• Excerpt •

When I think of Vincent as a teenager, this is the
image my mind projects:  there’s a cramped little room
with wooden floors and no window, completely darkened
except for the light emanating from a twenty-one inch
television.  Basking in the glory of that television
glow is a scrawny, half-dead figure with big, round,
bloodshot eyes and oily black hair, parted on one
side, sweeping across the opposite side of his
forehead.  He lies on his threadbare couch, wearing
the outfit he usually wore from his mid-teens to early
adulthood: a heavily wrinkled white dress shirt (long
sleeves since he was extremely cold-natured), a dark
undershirt (usually black), dark slacks (usually
gray), and socks that had once been white.  He sniffs
and coughs frequently because of his ceaseless
allergies.  He flips through the channels, all seventy
since he has cable, allowing the TV rays to soak into
his flesh, receiving a television tan, which is
actually not a tan at all, but rather a sickly
pastiness punctuated by acne.  I associate this image
with Friday and Saturday nights.
“Don’t you feel like a lazy American right now?”  I
asked the limp figure illuminated by the TV.
“You know I write all week,” he said in his usual
tired but warm voice.  “It takes a lot out of me.  If
this is how I want to spend my weekend, then why don’t
you let me enjoy it?”
“I will, but do you really enjoy it?  There’s nothing
but crap on TV.  Especially on a Saturday night.”
“You’ve taught me to learn from the crap so I won’t
repeat it, haven’t you?  Isn’t that what my education
has been based on?”
“Yeah.  Okay, smart-ass.  I just don’t think it’s
healthy.  I think the TV screen has become your only
window to the world.  That’s not good for a writer.”
Vincent let out a tired sigh.  He did this a lot.
“But I don’t feel like doing anything.  I don’t feel
like getting out.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“Believe it or not, I understand.  I was the same way
when I was your age.”
“I know I’m a loser lying in front of the TV, but I
find it comforting.  Something about having the TV
shining in the dark feels like home.”
“Do you miss home?”
“I miss having one.”
I wanted to comfort him but didn’t know how.  I didn’t
want to say “things will get better” or anything of
that nature.  So instead, I said nothing and watched
him flip through the channels.  I noticed that he
always stopped on the shows with girls, sometimes
keeping it on her channel, sometimes not, but always
pausing at the sight of the opposite sex.
“Are you searching for cleavage?” I asked.
“No.  Just for girls in general.”
He found one, an attractive young woman dancing in a
bikini on MTV.
“I love how you can look at girls on TV without them
knowing it,” said Vincent.  “You can stare at them all
you want, but they can’t look back.”
“If they could look back, they wouldn’t,” I said.
“Once you make it to that side of the screen, you tend
not to care about what you left behind on the other
side.  It’s a one-way relationship at best.”
“Yes.  Those TV girls don’t give a damn about me.”