He read 70 pages of Richard Yates and made a neutral facial expression. He wanted to be like Eeyore. He wanted to be like Tao Lin, then he remembered that Tao Lin is kind of maybe a pedophile and definitely abusing uppers. That made him want to be like Tao Lin a little less, but did not make him feel especially glad to be himself. He decided that he liked being lonely. He wanted to be depressed, maybe.
He imagined it involved unwarranted feelings of negativity and ennui. Long walks during gray weather and distant looks that passers-by might find strangely alluring. His pocket vibrated a little. No, that was something he had imagined, but his phone was out so he checked the time and contemplated calling each of his ex-girlfriends to apologize.
Then he remembered that none of them had called him to apologize, that this was probably something that normal people didn’t do. Being depressed was kind of pathetic, actually. It was something embarrassing that you were a little proud of, maybe, but couldn’t share with anyone, like a gigantic piece of shit that just will not go down.
