Fuckness by Andersen Prunty

decide who I wanted to be. I fought to resist the temptation. I knew there were several types of person to become. There were those who had material wealth. Those people living in the houses up on the hills in the near distance. But what did those people really have? They were the people who made their living by controlling other people’s lives. They made the rules, the policies—they hired and fired people. They decided whether or not the people below them would be eating in weeks to come. I didn’t think I could ever become like that. They were the human gods, the new breed of gods who built the new nature, the machines, something for the mere mortals to spend their days toiling with. No, I could never be a god.
    Then there were others, people like Drifter Ken, who seemed perfectly content to live with nothing. Like all of their happiness came from the inside and how they treated people and all that Biblical kind of fuckness. I could kind of see myself being one of those people, if I could ever get rid of the giant waves of fuckness that seemed to wash over me on a daily basis. If the fuckness would just let me be, maybe I could be a little nicer to people. If I could exterminate the red crawlies. Nearly everyone has a desire to be successful and make money but, for people like me, I knew it didn’t happen that way.
    There was, of course, a third class of people. The types of people that if I could have been I wouldn’t have chosen. This type of person never gives up. They’re not allowed to give up. They never rest to develop any kind of happiness on the inside because they are too busy trying to make money, trying to be one of the Clean People. So, not only do they not get to lead the life of expensive distraction, they also didn’t get to rest and enjoy life.
    Most of all, I didn’t want to be one of those people who had no idea who they were. The type of person who would whither up and die if you gave them an empty room. Those malleable, blobbish souls who were so busy presenting the world with an image they thought the world wanted to see, that they forgot who they started out as. This type of person can be found in each of the above classes, no doubt.
    After thinking that, I guess I really started wallowing in self-pity because I started thinking of all the mean things the parents had done to me and wondering if all that meant I had to be who I was. Like maybe I didn’t have to choose what type of person I should become because it was already chosen for me. For starters, the mother gave birth to me. And I was pretty sure my genes were somehow faulty because nobody acted like I did. Even the LD kids could go to their special classes and manage to go up to the next grade. I couldn’t get into those classes, though. All the tests said I was at least of average intelligence. That is, they said all of my problems were physical. Or that I chose to act the way I did. I was sure the parents had taken some pieces of the puzzle out of their respective boxes. Giving birth to me also meant I had to see them on a day to day basis.
    And then there were the horrible punishments.
    At first, they started out kind of subtle. I was certain, however much the parents denied it, that other kids’ parents bought clothes and all kinds of stuff for them. After I started failing, the parents didn’t even buy Christmas presents. They said presents cheapened the spirituality of Christmas. The parents had never struck me as very spiritual people and their lies blew up when I, on Christmas Eve one year, watched wide-eyed as they exchanged presents. Birthdays also went uncelebrated, one age sliding smoothly into the next. I doubted the parents even remembered when my birthday was. The punishments roughened in texture, growing more brutal and physical. But I kept focusing on this one thing. This one thing was what had made me finally decide Racecar was one of the blobbiest people in the world. In other words, if I hated Racecar, if that