Human nature, go figure it. Pecking orders just like
chickens. Everyone’s sizing up everyone else everywhere you look. He’s just this, she’s just that; and that makes me……
John Stuart Mill said competition was the necessary dynamic. Hume said much the same thing.
These great observers all agreed. The whole world would come to a halt if
people didn’t compete.
Survival of the
fittest….
What would the end result of that be? An exclusive
super-elite? Wouldn’t they still need to compete though? Until only one stood
tall? Who would be left to compete with then?
Who cares? Why care?
McNally wasn’t one of life’s winners. If he had ever won anything, he’d already
pissed it up several walls. He went through phases when he’d decide to compete
in the rat-race and ended up wearing the smart clothes purchased for the job
several months later, dishevelled and lacklustre; fabric monuments to another
failure. Currently he was wearing a shiny grey suit and blue slip-on shoes all
scuffed from his eternal walking. He had no underpants on and his piss-dribbles
had discoloured the left side of his fly area. He looked like a down at heel
insurance salesman which was interesting because that is what he was.
That is what he is.
He was married to a woman that loved him unreservedly. She
knew his heart was in the right place. Their love was a very private affair. So
private that they’d ignored the possibility of adding children to it. In fact,
they feared children may have subtracted
from it; diluted it in some way.
To her, he was the kindliest man alive. It was probably his
kindliness that kept him back; hampered him. The world was not set up for
kindly men.
She even bought his whisky for him. Other than herself, it
was the only thing that seemed to give him comfort. She watched him drink it.
She could see the transition in him after a couple of mouthfuls. The worries of
his life left him for an hour or two at least. He’d talk and tell her jokes and
stories. He’d laugh at her little oddities; who she’d talked to at work that
day, the absurdity of life and people. They shared a deep sense of the
absurdity of life and people and laughed together when they weren’t looking. He
was really the only human being who had ever brought her out of herself.
Without him she’d disappear again like a light that had once flickered but had
since died. She needed him like she needed food and water to live.
For what was life? Largely, it was what other people told
you it was. Banks and corporations; politicians and newspapers. But, what was
it really…? This little life rounded by a sleep?
She never even wanted to go out. In fact, the thought of any
kind of social life worried her greatly. His company here at home was all she
craved and she knew he felt exactly the same. Other people were only an intrusion, an aberration, an adulteration.
There was really no need for them.
The fact that they had to go out to work was bad enough. It
was hard to survive people on such a
daily basis. Their judgements and comments, their conversation. They threatened
to ruin everything. It seemed to her that people enjoyed the failures of others. They protested the contrary but it
appeared that they did. Some of them thrived on it like voracious jungle
beasts. The called her Jill when her
name was Gillian. People were always taking liberties like this. Like the
Native Americans who felt a photograph stole their soul, she felt people stole
a little piece of her every day; trying to get
to know her; looking for information. Where did she live, what did she like
to do? Why on earth did they want to know? She had absolutely no interest in
anyone else’s life.
After all that had happened to her she wanted as little to
do with anyone else as was absolutely possible. She was Mrs McNally, and that
was all she required from humanity.
