Thread: untitled

I hate the school bus. I just hate it. I’m a teenager, but the school bus just makes me feel so childish. At this point in my life, I don’t want to feel like some flake riding the school bus. I wish I lived in walking distance from school. The bus just gets old after a while. I’d been riding it ever since I began elementary school. Whenever I rode it, it made me feel as if I was in elementary school again. Shit, elementary school, the most awkward years of my life.

This was my first day of Tenth grade. Not only that, but it was my first day of school in Pennsylvania. Mom forced me to move here a few months ago, during my summer break. She’s such a tool sometimes. It’s unbelievable. I love her and all -- don’t get me wrong -- but she’s a very weak person. She runs into a few financial problems, and bam, “Pack up your bags Kale!” I love mom as a mother, but I can’t say I love her as a person. She’s just so weak. She gave me the same bull that all parents give their children when they fuck up; that they’re “only doing what’s best for you”. It’s easy to say something like that, but it’s a bad lie, a lie she says so that she won’t have to explain herself.

There’s something about me that I’ve always been pretty proud of; I never lie in order to feel better about myself. I lie sometimes, sure. Everyone does, even those who say they don’t. But unlike most people, I never lie for the benefit of somebody else. If a person asks me how they look in their new outfit, and they look just plain ugly, I’ll tell it to them straight. And that isn’t being cruel. It’s being real. If you tell them that they look wonderful, they’ll believe you, because that’s what they want to hear. And chances are, they’ll act as if they look wonderful. And that’s the problem with everyone these days. They think they’re wonderful when they have nothing to feel wonderful about. If you know you look stupid in an outfit, but wear it in public and tell yourself that you look great, that isn’t having self confidence. That’s lying to yourself. On the other hand, if you know you look terrible and admit to yourself that you look terrible but not care, that’s self confidence. That’s dignity.

I had hardly any interest in making new friends at Solon High School. Well, I would have liked to, but I was old enough to understand that it just wouldn't happen. It’s always been like that for me. This was the third move of my life, and at all three of the schools I’d attended, I was a bit of a loner. And don’t think of me as one of those awkward kids who dress in black. You know, those gawky kids who wear tight jeans, dye their hair, and sit in the corner of the room with their head in a book. That’s not me at all. I try to socialize, I really do. Well, at least I used to. People don’t like me. They never have. I’ve kind of gotten used to it, and kind of grown into it. Sure, I’ve had friends, but not many. It’s only the movies that somebody has absolutely no friends. You simply cannot go through life and not make any friends along the way. It just doesn’t happen like that.

It doesn’t really bother me too much, being sort of an outcast. Most loners, even if they don’t talk about it, feel sorry for themselves because of one thing; the lack of girls in their lives. All guys just want to have a girlfriend, to feel like they’re getting the basics of life. But it’s not important, it really isn’t. We grow up thinking it’s important because we see it so much.

There have been a few girls in my life, but I haven’t really gotten anywhere. I’m alright looking, I suppose. Nothing breathtaking, but not bad. Girls have winked at me and shit because they think I’m cute. Realistically, looks are all you really need, unless you’re some kind of freak or monster inside. The thing about me is that I can’t stand most attractive girls, and they’re the only one’s I’d really like to do anything with. Yeah, I’m shallow. I admit it. But everyone is shallow. Ugly people have no right to hate the world for how they're treated, because the only reason it bothers them is they know how much it’ll affect their chances of getting a hot boyfriend or girlfriend, which is the exact behavior they claim to hate in everyone.

Attractive girls don’t have it as good as they think. Usually, they’re snotty and fake. They think they deserve respect because they’re constantly getting it, from guys who are interested in them. But that respect isn’t actually respect. It’s disguised as respect. Everyone’s so nice to these girls because of their looks, that the girls are fooled into believing that they actually deserve the respect they receive...that they’re receiving all this respect because they’re just so cool and funny, and fun to be around. Guys always take shit from pretty girls, that's the problem. You have to feel sorry for most hotties, really. Their whole lives are a joke and they don’t even know it.

I remember about a year back, when I was fifteen, I was at my mother’s friends engagement party, and there was a girl whom I knew from school there. I’d spoke with her a few times, because I’d sat next to her in English, but we weren’t really friends. She’d ask me for help on an assignment every once in a while, and we’d been partners a few times, but other than that, there wasn’t much going on between us.

She was gorgeous. I’d sort of liked her. I didn’t really know who she was at the time. She was new to the school. She was shy and seemed so innocent. She didn’t seem like the other girls at school. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl who would talk shit about her “friends” behind their backs, or the kind of girl who would tease a guy just for the fun of it. We talked at the party, about school, about the teachers who got a kick out of, and we laughed and ate appetizers off the coffee table in front of us. It was nice.

After a while we were lying down on the couch, and she’d lie down and rest her head on my knees. It was become flirtatious, I guess you could say. Eventually she told me she thought I was cute and asked if I wanted to go “chill” in her room, to "get away from her boring family". I was so happy. I was hoping we could at least kiss or something. I liked her a lot, as I’ve said.

She held my hand as we walked upstairs. I was nervous and excited that I was shaking. Then everything changed. When we got to her room, her cell phone rang, and she answered. She began talking, saying things like “that bitch!” and “ha, don’t worry he’s a loser anyway”. I was so upset for that moment. Obviously this girl had had been at her knew school long enough to conform and become a tool like everyone else. It was just such a killjoy, the way she seemed to have suddenly transformed. She’d fooled me.

After her little conversation, she sits me down on the bed and leans her head forward to kiss me. I got up before she got too close and said something along the lines of “I don’t know if I like this”, and left the room. I didn’t really know what to say. I was feeling pretty down for the rest of the day, and dissapointed in myself for losing sight of reality. Relationships…there aren’t really any good ones. It’s not a great thing the way that music and the movies portray it to be. It’s not magical and it’s definitely not ever true... True love, that’s a laugh.

Sometimes I feel thankful for being inferior. I mean, if you fall into the crowd, you’ll lose any sense of self you were born with. You’ll just lose it. Whenever I see a group of jocks making fun of a fat girl, or a bunch of plastics texting during a movie, it makes me sick to my stomach. All these people, they just sort of fall into the clutter. That spark in their brain that was supposed to make them special and unique disappears. Society is a poison. I think when you’re young, you have a clear-cut, unfiltered view on the world. There's a misconception, that when you grow older, you become more aware of the world. Wrong. I believe that when you get older, your mind becomes filtered out and you become brainwashed. You lose sight of the good side of things and only focus on the negatives, and become overcome by the growing tendency to put a pessimist view on everything. But if people were to stop and think, to consider what they don't want to consider, they'd find that the real good in the world comes from the places you'd never expect it.

My reputation at my last school was being a bit of an asshole. Sometimes kids would try to be friendly to me. Like, they'd ask me to eat lunch at their table because I’d been sitting alone. I’d refuse and look like a jerk to everyone. The thing is, I knew they were only offering so they could feel good about themselves. They didn’t want me eating with them. They wanted people to see that they had invited me over. People think it’s so important to be so damn nice... If you don’t feel it, then you shouldn’t act it. There’s nothing worse than acting your way through life. People say crap all the time just to sound cute, just to fit in. It depresses me. It drives me insane.

Anyway, there I was on the bus, with some kid behind me yelling profanity at the bus driver. My hair was beginning to get wet, I could feel it. This kid was practically drooling on me. I wanted to lean my head back and literally spit in his mouth. Oh, and what's so funny about the word "faggot"? I guess it's loud, gets everyone’s attention, and a lot of saliva comes out when you scream it. The bus driver just ignored this little prick and kept driving. If I could be that driver for five minutes, I would have stopped the bus and given this kid a good beating. I was fantasizing it myself.

Nobody tried to talk to me. I guess it was because I was sitting near the back of the bus, and I was the "new kid". Also, I wasn't making any effort to engage in conversation or socialize at all. In order to fit in at the moment, I would have to start throwing things and acting like a pervert. Seriously, guys were actually feeling up girls right before my eyes. It made me sick. Who wants to see that on a bus? Who wants to see other guys do that anywhere? I just sat there, with my headphones on. The loudest, most obnoxious rock song in my music library couldn't drown out all the yelling and obnoxious laughing. They weren’t even laughing at anything funny. There would be a faint odor that was a little gross, and everyone would cover their mouth with their hands and start squealing. And because I wasn’t taking part in this bullshit, people were all of the sudden pointing at me and whispering shit, probably something along the lines of “what’s wrong with that guy?”. I was sitting by myself, of course, with my head leaning against the window, trying to keep my mind blank, but obviously, I was failing miserably. It’s hard for me to keep my mind blank. Whenever I try, I end up thinking about why I’m keeping my mind blank, which brings me back to reality, a reality that makes me want to clear my mind.


I wasn’t nervous about starting up at a new school again. Sure, it would be awkward, seeing everyone for the first time, when everyone else already knew each other for years and had established their cliques. However, I’d expected that. I’d given this some thought. It doesn’t make sense to be too worried about anything, at least not to me. If you know something’s coming, it makes more sense to prepare for it, rather than worry about it. If you make sure you’re expectations don’t exceed the realistic, you’ll never be disappointed.

I enjoyed it. One thing’s for sure, you can write. And that, my friend, is good enough to be published.