Work Text:
Whiskey, poetry and silence make for good companions after a full day of putting on a farce and playing a clown. The whiskey burns down the throat, hurting but giving much requiered stimuli. He doesn't even pretend to comprehend the poetry. He just looks at it, reads the first line ten times and repeats the same procedure for all of the verses, no matter how many there are. He can never quite convince himself that he reads the lines well enough. He feels he needs to burn the words, burn the letters the order into his retinas before he should be allowed to move on.
The silence is the highlight. After a full day of a bustling office with nothing but sound (yelling, talking, chainsaw, computer, pen on paper, scratching, scratching, scratching, scratching) he is finally afforded a moment of complete. Utter. Silence. He enjoys it the most.
He repeats his routine, as always, a little frayed around the edges but the familiar steps close night after night in a repeating circle. Sometimes he eats. Sometimes he does not. He tries to berate himself for being lazy and not even having the energy to put a sandwhich together. He turns to ask someone what he should do. He wants affirmation or the complete denouncement of his worth and talents. Someone to put him on a pedestal or someone to tear him down into the mud.
There is no one behind him.
He does not eat.
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Pidän keväästä. Silloin maailmaa syntyy uudelleen.
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There's a house. It's on flat land next to other houses. Each house is the same colour. He likes that.
He just came home from school. Mummy says he's a big boy now that he's in sixth grade. He doesn't feel big. He still wants to play with his dinosaurs. He wants to line them up, talk to them and carry one around. Once, his little sister knocked a dinosaur over. He cried for hours, claiming she had hurt the dinosaur. His sister didn't understand. His mummy had told him that his dinosaur, a triceratops, was made of plastic. It didn't have feelings. It wasn't alive. It couldn't feel pain or sadness.
'It's like a tangerine, but without the flesh.' His Mummy had said. 'Humans, animals and plants have the fruit-flesh inside. That's our emotions and sentience. But the dino can't feel those things, darling. It's made of plastic.' His Mummy's words hadn't really helped. It took a long time until he was no longer crying, and even longer until he trusted his sister near his dinosaurs again.
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En pidä tunteista. Enkä pidä niistä puhumisesta. Tuntuu, kuin esittäisin jonkinlaista näytöstä tunteillani.
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Usually in the morning he drank coffee and sometimes, when his energy could handle it, he made something to eat. Then he brushed his teeth (bristles hurting the moment they touched, the sounds the sounds the sounds the sounds) and combed his hair. He put on the same clothes every day, with little variance. Sometimes the shirt was different. The pants.
Always the jacket.
The same.
Then he looked in the mirror and practiced, for just a minute, how to smile with his full face and not have it look forced. His mouth could lie but his eyes stayed wide open.
He didn't like smiling. He couldn't tell without the mirror if his face was actually making the correct expression, or if he was just grimacing.
Then he left, and he put his work shoes on. With them he put his work personality on. Subconciuosly.
Talkative.
Funny.
Crazed.
Self-destructive. (But in a funny way, not in his home way. Joke. Make a joke about it. Make the joke so extreme it's something you would never actually do. If the joke is extreme it passes the joke inspection. No one will look for bruises when you joke pills, guns, knives and jumping.)
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"Lapualaiset on jo aikojan sitten tapettu. Nyt on laihialaiset menos!"
- Väinö Linna, Tuntematon sotilas
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When he was in junior high, the boys around him (not friends. Not friends.) started talking about girls. They said they liked some of them.
He had, much to his Mummy's relief, gotten over the dinosaur incident at this point. So he could say that he liked his little sister well enough. But the way the other boys talked...
Was he meant to feel that way too?
He was the highest scorer in their schools midterms, so they expected his life to revolve around studies. But they still sometimes pulled him away from his thoughts or books or something else equally more important than them and asked if he liked any of their classes girls.
He always just gave the same vague smile and said no.
But then they stopped believing him.
So he scrambled for someone to "like".
Michiko Ishihara was aiming to become a school teacher. He picked her. He never told her, of course, but when the other boys asked, he named her as his source of fancy. She had narrow eyes and thin lips, black hair in a bob and she was short and a bit plump. The other boys teased him for liking a chubby girl. He never understood why.
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Kaukaisuuteen katsoessaan voi nähdä valon jumalattaren. Kenet? Mieti itse.
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Today it's business as usual at his job. He laughs, makes others laugh and cringe and he harasses his co-workers. They expect this behaviour. What would they say if they saw his naturally blank face and empty mind? Nothing actually runs through his head.
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Et voi saada menetettyä takaisin.
Joskus on pakko valita kahden väliltä.
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He sometimes still arranged his dinosaurs into lines and talks to them. Sometimes when it doesn't feel like his throat will be ripped out for producing sounds. Sometimes when he is not too aware of his own voice's cadance and reverberation.
He is sick.
There are bruises on his arms and his legs. His ankles will get worse with age. He cracks his knuckles too often. His Mummy used to say that he'd get osteoporosis at this rate. Or dislocated joints.
He misses Mummy.
He was able to function properly at home.
Someone was there to remind him to be a human.
Without the reminders he is not human.
He can pretend. He can switch masks depending on the company. He can supress flapping arms and odd sounds.
But he can't delude himself.
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Olipa kerran
Järjetön, syntinen mies
Vailla merkityst'
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He knows he's not a good person.
There's something about him that crawls inside of his own stomach, that raises eyebrows and fists against him.
So he struck back and found himsel here.
But this is better than going back to the numbness/emotion of yesteryear.
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"Eikö sadulla kuuluisi olla opetus?" Kysyy tyttö isältään.
"Ei tietenkään!" Huudahtaa isä, tyrmistyneenä. "Sadun tarkoitus on aloittaa ajatusprosessi."
"Niin mikä?" Tyttö kysyy hämmentyneenä.
"Ymmärrät, kun kasvat isommaksi," Isä vastaa.
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Dazai Osamu goes to bed one evening, sure he'll wake up the next.
He always does.