so i saw the backrooms yesterday and i spent a couple hours today weeding my garden and chewing over all the bits and one thing i can't get over is when, SPOILERS: clark sticks a carving knife into one of the effigies and says to his therapist, 'can you imagine how good that feels? not to feel anything? not to hurt?'
like yeah man i can imagine. i can imagine how you're a black man in the early-mid 90s and you didn't make it as an architect (how many black men were in your graduating class? how many were in the board rooms of all those firms you didn't get to join?) and you didn't make it as a small business owner (maybe it's not your race, not everything is about race, you can't make it all about race all the time) and you dress so very business casual (you're a businessman but you're casual) and talk so carefully (you're a good man, civilized, polite) and any time you raise your voice everyone around you flinches away and you've been drinking all this time just to get by, just to wind down, just to stay numb, except you're not getting by.
except you got nothing. you wound down. you're hitting bottom.
you paid for a wife and a house and didn't get to keep them. you humiliate yourself doing minstrel shit for a tv commercial and it all just shatters. your whole life has been that broken fucking glass you dropped. getting dropped on your ass by your own fucking chairs, this cheap pasteboard furniture you can't even sell. santa clara! you thought california would be different. you got a rust belt accent that bleeds through when you're not careful (new york? chicago? philly?) and you thought maybe in california it would be better but what the fuck do you have to show for any of your dreams. a guy like you doesn't get dreams, he gets crap. he gets glass shards and broken legs. a guy like you. a guy like you.
what's the matter with a guy like you? why did you get born this way? wired this way? some guys get california sunshine and you get broken glass. you wanted to be an architect! you wanted to build the world. but the world isn't for guys like you, pasteboard guys (black guys) wired wrong (angry. sad. angry.) the world isn't for guys like you to build.
not the world up there. out there. beyond you. but down here... with what's left. when you're left with what's left.
when you push that knife into some big fat white guy's neck (a fat man, you picked a fat man--but you're not fat, even with the drinking, even with the desk job, you took care of yourself, you took pride in yourself) you push your knife into a guy's neck, and there's nothing. he doesn't care.
god, wouldn't that feel good? all your life you've had that knife pushed into you. one inch, ten inch, a little cut here, a little cut there, one in your neck, one in your heart, one in your balls. one through your spine. life is an endless series of knives, pushed in slow.
god, wouldn't it feel good if that didn't hurt.
