Stupid People, Stupid, Stupid People_ , I'm talking to you and you better fucking listen. When you were an adolescent, you were young and impressionable and you thought you were cool and hip and all that shit. Then you reached your first job, the first real job, and someone showed you the light and that was it. You were on the hook. You started drinking all that coffee. You didn't know any better, you were too dumb to know any better. You drank your own bullshit Kool-Aid. I know your kind. You had a chance to grow out of that, I'm giving you a real opportunity. I'm talking about something meaningful. You're a _fucking_ cop!" By now, I was yelling at the top of my lungs. "You know what it is? You're just a fucking _sellout._ " They stared back at me, their eyes wide in disbelief. One guy was wearing a blue blazer over a T-shirt, the other guy was in a sweater vest. They looked exactly like real police. "You guys, I want you to look around you at this shit and tell me, are we the ones who did this to this city? Is _this_ what this town deserves? Look around you. What's missing? There's not a damn thing missing. It's gone. My family left today, and I'm fucking sick of this shit. There's no justice in this world. You want justice? What have you done to try and _get_ justice? Don't tell me you want justice. Nobody wants justice. What you want is retribution. _I_ want retribution, but I know I can't have it because you people can't get out of your fucking way. That's what you are, you people. You're the goddamn _roadblocks._ " I could hear other voices shouting at me through the noise of the party, but I ignored them. Now everyone was shouting at me. "You are the worst sons of bitches I ever met, including my wife's fucking _parents._ " They were standing there. I stood there, shouting at them. "If you people don't believe me, look around you. You've taken everything, and you can't stop taking more." By now, people were looking at us, then whispering to one another. There was something eerie about me in my anger. My eyes, usually so soft, were wide. I think they were afraid. I began to walk away. "Fight for this," I shouted over my shoulder. "Take it to the fucking streets!" My chest heaved from my exertion. I was tired, but I didn't want to sleep, I wanted to stay awake and talk to whoever it was that I was talking to through the haze of my anger. All I could think of was _retribution,_ and how _I_ had not yet gotten to where I wanted to go in life. I was angry at so many people. I didn't understand how anyone could stand so close to them, in a city that is a prison, but still be allowed to keep on living. To keep on going to their jobs, to go to work and make a profit and put a dollar into the bank account of a real estate developer who bought up the land they were standing on. _Retribution._ Just a bunch of _suckers_ who worked for their fucking money! _There are no good people anymore._ There is no society, no civilization, just _people,_ people who can't stop themselves from lying, people who keep falling into their habits of violence, who won't stop themselves from taking what they want. We _must_ stop this. You will never be who you think you are as long as you're looking to make other people responsible for your life. You need to think about the other people in the world, instead of trying to make them responsible for what's happened to you. That's the only way to think, to think of what it is that you have done. _I am not responsible for my life._ _I am responsible for what I do with my life._ _I can decide what I want._ _I can decide what I don't want._ _I can decide what I do with my life._ And then there are those who _help_ others as I do, but in their own way. No matter what you may have seen, or been told, the world will be better if there are more good people like me in it. The more of us there are in the world, the better it will be for everyone. _You will never be safe until you learn how to survive._ _You will never be able to sleep until you learn how to wake up._ _You will never be able to sit still until you learn how to run._ _You will never be able to look at others without wanting to kill them._ _You will never know what is going on, but you'll be sure you're going to do something about it._ # 13 # Falling Down I sat on my father's porch that evening, watching them burn their dead. "Don't get involved," warned my father. I felt for his hands, warm against the back of my neck, and turned to him and looked in his eyes. "Don't get involved," he whispered. "It's dangerous." I saw him look at the ground. "They've got their own ideas about death. They have a different way of doing it." "You've seen it?" He shrugged, as if this was a fact, a fact of which he was quite proud. "We don't take part in that nonsense anymore," he said. It was just the kind of thing you might expect from a man who was always in the background. "He gave them permission to burn the dead. He made them sign a paper." My father made fun of their religion. "Bullshit. Those are stories." I was surprised at how little he cared that I was at their ritual, that I had been given permission to be there. He was proud that he'd be able to give them anything they wanted. I knew that this "man," who was "their leader," did not want to work with us, but that my father believed in giving people what they want, in making people happy, in the same way he believed in never taking things from anyone. I wondered if that was why he had given up his own work with the elders, and perhaps his friends, to be seen as an important figure among his people. "They say their prayers and they're all set," he continued. "Now they want permission to burn the dead." "What's he paying them with? Is he paying them?" "He didn't pay them with anything." "He's giving them something." "It's worthless," he said. "So what are they paying for?" "It's their own idea. A different religion. He asked them for some of the dead and now they want the entire ritual. He can't control them." "But why did he give them something he thinks is worthless?" "He doesn't think it's worthless. He thinks he's giving them something of value." "Maybe he has a reason," I said, my heart racing. "Maybe there's a good reason." My father shrugged. "It's their idea. It's their religion. He's giving them something he knows they can't resist." "You mean they want to get their hands on it." "They're not a bunch of kids, you know that. Don't get involved in their things. And don't go and buy some cheap bottle of vodka from those guys. It's got no taste, that stuff. It's not a good thing to drink. My father doesn't want you wasting your time with that kind of stuff." "It's not a good thing to waste." "Don't waste. I'm not sure why he is giving them all of this." "What if they come back?" "They won't come back, you can be sure of that. They're not going to come back. They are already as bad as those people in Africa who drink their own piss and eat their own shit. They're coming to them with their own bullshit ideas of life. They're not coming back." I looked toward the forest where the men had been cutting down the branches. I could see what was left of what had once been dead branches. It seemed pathetic, the way they looked to me like a child's plaything left by the roadside and forgotten, all burned up. I watched their shadows moving across the trees. I tried to imagine them like the dead in the forest. I did not know how to imagine them. I felt as if they were in my own head, living there, with my father, trying to sleep. "Are they close?" "What do you mean?" "How close are they?" "Far enough." I turned to my father and looked into his eyes. "Close enough to hear everything that's going on?" He