Waking Up - Fiction

 

When Olivia woke up on a rainy Saturday, she realized that everything had changed. She looked at the rain storm outside her old windows in her bedroom then smiled as she slid out of bed. She walked down the narrow hall to her kitchen to prepare a cup of tea then stopped as she reached her living room. There were beer bottles all over the floor, along with issues of The New Yorker, several poetry books, and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, some lipstick stained, and others just stained. She glanced at the sight, then plodded towards her kitchen. She really wanted a cup of tea. A rainy Saturday means that I can stay in and watch movies, she thought as she prepared her kettle.

Olivia lowered her bag of Earl Grey tea into the mug and said aloud, “I don’t care anymore. All of it. None of it.” Although her words barely came out in a whisper, she felt as though the world heard her finalizations. Once everything was ready and the kettle slowly boiled the water, Olivia returned to the living room and proceeded to clean up. She no longer cared if she recycled the bottles or not. She threw away all the magazines and placed the poetry books back in their respectful place on her shelves. As she threw away the last bottle, the kettle began to whistle, giving her enough of a reason to take a break. Once her tea was prepared and her living room cleaned, she returned to the living room and sat down on her couch she lovingly called the “Nyquil Couch” since if anyone laid down on it, they would instantly fall asleep. She did not want to fall asleep. She wanted to be fully awake for what she was feeling at the time. Olivia no longer cared about following her friends in their urban hipster ways; to her, it seemed as nothing more than an excuse to be assholes with limited knowledge about the world spread out so widely. She remembered how last night, David read every poem from her various literary magazines, proclaiming to want to be like them with his work. To him, getting his work published by those that mattered meant that you had “made it”. Olivia took a quick sip of her tea, then said, “Bullshit. They’re all pretentious. Snobby. Arrogant. All of it.” She took another sip of her tea, then smiled as she leaned back onto her couch.

What did it matter, then, to be so “liberal arts” knowledgeable? Why did her friends claim that they wanted to be the voice of all people, only to create an ivory tower filled with indie films, locally brewed beers, music made by people you’re never heard of, and mostly white people unless you're are a minority who thinks outside of your “colour box”? That’s how they felt about her. Olivia was not the typical black girl living in her city. She listened to folk, rock, alternative, jazz, Classical music, and anything else under the sun that had a soul. She tried to listen to country once due to a redneck intellectual that she was briefly interested in, yet the twangy singer made her nauseous enough to stop after only a week. The final blow came for her the other night when she attended a concert by a local musician located at one of the coffee shops in town. She wanted to support the musician because she had several of his CDs and she wanted to get out of her apartment for the night. So, she arrived at the coffee shop, only to be told that it was now standing room only and that there were no more chairs. Olivia didn’t care; all she wanted was to see this guy perform.

After walking around the tightly packed place for several seconds trying to locate a spot, she found a piece of a wall that had not been claimed and leaned against it while waiting for the concert to begin. Several seconds later, several people of her own supposed ilk walked in front of her, narrowly missing her feet, and stood right in front of her. She sighed yet was still determined to see, or at least hear, the concert. Just then, the musician himself walked right in front of her, again narrowly missing her feet, and did not even say excuse me or pardon me to her. She sighed again then pulled out her book and read. More people walked in front of her, carrying bottles of Pabst’s Blue Ribbon as well as other bottles of imported beer as though they were trophies. The musician walked by her again and brushed roughly against her book. She glared from behind the pages and then placed the book back in her bag when she heard him begin to play. Two songs later, she was out the door, miserable and ready to get back home. Although she wanted to be around people that she felt would understand her and claim her as one of their own, she felt nothing more than a pit of something hard and cold in her stomach. They don’t care, she thought as she got in her car and drove off. Were they supposed to? Does being an urban hipster give you the right to be more of an entitled asshole because you claim to be so in touch with the world around you? Such were the feelings she felt that entire week leading up to the small party at her apartment last night. It was supposed to be a small affair that, unfortunately, turned into nothing more than another rendition of last Saturday’s concert. No one truly cared; all wanted to step on each other’s feet and the beers were merely bragging rights.

Olivia’s mind returned to the present as she finished off her tea and stared out of the windows at the rainstorm. If this was nothing more than a glorified scam, then what else is there? Do you keep living the lie or do you find “something else”? THE LIE, as she now capitalized it in her mind, no longer held any interest for her. All she wanted to do now was just live, no matter what form it took within her. Embrace her life using her own rules and guidelines. She got up and placed her mug in the dishwasher, then got dressed and decided to walk down her street, rain and all. It was a first step on a new path, and she never felt better.

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