The difference between us and you though is easy: we are alive and you are dead.
Some of you died in war, in car crashes, in school shootings, overdosed on drugs, strung out in strip club bathrooms searching deeply for your last breath somewhere on those dirty tile floors and finding it. Finding it all over.
Over. Finished. And gone.
Some of you took your own lives over stupid shit like girls (the most renewable resource on the planet), parental encumbrances, or just because it was all too fucking hard. Some of you even killed a few others before you went, probably because when one seeks hell, one needs to make sure one gets there (the rules seem to get more lenient with each generation).
"You could have been trapped in a loveless marriage or a dead end job."
But many of you did not. Many of you did not deserve to die. It was not, as they say, your time. Which begs the question, whose time is it anyway?
(Maybe Spicoli was right. Maybe it is our time.)
But for whatever reason and through whatever means, you died too soon. You left a legacy of youth, of dimples and pimples, of energy and orgasm, of dreams and of passion. But not much else.
This is your eulogy.
Children of the public dream, we who scarred you salute you. We who humiliated you apologize. And we who love you miss you so much we can still feel your smiles and cries so strong and heavy that when we move we can feel a piece of you jostling around in our hearts. We’re sorry we lost you. We’re sorry we’ll never see you again. We’re sorry for everything that happened. Even those of us who got laid by chicks we met at your funeral feel sad. Even the heartless, tough and cynical bastards raise a toast to you on the anniversary of your death (which we jokingly try to turn into a celebration of life). Knowing that won’t help you any, but it’s a good place to start.
We want you to know that you’re not missing out on all that much. The second generation of Star Wars movies sucked ass, the job market is horrible, our government is increasingly Orwellian, and our women are increasingly vain and selfish. Life ain’t that grand.
The public dream apparently also included having the highest percentage of our public in prison for victimless crimes. You could have been one of those guys. You could have been trapped in an eight by ten cell with your head three feet from a toilet while a chubby redneck snores above you all because you got addicted to cocaine. You could have been trapped in a loveless marriage or a dead end job; you could have hated every morning.
So maybe you’re lucky.
Let us not dwell on the things that make life grand: the camaraderie, the love, the friendships, the orgasms and the victories. You don’t need to hear that or to feel that. You need to know that you made the right choice bowing out and giving the world the big fuck you.
And I am here to help you do that.
And so, to all the bullies, all the cheaters, all the liars and the manipulators, the killers and the weaklings, in honor of the dead damned of the public dream, I say fuck you.
To all of the expectations of wealth, the damned forced dreams of public consumption, the status symbols and the fads, I say fuck you.
To all of the members of the illegal authorities: crooked forceful cops, overbearing idea stealing superiors, populist pleasing politicians and murderous militants, I say fuck you.
To all of those who inspire the lies, exclude the truth and feed off your own self images, I say fuck you.
To all who kill in the name of peace, all who watch human self-destruction in rapt amusement, all who cannot and will not taste the sweet air of true and real living, I say fuck you.
To all of you who waste your lives chasing dreams of riches and not the richness of life, I say fuck you.
And most importantly, to all of you everywhere who ever thought that there was absolutely no reason to care about your fellow human beings, no reason at all to honor your contracts, keep your promises, or respect anyone or anything beyond your sad little lives, I say fuck you.
And on one final note, children of the public dream, in honor of the search for truth and the seeking of forgiveness, I offer up one final wish:
Fuck me.
We’re all sorry here, children of the public dream.
Just some of us haven’t realized it yet.
