooklyn so I can get my hair cut in Soho for four hundred dollars every month. If I were to acknowledging my personal insufficiencies and declare bankruptcy, I would not only lose the respect of my friends but all the credibility that allows the IRS to lend me certain executive benefits and leniencies. In other words, I would leave myself vulnerable to audit, inquiry and federal investigation where my moral bankruptcy would be on display for an entire community of hypocrites to condemn.

 

I had walked about ten blocks when I caught the eye of a rather handsome man in a new season Ralph Lauren blazer. Before I could remember his name, he approached me with “Bradley Stern! Damn, it’s been a while!” forcing me to improvise a response.
“Buddy! How are ya? How’s your portfolio?”, I throw my mask on and exercise a “one size fits all” response.
“It’s great, overseas futures are up, it’s lucky for guys like us; We knew to have a lifeboat or two handy when the Dow hit an iceberg”.

It was then that I realised who I was talking to; Morgan Stein, my fellow employee at Bank of America before we both got laid off. Morgan was a trust fund baby who would go on to tell me that he’s been “dabbling in the stock market” to generate income since the dive. Through lines of inquiry, I knew this to be false. Morgan had taken a pity offer from his brother in law, who was a major stock-holder for Amazon.com. Since then, Morgan had been getting large by selling people’s credit card details on the internet black market and blaming it on computer hackers. Integrity and profit, it seems, don’t walk hand in hand up the steps to corporate success. 

“What’s on the itinerary today, Stern?”, he asked to prolong a dying conversation.
“Oh, not much. I’ve got a merger to oversee later in the day and a dinner with a Richard Steele at Millevangelo’s”. These were all lies, of course, Richard Steele was the alibi I gave when I would book callgirls on uneventful Saturday nights.
“Oh, how is Richard? I think I saw him at the ponies last month...”
“Yes, I ran into him there too. I remember his heart to have been playing up – he was thinking about taking some time off to-”

I was interrupted mid-sentence by a bum extending a paper cup, asking politely for spare change. We had walked across a group of homeless people, massing on the sidewalk like they were waiting for a parade. This particular bum was middle-aged and wore a flannel shirt. I was about to ignore him and continue on my way, when Morgan put his true colours on display.
“Get the fuck off him you low-life piece of shit”, he spat. He looked to me for some validation of his outburst, and without thinking replied “Yeah! Why don’t you just get a fucking job and stop plaguing tax-paying Americans by leaching off social security for your whole fucking life?!”.
These were the depths to which I was willing to sink.
“Good one, Stern. Guys like us have to look out for one another.” he said triumphantly, and dissolved into the crowd as sporadically as he came. The words “guys like us” caught me off guard, and I found myself repeating them in my ear as I walked towards the bank. I wasn’t anything like that man, as much as I tried to convince people otherwise.

As I walked towards the bank, I was becoming increasingly irritated by the clothes I was wearing. The leather shoes I had stolen from the men’s locker room at the health spa I frequent became a concrete mass. My legs had started burying in the sidewalk until I was completely immobilised. The suit I had stolen from a charity event just two weeks beforehand must have belonged to a disproportioned individual, as I began to notice it tightening on my lungs until I was choking in the street. Stars burned on the corners of my retina as my Calvin Klein tie hung me from the gallows of a midtown streetlight. People were looking at me with confused looks, telling their friends they thought I looked too young to be having a stroke. I heard confused calls for a doctor, people staring at me like I was on loan from the Louvre.

I ran into a back alley, pulling off my designer ensemble like an escaped convict would his standard issue orange jumpsuit. I loosened my tie and threw it away, gasping for the relief of oxygen. My clothes dripped with cement, and were torn from me until the crippling pain I felt melted away. There I lay, in a beautiful simplicity and enlightened state of being, my mask fell for hours.

When I awoke, it had long since become night and I felt the freezing chill of insecurity one only feels when they don’t have a place to sleep. I started up the boulevard in a desperate hope of reaching my bank before closing time. Even if it were open, I wouldn’t get through the lobby, looking as I had. I was in a state of vulnerability I had never since felt. As I walked, a teenage boy caught my eye. I stared at him intently, thinking about the promise I had at his age. The comfort in knowing that nothing is beyond reach. No child grows up hoping to beg for change every day. With an uncomfortable glair, he addressed me with “Stop staring you homeless fuck” as he hailed a cab. 

The street ran wild with people; they scuttled towards parties and restaurants, buying cheap fabrics in an attempt to hide their scars. A system of capital and loss that I defined myself by for so many years was now bursting apart at the seams. Finally, through the perpetual forest of brick and concrete, I was taken in at a soup kitchen. There were children with bruised hands, doing things children should never have to do to survive. There were families who had dressed up in smart-casual, as if trying to preserve the shattered remains of their dignity. And finally, there was me; Bradley Chase, the Harvard Business School Honours Graduate who spends his days trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.

When I finished my meal I started walking back down the street, towards a homeless shelter I suppose. I don’t remember much, but in the corner of my eye I saw a homeless man getting beaten by two teenagers. They were aware of my presence, but ignored me in the hope that I would walk away without taking pictures. I had a good look at the bum’s face, and he appeared to be the same bum I saw with Morgan. That sealed the deal, to relieve myself of all person guilt I carried from insulting this guy in the street. I threw myself at them in a hope of getting their attention. After shouting for the police a few times and scattered biting, the confused teens ran off, without satisfying their blood lust.

I looked at the man, who knew me instantly from before, and helped him up.
“Do you want to get some food?”, I ask hesitantly. He didn’t nod but started walking back up to the soup kitchen. Desperate to break the silence, I asked him he had seen me before?
“Sir, have you seen me before? Don’t you remember me with that guy a few hours ago?” still no response. “Well, he was-“
“Do you seriously not remember me?”, he asked in an undertone.
“Wha- Well, from before, but I-“
“I was your boss you ignorant son of a bitch”, he continued. “I was your boss at Bank of America, the guy that laid you off when our shares dipped”.
He was my boss, Walter, Walter..something. The son of a bitch cut me lose. He was the chief employment officer, he would handle the pitying yet self-righteous feeling of having to fire a person. He sat me down one day as if a regular, guy to guy conversation.

“Hey buddy, how’re those number holding up!”, he asked. He always sounded like someone had poked a cigarette clean through his lung. 
“Well sir, you’ve seen the market prediction. We’ve had better days”, I sighed with disappointment.
“Well there buddy that’s kinda what I’m here to talk to you about. See the big guys upstairs have up a chart, they’re measuring market dips against employee worth. Well your finish line was crossed a good hour ago and I had to come here to tell you...that we’re having to let you go. Listen, take all the time you need to clear your desk, I understand you’ve gotten yourself kind of entrenched in this place.” With a wink and a five minute speed bump in his day he and the company had wiped their hands of me.

“Yeah, you remember me now, don’t you!”
I knew it to be him. I  said nothing, but he could see I was angry. Although he didn’t know it, he had single-handedly pulled the plug on my very life. I was so angry and yet, judging by the look of his clothes, heaven hath dealt him a similar fate.
“I guess you weren’t expecting to see your old boss again, the guy who pays his bills with your old age pension.”
“Wait, a?”,I asked.
“Oh, a lot of things I guess. I just got tired of spending my mornings exchanging headlines over instant coffee. I got so goddamn sick of making vague stock market references over lunch that for the first time in my life, I felt discontent in my day to day routine. I thought, with all my money, I should be doing big things, starting Cancer research organisations, buying into the oil game. I should be making the most of my fabulous life. Instead I spend my days draining Cosmopolitans and lighting Cubans with dollar bills, doing all the things these people expected of me. Finally, I had reached a point where I needed to separate from my affluent death, so I put myself in a poverty the likes of which would make a Buddhist monk want to take a bubble bath. And so here you see me today, completely free of corporate pressure and appreciate the smaller things in life.”
I guess by smaller things in life he was referring to his current sleeping quarters, which he tended to as he talked. I

 

 

 

 

 

One day, as I walked aside a lake.
I glanced at a distant vessel, sitting perfectly still in a bed of frozen glass.
I was reminded of the ships that find there homes in museums, beached amongst dinosaur bones and muskets. How they must see themselves as failures, each lost on their way to the open ocean.

I walked to a cove where I hoped to get a better look of the boat and it's inhabitants.
Finally I saw a man, pulling riggings and leveys in an attempt to solve his predicament, he was completely overwhelmed. A face that has spent it's years learning from instruction manuals.

There was no wind that day, but that was a lesson he had to learn for himself.

If stars were holes to heaven
It shows that God didn't have the common sense to lay carpet
I mean sure, you may have to vacuum once and a while.
But hardwood expands in the heat of the eternal Summer you promised us.

He wanted to be a carpenter, he'd always liked making shit.
But he was too busy getting stoned to pass his architecture exam.
And got kicked out of community college.
How are you ever gonna pay off all those student loans, God?

Locked in his room, crying.
He was never that good with intelligent design.
Always looking for solice in a boiling spoon
And left his children to figure it out.

You get to a stage in your life when you know yourself pretty well.
You understand and embrace your own vices.
To do anything productive or self-improving at this stage is to fight against what you know to be  you.





He sits alone and stares at his inanimate desk.
This desk supports his weight and supports his documents. It was built to fulfill that purpose.

 are we designed for one definitive purpose?

Framed, composed and shipped to an office supply megastore.

There it was purchased by a boy in distress over his slipping grades. Once informed about the benefits of a working desk, he attributes his failed academics to his own neglect of this advice.

In reality the only value of a desk is psychological. Rigid and uncompromising, you become chained to reality from your own discomfort.
Built from wood to remind you of all the trees that had to die for you to have an education.
People are sacrificing precious oxygen for you, and for what? So you can get a B in your chemistry mid-term?

You look at the calculator in your hand, eagerly waiting to supply Trigonomic ratios at your every passive request, without a shred of appreciation or gratitude.

You only notice the calculator's country of manufacturing. Learning of it's Japanese origin brings on an all-consuming fear that the oriental kid in your class has already ultilised

Sometimes I will seize opportunities but sometimes I will let them slide by.

The line between opportunist and asshole is far too thin.

Paint over your thoughts with lead-based melodrama.
Living through an empty subculture.
Feelings don't feel quiet right.
So exaggeration becomes your closest friend.
And you pretend you're living.
Envy can be so unforgiving.

Rain comes. Walls melt. Paint runs.
And your stomach sinks,
as you meet the very things you had tried to paint over.
Your greatest burden and only fear.
But there's always something preaching non-conformity
To tell you where to go from here.

You sit in your empty life.
Paint over your thoughts with lead-based melodrama.
Living through an empty subculture.
Your feelings don't feel quiet right.
So exaggeration becomes your closest friend.
But then the rain comes
And the walls melt. The paint runs.
And your stomach sinks,
As you meet the very thing you had tried to paint over.

Is there any legacy you can leave in one day that doesn't involve and a camcorder and a handgun?

I spent Valentine's Day reflecting on missed opportunities and relationships in general. I came to a few conclusions:

Relationships are self-esteem in a can. No matter who you are, if your status reads "In a Relationship" you feel accepted. And why shouldn't you; for some people the worst thing in the world is the thought of being alone.

I however, value confidence over any other quality in a girl and therefore labeled anyone who seemed to remotely care about the number of "Happy Valentines Day" text messages they got as "EMOTIONALLY DEPENDANT"

I will never respect them enough to enter a relationship with these people.