残念ですが、さようなら

he wanted to be an architect. he sketches brutalist buildings when he's bored at work. he wears an old 1970s architect convention shirt to bed. his favorite poison is whiskey. his drunken media of choice is old reruns of sitcoms. he sleeps in the store because he has no family, nowhere else to go. he likes offbeat brutalism and asynchronicity in a time when sleek uniform modernism was the trend. he's a black man in the 90s who failed to get an architect job and he doesn't really know why but it's probably due to race but nobody listens to him when he says that. his wife is white. his therapist is white. his employees are white and asian. he doesn't seem to have any community, racial or familial or friendly or otherwise. he's surrounded by people who seem to never listen to what he's saying. and it makes him angry. everything about his life, his job, himself, makes him angry. he's so angry but feels so bad for being angry (don't be the angry black man that won't get you anywhere now will it) that he represses it until it worms its way out after breeding into him like bacteria. he screamed at his wife and doesn't feel bad because he doesn't understand her life. on some level he doesn't care to. he treats relationships like transactions because it's logical, why can't this fucking fatass understand that life takes MONEY? he def threw that glass at his wife but also he didn't mean to throw it, he didn't want to scare her, he never meant to scare her but on some level he knows he scared her and always did and the glass was just the final straw for her to kick him out but accepting that means that he's the problem. and how can he BE the problem, he's been her fucking provider, he supported her dreams even as his fell apart, he started this furniture store while she started a master's instead of getting a real job, it's his name on the house and electrical and grocery bills, isn't she obligated to support him back? to not question when he comes home from his ADULT JOB while she spent the day buried in law books? to just understand him while he doesn't have to understand her? he's the provider, like the man should be and he still gets no slack. he dressed up as a pirate and danced around for white people's amusement and the fucking cowboy yeehaw guys are still outselling him. his furniture is shit and he knows it because he's had to sleep on it for weeks. and for ONCE can the world just CUT HIM SOME SLACK and HELP HIM, SOMEONE realize he needs HELP and not scorn, that he's drowning and sad and all this aggression is just to cover up that he's scared and sad and alone, he doesn't think he's a violent dog, he doesn't know why he bites. but violent dogs don't realize they're violent, even if they don't mean to be. they've just been beaten down by the world, by the system, into their loop of snarling and biting even at people who love them and want to give the help they've been begging for.