I believe that all animosity is rooted in jealousy. Based on this fact, I have been attempting for some time to understand what it is about my roommates that bothers me so much. On first inspection, it would be easy to blame it on the fact that we’re all young and musicians that, more or less, are in competition for the big win. But I’ve been sure that it was deeper than that, because they’re not very serious in their vision for their band beyond drunken/stoned conversation.
Then I thought that it must be their intense and constant drug usage. I mean, I drink. A lot. So much so that right now I am trying not to. I’m succeeding but, hey, it’s also only been two days. Anyway, they are always doing coke, rolling on ecstasy (often by themselves in their own rooms! Bizarre.), dropping acid, they smoke tons of weed and are in some strange sort of competition with themselves over how many bottles of whiskey they can swallow, no matter how little they like it or how awful they feel every day.
See, this is strange to me, but not because I’m straight-edge in any sense of the word. I am a self-admitted chain-smoking, booze-hounding, hooker-loving, cocaine-addicted (I try to stay away from it; it’s a compulsive thing these days, brought on only by drunkenness), sleep-deprived, party-hardy, late-night bohemian who has been addicted to meth, done LSD, mushrooms, any pill you can think of in high doses, smoked plenty of weed by now (not even interested anymore). But I take my independence from my previous vices very seriously as a real mark of personal accomplishment. For all those past were followed swiftly by heartbreak, failure, poverty and death. These are experiences I would rather not relive or, at least, relive them unnecessarily.
Right now they have just returned from a rock show with their girlfriends and are having quite the drink, dance and smoke party. It is taking every single fiber of strength in my being to stay here in my room, hardly even separated from them, sticking to my original plan. I have already redressed and stood up twice to go join them. Both times I have stopped myself, and that led me to wonder why they do not fear their clear dependence on their vices for fun, as I often do. I can tell I’ve lost control of mine, and nothing bothers me more than not being in charge of myself. I mean, if you are not deciding for you, then who the hell is? Seriously, think about it the next time you wake up feeling like an asshole, with hardly any memory of the night before, a nasty stomach ache and a desire to change your life.
In this reverie, I have suddenly figured it out. I have discovered the root of my animosity toward these people. For the same reason I always want to professionally switch from blues and jazz and rock to really simple and fun rock ‘n’ roll music, I am jealous of their sense of innocence. That’s why they don’t seem as into their music careers as I feel that a band that I would consider “competition” should be. That’s why every night they party like idiots (really, it is quite immature and I never know how to behave when I hang with them) even here in their late twenties. Their naivety is rescuing them nightly. They are rebelling against the parents that they still have. They are living “while they’re still young.” Thus, I have discovered my jealousy: I have seen and lost entirely too much to believe in that youthful, wild abandonment of the future. At twenty-four, I am older than my roommates of twenty-six, -seven and -eight.
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