White Pants

You’ve got questions to answer. People are demanding your attention with trite questions that they could find out with a google search. It frustrates you that this occurs but alas, you certainly wouldn’t want to lose followers. Your mother has asked you to get off the white couch with your new selvedge, as the indigo gets everywhere. But questions come first. You answer the easy ones first, where to get spiffied up (duh), what to wear with a black tie (one thing), and how to put on a shirt (tag on the inside). Halfway through answering a question about where to find a tailor (they’re typically in a place called ‘the tailor’s’) you are notified that you have a notification. Under your mp3 upload from Beck’s Mellow Gold album some bro is calling you out. “hay man. Your probably 1 of those ppl who started to like beck after guero your so cool.” Oh man, you hate petty arguments like this. You’re totally above them and morally superior to people who think they know music better than you do. You’re a cultural genius. You are all knowing. You are always first to the punch. Someone else makes it? You sure as hell let everyone else know that they made it and that you reblogged it. Well, this fucker was trying to show you up. You respond, “Yo, wanna’ have this argument? I started listening to Beck when Mellow Gold dropped and have followed him since. I have always been a Beck fan.” This would show this fucker that you’re superior to him. None of it was true, but it didn’t really matter. You actually didn’t start listening to Beck until after Sea Change but it’s the internet. You were still pooping your diaper when Mellow Gold dropped. No reason to tell the truth on the web. Ever.

Your mother screams at you to get off the couch. “If you’re gonna’ sit on the couch, put those white pants I bought you on,” she yells from the kitchen. Well, you had finished complaining about your life to your followers, you figured you’d play the martyr and change your pants. All the females who followed you and were under the impression that you actually dressed well (well, you did dress well. Just not as well as you were comfortable with) offered their sympathy when you waited until the last second to do your homework and griped about it on the web. This always made you smile. Someone did care about you, even if they were 1500 miles away and completely incompatible with you in real life. You stepped out onto your back porch to smoke because if you changed pants before you smoke, you might forget your cigs in you pant pocket and leave them upstairs. The house next door looked exactly like yours. Big, plastic, landscaped by the same people who landscaped everyone else’s, with a Land Rover sitting in the drive. The other house next door looked just like the house next door and that one looked like your house. Your house looked like the house across the street. On the back porch of the house next door stood a neighbor boy. You never learned his name even though he was the same age as you. He was wearing white pants and was smoking the same cigarettes as you did. Good thing you hadn’t changed into your white pants like your mother had asked. Individual. Thunderclouds rolled in and prepared for a late afternoon crash, boom, and shatter. You could hear the grumbling of the sky’s gut. The thundercloud’s rage built up like your elitism. Maybe this was the kid who had accused you of not liking Beck until Guero. Maybe, just maybe. Maybe this kid had a gun. A little one. Like the kind you see on EDC. Maybe this kid would freak out like those kids in the news, walk across his lawn to your back porch, raise his pistol, and shoot a bullet through your shirt that you wore on Fridays, into your chest, out your back, and through the other side of you shirt. Maybe he’d put you out of your misery. Maybe you'd never have to reblog anything ever again. Maybe he’d redeem you from your couch. Maybe he’d vault you into a story in the news. Maybe he’d just take all your followers and tell them that you hadn’t heard of Beck until Sea Change.

On second thought, you hoped that boy stayed right where he was, played lacrosse rather than answer questions on the internet, and had never listen to Beck once in his life.