Mark stands with his attractive friends in the corner of a crowded bar. The sounds of fifty conversations are muffling together compressed under what would otherwise be intolerably blaring music. It is not very late, 11:30 p.m., the place is full and people are casually moving about.
Mark is also an attractive man, a fact of which is he aware. Over the sound system the song Building Steam with a Grain of Salt by DJ Shadow ends. The song Your Retro Career Melted by The Faint, remixed by Ursula 1000 begins. It is Mark's favorite song, if he was at home right now he would more than likely be listening to it.
"I'm bored." Mark says to his nearby friend Randy.
"Me too." Randy confirms.
A girl walks past them with toilet paper stuck to her shoe. Randy smirks. A girl who was sitting alone at a table next to them approaches Mark.
The girl asks Mark, "Excuse me, I was wondering if you could watch this table for a minute while I call my friend, I promise I'll be right back."
"Whatever." Mark replies.
The girl hurries off to do whatever she intended.
As she disappears from sight a group of people approach and one of them gestures at the empty table and asks Mark, "Is anyone sitting here?"
"I don't know." Mark replies.
The group accepts his answer and they all proceed to sit down at the table.
Another girl approaches Mark, her name is Sarah.
"Hey Mark!" She says cheerily.
"Hey Sarah."
"You didn't come to my party last Saturday." Sarah asks.
"Uh ... yeah sorry."
"You said you'd come." She says with a smile and makes a fake little punch at his shoulder.
"I thought you were joking." Mark says plainly.
"What? About the party." Sarah asks, confused.
"Yeah."
"Why would I be joking?" Sarah asks.
"Yeah, I didn't get the joke either. Hey, I gotta go to the bathroom, see you later." And with that he leaves. So Sarah returns to her friends on the other side of the bar.
Sarah is there with a man named David and a few of her girlfriends, Sandy and Katie. David secretly pines for her, a fact which Sarah secretly is aware of but never acknowledges. Sarah does this because she is not interested in return.
"Hey, I saw you talking to Marky Mc-sexy!" Katie says.
"How'd that go?" Sandy asks.
"He's not the brightest bulb, but who cares. I'd talk to him even if he was in a coma." Sarah says.
"I think you're supposed to talk to people when they're in comas." David states.
"What?" Sarah asks.
"I said ... forget it."
"Whatever." Sarah says.
"I'll do anything he wants, and I mean anything." Sarah says.
"We all know what you mean." Sandy says.
The three girls laugh, David thinks of faking a smile but settles for staring out the window while dying a little.
Mark comes over and begins to talk to Sarah, David begins to fidget and clearly is avoiding looking at them. He quickly scans the room for anyone to talk to. He checks his watch, straightens his shirt, sips his drink, and then totally runs out of ideas on how to pass the time. He checks his watch again, it has been 16 seconds.
2 guys are standing beside the pool tables having a conversation. They are Kevin and Sean. Sean is staring across the bar at a group of 5 girls, all 5 of them are very good looking.
"Have you noticed that group of girls? There isn't a single girl in that group that isn't hot." Sean says.
"Yeah." Kevin acknowledges.
"Doesn't that seem a little odd? I mean it can't be a coincidence that all these hot girls just became friends. Is it possible that not a single one of these girls has ever met someone they wanted to be friends with who wasn't pretty?" Sean says.
"What are you getting at? They plan it this way?" Kevin asks.
"Is it possible that they just won't be friends with imperfect girls? Like they exclude them? Like some sort of all star bar star team?" Sean wonders.
"Who gives a fuck?" Kevin asks.
Sean realizes that he probably doesn't either. In fact he more than likely wouldn't even care if they were in some sort of new shi-shi blood drinking fashionable assassin cult.
Two other people are talking, people much like Mark, Randy, Sarah, David, Sandy, Katie, Sean or Kevin.
[Man] "Good music tonight." He says absently, looking over her shoulder at the rest of the room.
[Woman] "Yeah, its great." She says, looking over his shoulder at the room.
[Man] "Are you here with your friend [Another Woman]?" Trying to make the question appear totally casual.
[Woman] "No, she's out with some guy. Hey, I saw your friend [Some Man] yesterday, I guess his girlfriend just dumped him." Looking around the room, eyes suddenly widening when she spots the guy she was hoping to bump into there.
[Man] "Yeah right. Whatever." A long distracted pause, then nodding at someone over her shoulder. "Umm..."
At the exact second he speaks that "Umm", every single person in every conversation in the room also says "Umm" at the same moment. The effect is that the room becomes filled with one long hum, like a choir. The hum holds, a second, then silence. Then every person in the entire room begins to speak the same words as if with one voice. As if they are all reading the same script at the same time. But unlike reading a script each of them is speaking naturally and sincerely.
And as a group everyone says:
"It's funny, I just noticed something. You weren't listening. I could tell because neither was I. You were looking around the room wondering if there was anyone better to talk to, I could tell because so was I. We have a lot in common. We both treat relationships like conversations and conversations like shopping.
It's not because we want to, it's how we are. It is our lives. We learned a long time ago that it's smarter to not be too interested, get too involved. We're all so cool and detached, and I think we're becoming more and more.
Tomorrow night I could walk in dressed in a bear suit, or dressed as Pikachu and you would not react. By the next night I could transform into Ben Affleck, or Heidi Klum, dissolve into air or burst as cloud into a million shining lights right before your eyes and you would not blink. We would not blink. We would not react, because we are so fucking cool, so fucking ice cold that we are frozen. We don't react, we pretend we have seen it all before, everything. Do you believe that nothing can impress us? Do we believe that we are never surprised? Our act is perfect. I am on the cover of magazines.
We are so fucking cool that everything is passe, we are passe, this is passe.
But I remember something different. I remember another time. We were 17, we were sitting on the hood of my Dad's car talking, we talked all night, you were so fucking interesting, we were so interesting. We were so interesting we talked and I swear the stars themselves leaned down to hear more. We were fascinated, fascinating, honest, promising, hoping, and believing. We watched the sun come up. We couldn't wait for the sun to come up, to heat us up and to wake up the world.
There was no pretending, we were as we were. Being unimpressed was a sign of stupidity, being bored meant you were boring. Pretending not to have feelings was weird. It is weird.
The nights were too short, the days were too short. We would ride our bikes over broken trees and try to break the sound barrier on snowboards, or toboggans, or rollerskates, it didn't fucking matter. Nothing decayed, everything grew taller, shone like the sun, got battered down by rain and shone anyway. My pulse was a stopwatch, a drum roll, a timebomb, it had a purpose.
What happened, was I poisoned? Will you suck the poison out? Did the world change? Did I change? Someone bring it back. I want it back, bring it back!