The History of Writing (Part Three) Tiffany and Brittany and Kurt Cobain

The fact of the matter was, there wasn't  much to do around the retirement home, for the residents, employees or anyone who'd ever bother to visit one or the other.With the minor exception of a small handful of'70s Babies (as in people born in the 1970s) no one needed assistance with the primary responsibilities of daily life--washing, dressing, organizing their rooms and belongings. There was, on average, at least 12 hours a day utterly bare of urgency or need for personal effort. Sleep was valued as an invaluable luxury, when, in the 6 or 7 hours sleep could be generated and fostered in the body, with- or without drugs. Heroin & methamphetamine, by any name other than heroin & methamphetamine, was purchased and consumed and remorsed and celebrated like a strange, hateful, ambivalent sort of deity, never loved, always worshiped. 

So, Tiffany and Brittany, like thousands if not millions of others within Brooklyn and the great, lonely and narcotized span of America, filled most of those hours watching and half-watching various television programs or disinterestedly listening to the radio or talking about the same old, same old, same old. 

On one such day, near the end of June, 2036, there was a program on t.v. about the band Nirvana. (If you happen to be one of the last 4 people on Planet Earth living in a remote region, survivor of one of the uncontacted tribes, subsisting on bugs and thistle and dreams, you are duly encouraged to Google* them at this time. Maybe try Scentless Apprentice, itself an adaptation of another work from another medium; and their cover of Love Buzz is pretty good, too.) 

 Said Tiffany, "He's the one that choked to death on his own vomit, right?" Meaning Kurt Cobain. 

Brittany, perpetually in the careless grip of melancholia, gorgeously depressed, woefully hopeful... "I... No! He killed himself, Tiffany. You don't remember that? Everyone knows that. What are--..." 

"Don't say it. You know I don't have any right now." 

"You know, I take drugs, too, idiot." 

"Don't call me an idiot." 

"Then quit talking like an idiot, idiot." 

Tiffany, with machine-like predictability, finger-combs/brushes her un/naturally blonde hair, like some paranoid cry for territory, naked in its craving for camouflage. Finally, "You're an idiot." 

 Brittany feels bad for insulting her friend. For 20 years that feel like 200, she's indulged the quinquagenarian's self-absorption, and it's taken a marked toll on both of them. Every day condensed and repeated into the next, the memory of memory of memory. "Please, Tiff, let's not fight about anything, today? Just today?" 

"I'm not fighting! I'm not the one calling people names!" (Some of the staff and most of the residents have taken notice of their argument at this point.) 

"You know I didn't--" 

"It's what you did," retorts Tiffany, "that matters. You say things just to get a response! You don't care about my feelings!" 

Singing, whisper-style, halfconsciously, "I don't care about you...." 

"No matter what I do, no matter how many times I ask, no matter anything, you just do what you want and to the rest be damned! I might as well... I don't know. I might as well be talking to a robot or one of those socko-puppet people when I'm talking to you!" A breath of frozen silence. "Are you listening to me, now? Hello? Earth to Brittany?" 

Brittany closes her eyes, subtly shakes her head, a paragon of equanimity in defeat. She hears the words, but they no longer effect her. Birds, canaries, likely, flitter unseen at some indecipherable coordinate. 

Tiffany eventually gives up, and the t.v. moves on to the next program.  

 

 

 

****

*Google or whatever other browser people trust the most these days.  

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