Celebrity City

 

Their names shine in glitter and gold, illuminating the alleys of the city I walk.  Their faces are perfect, their bodies surgically enhanced, as sharpened by photo-shopping as the avatars of a dating site.  On the movie screens they give us the escape we need from our lonely lives, a temporary distraction to let us loose from the bankers who hold us hostage.  They run the land; they provide the template: an economy based on spectacular entertainments that take advantage of our desperation.  What we are desperate to find is the same function that alleviates the rural class from revolting in our cities: an invasion of the senses to comfort us in our time of need. 

Our spirits are severed from the churches we attend, blown out of our bodies by fireworks at night, suffocated by all the show tunes echoing through the concrete labyrinths, held in check by the negligent investments we've made.  The words of scripture are only phrases to be recited, not practiced.  God has left the world to the inventors, the promoters, the goblins who feed on our wishes, that laminate them on a community platform for all to see, all to covet, all to spoil so thoroughly that our resulting ignorance toxifies the environment around us, often without our awareness. 

I hear it now; here comes the parade, hip hip hooray.  Dancers in two-piece bikinis with scaly skins twirl batons over their blonde wigs; gap-toothed acrobats swing around a mushroom-cloud balloon dragged by gorillas in suspenders; soldiers in uniform march in columns of clout, manipulating their rifles with the ease of machines; clowns with horns blow money out of them to the crowd below, every joyful squeeze orchestrating a crescendo through the procession.  We stand in a sort of concentrated awe, spoiled by every spectacle we've already seen, fully expecting each new trick to give us something more, something that gives us meaning, something we'll talk about around our cubicles at work tomorrow.  And we are so spoiled that we expect the finale to be greater than everything before it, like all those inconsequential theatrics were only meant to set us up for the real juggernaut, which comes just moments later: an oversized army truck dressed by several superheroes of the Marvel variety, with their weapons in hand under a flag as tall as the buildings, imitating an unseen aerial battle as the national anthem plays from a megaphone. 

More!  They scream.  We want our money's worth!  They demand.  All these choreographed pyrotechnics aren't enough.  We need so much entertainment that we'll become fully desensitized to anything that resembles natural living.  Nothing here is remotely uncivilized; we've created a sterilized utopia where anything that catches our eye, no matter how unethical or careless it appears, gets placed on a pedestal for its 15 minutes of fame, to be consumed and digested for the masses to process- even the things we thought required a cerebral element, like our politicians. 

Somewhere in the crowd a young man is watching us, a familiar face we would probably mistake for one of our neighbors since we all look alike anyway.  He takes in all this nonsense and wishes he was the one making a statement instead of us.  We've said enough, he thinks.  We've said and acted and bullied our way through the weak ones like him for so long that he's finally reached a boiling point.  He can't take all the fakeness anymore.  It's everywhere now, glorified on idiot boxes and in gossip columns so disproportionately to things that really matter that he decides to take the issue into his own hands.  He's holding two semiautomatic pistols in his hands, eager to show us something we'll never forget.  In his mind the fake show has passed us, but the real one is about to begin. 

Now the abuse will stop.  Now the country will pay attention.  Now everyone will listen to him, and he won't feel neglected anymore.  The papers will be all about him; he will triumph over the biggest box office hit, the latest champion in sports, and whatever crazy antic the president is involved with.  Now it's his time in the spotlight.  He never had any real talent to impress people with.  The only way for him to achieve the kind of fame he sees in magazines and in trending feeds is by pulling the trigger. 

When the moment comes, he hesitates, he freezes up, he can't move a muscle.  Time passes and the parade moves past.  He walks away from the oblivious crowd, who will never know that they narrowly escaped something that would have left them dead, or at least traumatized.  The boy reflects shamefully that the only solution he could think of rested in the same kind of violence he'd been a victim of his whole life.  Eerily, he realizes that the only difference between himself and a mass shooter is the ability to swallow one's revenge.