Already Dead

The sun was brighter back then, the sky a deeper blue. Even the Lidl lemonade tasted better, came in cans too. Summers were hotter, the nights at the swimming pool more forbidden, the skin-on-skin more electric. And the TV—man, that was actual television. The whole Pokémon-obsessed crew sprawled in front of the screen after school, chips and cola within reach, one dubbed anime after another, and then out into the streets running like we’d sprouted tails and learned to fight like Goku.

And the games. God, the games! Nothing before or since has ever hit the same way as sitting in front of the N64, four of us crammed around the controller taking turns in Smash Bros or Mario Kart, or watching them ride through the fields in Ocarina of Time while the rest of us just stood there, perfectly happy watching Link fish—actually fish, for minutes, and we’d just stare, hypnotized by it.

But here’s what I know now: the longer you live, the more you’re already dead. I know everything and everyone, nothing lands new anymore. I’ve had enough tits and pussy for the next fifty years; given the choice between an orgasm and cake, cake wins now. I think I know what there is to know, and whatever I don’t know isn’t worth knowing. Nothing shocks me anymore—I’ve lived through worse, seen worse, felt worse.

Is that the curse? Being raised on sitcoms with stand-in families, fed internet death and fucking and advertising since birth, in a culture that just remixes itself—same music, same clothes, same emotions—on an endless loop until you’re in a box? Yeah. We’re the coolest and most burnt-out generation there’s ever been, and I live with that.