Counterculture Culture

Re: Your Brains, Jonathan Coulton

There is a superfluous display of affection coming from those two fat people. Really fat, like overgrown babies. Please stop kissing his neck; this is a public walkway. Go do it in an elevator or a bathroom stall like civilized human beings. My brain says no but my eyes keep on looking. Pretending to read. Trying very, very hard to study. Stop groping please. An acquaintance sits on the large sill next to me and notes that, perhaps, we are fortunate that the lovers aren't naked.

Now I am disturbed.

I remember that time in the mall restroom after closing time. And that time on the bus. And that other time in that other public bathroom in that restaurant on the highway. But I don't want to see them do it! It's a matter of-well, not principle, because I did it too-but...something. Maybe the basic guidelines of human physical attraction? At least they're far too happy. I have to hand it to them for not caring about what other people in the general environment might think upon seeing them. Most people don't do that most of the time. Those two probably won't either, when they come up for air. Most people are self-conscious. I don't want to look weird.

The time has come for me to enter class, and like waves of pollen the students, including the jiggling pair, disperse on the second floor walkway. In class awaits something significantly more grotesque. Never mind sitting till I'm numb, or squinting in the late afternoon glare, the class is infected with a severe case of uniformity. Endemic uniformity. I sit next to the girl with the short hair and the one next to her with the short hair and so on until the row ends with the boy with the long hair. She is wearing burlap, and so is she, and so is she...and he is wearing tweed and so is he. And they are discussing something complicated that no one really understands at all.

The class is small and white with wall-length window panes and a slide projector ready at the eastern most point of the class. I sit in the south, at the corner of a 'U' formation of desks that's been doubled over. Around me people who look different and yet uneasily the same begin the fill the chairs. The chatter and chirping and bizarre howling ensue and I remain mostly quiet. Maybe an acquaintance here is closer than an acquaintance on my other side, and I acknowledge that, carrying on light talk. I look ahead as a driver over a dash and feel that pang of solitude I feel every time I come here.

I'm afraid I don't fit the standard. I fit in too well to fit in. It seems that one requires a certain aesthetic, a certain singularity of thought, a certain pomposity, to truly be original. To truly be the aberration, one has to fill criterion A, B and C. Cookie-cutter revolutionaries, who'd have thought? Or maybe it's just the hand-me-down style and the inflated sense of pseudo-intellectualism that's so damn sexy. Maybe when the kid in the eternally black hoodie and the unwashed ponytail stands up to give a speech about some Greek arithmetician we'll all holler and cheer silently and masturbate in awe of our own gracious and delicate genius. I don't need you guys as friends! I don't let you into my tree house either, so ha! Try to fit in to my understanding of the universe! Yours apparently consists of poorly composed folksy pop music and obscenely expensive hobo attire. Listen to the dirty ponytail stand and pour his heart out about Platonic transcendence. It makes sense because after all we are beyond the masses, the dirty, unwashed masses. Literally speaking, who is unwashed again?

We have been touched by the finger of enlightenment, and that makes our clubhouse better than your clubhouse. Listen to him talk; listen to her talk; listen to me talk. I am pretty full of it. We harrumph and dwell on history and forget how entwined we are with the human experience. Go consume your organic this and avant-garde that. You guys have all the makings of a real society, creed and all. Am I in or out?

And oh good the time comes to leave. By some odd stroke of luck I find myself encountering the male of the large couple on the bus ride home. He's endearing, almost charming, funny and certainly intelligent. He's genuine after all. With him I eat my muffin and play with my long hair and rest my hand on my jeans just like the girl with the long hair and the jeans next to me. And the girl with the long hair and the jeans next to her. And so on. And we go home, and we watch television, and we work, and we love, and finally, we sleep.