Introduction to a Failed Youth

Image via WikipediaThis is the story of a lonely person. He is twenty-two years old. Has never had a girlfriend, never gotten lucky--though experience has yet to show him if “luck” is all its cracked up to be. What does he need to do or be in order to succeed, to remake himself--to become a champion among men? This is the central, insignificant question of his existence.

He asks himself all the time why he isn’t a paragon of masculinity. So often, in fact, that every week he seems to have a new answer, and with it, a new complex.

Is he ugly? Probably not, he’s decided, though his single shared feature with the sculpture of Michaelangelo is his stone-white skin.

Is he stupid? Far from it. Top of the charts, they say. Phenomenally intelligent, according to the tests. He wonders if this isn’t a detriment to his ambitions. Imagine the powers of over-thinking and over-worrying available to someone with a one-hundred and eighty I.Q. Some nights he lies in bed, motionless, eyes open to the dark, longing to be struck by stupidity.

The following entries comprise his journal. His private thoughts: the great paralysis and tiny triumphs, recorded not for posterity, but because there is only so much room in the mind for so much self-doubt--and so much hope.