The American Dream and other such things... (Airport fun!)

Note: I wrote this in the summer of 2001... It is in present tense at that time...


As I sit here in the SeaTac airport waiting for my late "aircraft" so that I can "board my late aircraft" (oh how I love stewardess/pilot lingo), I observe many people, going many places, doing many things. After about an hour of people-watching I have come to this conclusion: Some people are dumb. They have no direction of where they are going. Yeah, they might be on a flight to L.A. or something, but honestly, where are they GOING?? I have to wonder sometimes, I really do. These people I watch, I can only bet that they're going back to their plastic suburban lifestyles, doing the typical plastic things that those plastic suburban folk do. Watching their fuckin' big TVs, raising their 'perfect' children, the children who will no doubt become massively fucked up adults, due to their own shitty parenting. As I sit on my ass on this unmoving airplane, I look around me some more and just have to wonder how many people on this airplane are TRULY happy, not just pretending to be happy in order to maintain the image of being a perfect human being living the life of... *drumroll* The American Dream! Well, the American Dream... Dreams aren't real, right? They occur when you're asleep, or spacing off, yes? Which maybe means they don't really EXIST?? I think so.... The so-called American Dream also happens to be different for every single person in this country. Or, shall I say, every single person in the suburbs? Afterall, the suburban image basically did create the whole image of the American Dream in the first place. I don't think that some poor inner-city kid living on welfare is going to be having the same dreams as a kid living in a half a million dollar house in the suburbs. I just finished reading "There Are No Children Here" {Excellent book, by the way} and you know what? Judging on what went on in that book being that it was based on a true story and all, the inner-city kid's dream would just be getting out of it all, off welfare, and into a life that isn't full of pain, without fear of being shot everytime they leave their house. What's the dream for the suburban kid going to be? Probably a BMW for their sixteenth birthday. I'm not saying that this is the way it is, it's just an example.
Back to what I was saying... Dreams themselves are more like fantasies than anything. What does "fantasy" usually pertain to? Something you can't have, or that is out of reach to some extent. So the American Dream {My idea of it, by the way.. For examples sake only. I am in no way, shape or for implying that this is the way it is.} is really just as plastic and unreal as the people who think they live it. So here is my depiction of of American Dream.... AND the strings attached.

Husband and wife, happily married, or so it seems. The husband; tall, dark hair, quite good looking. The wife; also quite attractive. She drives a huge Suburban SUV even though she is a rather small woman. SHe sees her husband off to work at his high-paying corporate job every day, leaving through the front door of their good-sized white house with the perfectly mowed lawn, the perfectly trimmed bushes and trees, and the perfectly painted white fence. She kisses her husband on the cheek and he drives off. On the way to work, this mild-mannered, polite man gets stuck in a traffic jam and immediately turns into a beast. He is yelling four letter words at the other cars, honking the horn of his white Lexus, and giving the one-fingered salute... The man is angry. Meanwhile, at home, the wife is getting her children ready for school. Both children are blonde, blue eyed, and tan. The girl is two years older than the boy. They are mild-mannered and polite. The mother cooks the children oatmeal, which they eat slowly and leisurely before putting their books and perfectly done homework into their backpacks. The bus comes and the children get on it while their mother waves from the inside of the front door. She closes the door and goes into the kitchen to do the dishes. When she is done, she lays back on the couch in her bra and skirt with a cigarette and a bottle of whiskey in hand. No more than ten minutes later the dorrbell rings and a tall blonde man stands there holding a boutique of flowers. She takes them, smiling, and kisses the man on the lips. They go into the husband and wife’s bedroom. Before long they are both naked and fucking each others brains out. Meanwhile, at school, the girl finishes her third hour class. Her teacher smiles at her as she leaves class to her locker. She walks quietly through the hallways to her locker, where she puts her books and stuff in it, everything still perfectly organized. She closes her locker gently and heads off to the girls locker room, where she heads for the bathroom and climbs out the window. In the parking lot, a black car with tinted windows awaits her. She gets in. As the car drives her away she rips off her pastel shirt and jeans, revealing a leather bra and hot pants, and fishnets. She lets her hair down from its ponytail and puts on heavy mascara and lipstick. The car is taking her to work at the local strip joint. Meanwhile at school her little brother is in the bathroom with his friends. He has changed out of his pretty clothing and into vinyl pants and a Marilyn Manson shirt. He is putting white makeup all over his face to hide the tan while a cigarette dangles from the edge of his mouth. He next puts on eyeliner and then black lipstick. He pushes his blonde bolw-cut hair up into spikes, which he then sprays blue. He and his friends then walk outside under a tree where they sit for the remainder of the afternoon playing their guitars. When eighth hour arrives, he goes in to take a shower and change his clothes before returning home. He arrives home while his sister is at “cheerleading practice.” She is really in the back room of the strip joint, snorting crack through rolled up fifty dollar bill, a tip, before going home. When home, she sneaks through the back door and into the bathroom where she proceeds to wash her makeup off and stop her bleeding nose. Meanwhile, the mother is in the kitchen feeding her son milk and cookies while asking him how his day went. The daughter walks into the kitchen in her robe, a towel in her hair. She says her cheerleading practive was “exhausting.” She then retreats to her room to rest from a day of exotic dancing. At prompty 6:00, the father returns home. He fakes a good mood even though he’d had the worst of days at work. The family eats a healthy, nourishing dinner, talking to each other about the perils of each's day. Lies, of course. after dinner the children go up to their rooms to do their "homework." The girl is really snorting more cocaine and talking to a friend for homework answers while the boy sits in his room jacking off, knowing that he will simply beat up a nerd for homework the next morning. The husband retreats to his and his wife's bedroom looking for a bottle of vodka he had stashed between the bed and nightstand. He finds it indeed, right next to a used condom. He is mad! Yay! He calls his wife into the room, locks the door, shows her the condom and then proceeds to beat the shit out of her for cheating on him. No problem, she'll just cover those bruises with her usual dose of cake makeup!

Now that is just a depiction of the possible underlying attatched strings of the American Dream. Dream, my ass. Shallow people doing shallow things while hiding them in order to maintain the image being a perfect person. We may look at these people in awe of the things they have, the life they are living. The truth? They are miserable and empty. They aren't happy, they werely buy those expensive cars, those big fucking TVs just to console themselves because deep down they know that they are miserable and that they are stuck living the life of the American Fucking Dream. They are stuck because they know nothing outside the image of perfection. They don't know happiness. They don't know love. All they know is money, the things money buys them, and that there will be a bottle of vodka waiting for them when they get home, enabling them to get so drunk that they can actually pertend everything is going to be OK. The truth is, it won't. Not for most of them. They will go on with their mindset that money can buy happiness. When they suddenly wake up, 50 years old with come incurable disease because they wanted all of the shallow pleaseures life brings, they will realize that they'd spend the past 50 years of their life being unhappy. THey might try to reverse their mistakes before they die, try to live a little, and they will die in the process. They might die from their past mistakes and the outcome of them. They might die doing something whilst "trying to live a little." Either way, why did they die? Because they still hadn't learned. They were still as stupid as they'd ever be. They didn't learn from any of their mistakes. These are the pepople whom I ave no choice but to laugh at because of their complete lack of common sense and judgement. It's not that I'm a sadistic little bitch, although I'm quite aware that I am, it's just that these people get exactly what they deserved and for that I laugh at them, and my laughter follows them right to their graves. In an ultimate conclusion: You get what is coming to you.

Um, yeah, I want to go away now...