Chapter Text
Your name is Jay Wang. Today, the 11th of April, 2009, is the day you play your copy of the beta of SBURB.
It’s one fifteen in the afternoon and you are just now getting up. You curse yourself like you do every day, hate yourself for being a colossal disappointment to your parents, and check your phone to see if you missed any appointments. To your dismay, the mental disability evaluation you were supposed to attend began four hours ago.
A sinking feeling settles in your gut. Without the evaluation, you are not likely to receive disability income from the government. It wasn’t even your idea to apply. You always felt dishonest about asking for money from the government. You held a job for three months in college, so clearly if you can’t get a job after two years of trying, you just aren’t trying hard enough. And now you’ve even fucked up getting government assistance. You really are a worthless sack of shit, aren’t you?
You look over at the bottle of antidepressants on your nightstand. There really is no need to take those, you think. It’s not as though you will do anything productive that needs you at your best. You think this even as that part of you wonders whether it would be possible to overdose on antidepressants, and whether it is a prolonged death. You are fairly certain no one would find you for several hours at least.
You drag yourself out of bed to take a shower. The water is scalding hot, but you get under it anyway. You deserve to suffer for your failure.
You cut the water at five minutes. You haven’t washed your hair; about half of it is still dry. It doesn’t matter, though. You won’t need to look good for anyone today.
You need to do a load of laundry; you are out of T-shirts. You put on a button up shirt over your shoulders and start separating the laundry in your hamper and scattered about your room. you leave your shirt unbuttoned.
When your first load of laundry has made it to the washer, you pour yourself a cup of Coke and return to your room. Now the whole room smells like dirty laundry. You open a window and turn on a fan, then grab your GBA and take it to the couch with your soda. It’s now about two fifteen.
All at once, you are whisked away to Hoenn, and you spend an hour grinding levels, then five minutes defeating a Gym Leader and some Team goons. There is something immensely satisfying about working hard at something and having it pay off quickly. Not like in real life. No effort you’ve made in the last two years has paid off.
Eventually, hunger pains drive you to the kitchen. You heat up some leftover masala and eat it with pita bread. Boiling water for rice seems like a monumental investment of effort and patience right now. You drink another two cups of Coke.
You go back to your room to check your email and various website accounts. Your room still smells like old socks. You grab another pile of laundry and move the load already in the wash to the dryer. It is now four o’clock.
You are back in your room. The smell of socks is muted but still present. Nothing interesting is on Facebook, just people from high school and college doing things with their lives while you sit there, sessile and stupid, wasting your young years in helpless idleness. On gameFAQs, your review of Metroid Fusion has received some positive attention. You enjoy the validation.
You check your phone. Text from Jim. Have you downloaded SBURB yet? No you haven’t, because it is in the mailbox and the mailbox is outside and you can’t go outside because you don’t have a shirt on. You return to the laundry room, wait for the cycle to end, pull a still-hot shirt from the dryer and throw it on.
The sky is bright, too bright. All around you, suburban houses and tended gardens sit and pass judgement on you. It seems to be facade to you, a mask over some piece missing from the soul. There is no community here, only proximity.
Something kinda sad about
the way that things have come to be.
Desensitized to everything,
what became of subtlety?
How can it mean anything to me
if I really don't feel anything at all?
-- Rock and Roll legend Paul McCartney
You grab your mail and go inside. The sun is starting to set, and you feel a strange wave of world-weariness. You have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.