Jacob usually enjoyed waiting until he was inebriated to write. Rather, the wait brought him no joy – he was actually frustrated at his inability to commit thought to digitalization without the effect of intoxication – but once he had consumed enough sleeping pills, anti-depressants, cocaine (rarely), scotch, wine, cough syrup, or anything else, really, that fucks you up, language pulsated out of him, awesomely unto the screen. He rarely read anything he wrote. This led Jacob, your hero, to maintain that he must have some underlying, unrealized talent, that to unspool this ability from its mooring was rather unnecessary to prove its existence, and to take the accordant emotions that all men feel from it. This would bring Jacob joy, but only rarely, which went for almost every other thing that would bring Jacob joy. No, most of the things Jacob experienced brought him little or no joy. Indeed, many things sapped joy from him – through their mendacity, drudgery, commonness of appearance, general unpleasantness, or relation, in any way, to the fetid cuisine of his Vietnamese neighbors, the stench of which regularly slithered its way through the walls of their dungy living conditions – and many other things, while constituting the forbearance of neither pleasure or displeasure, slowly eroded his ability to care for the humanity placed around him simply because these things existed so plainly.
It was one of these third-category things – namely his routine of shaving roughly every third day or so – that for no reason at all occupied his mind when over the bass of rap music (the particularly ignorant kind, which, in moderation, he thoroughly enjoyed) Jacob heard banging on his door. Pausing mid-rambling sentence – it really did not matter where the train of thought had last been when he resumed writing – Jacob stood, stumbled only half a step, noted how much more obvious it is that you’re drunk when standing as opposed to sitting down, and walked toward the door. The banging, which never really stopped, though Jacob did not notice this fact, continued until Jacob’s left hand depressed the bottle of mid-priced – though ultimately, very modest – scotch onto the door lever , opening the door. Leaning on his right should, Jacob immediately recognized this evening’s interlocutor as his downstairs neighbor Randall, a man not much younger than Jacob, who, despite powerful eyes, was unnecessarily plain, though his plainness did not much bother Jacob, for once, while traveling through the Ibe…
“Jacob you fucking asshole, why the fuck are you playing this bullshit at 1:30 in the morning? You need to turn that goddamn shit the fuck off.”
Clearly Randall’s trip up the stairs had left him in an irritable state.
“The stairs ain’t got jack shit to do with this, Jake. Don’t be such a prick.”
This late night disturbance brought little joy to Jacob.
I got dat jigga juice / I got dat jigga juice / It got me Jiggalatin’ / It got me feeling loose / I’m feelin’ out my body / I’m ‘bout to get it started / I’m feelin’ out my body / I’m ‘bout to get retarded
Randall was right, of course, and since Jacob had a pair of high quality Bose headphones it was really no trouble to turn the music down. Jacob understood Randall’s position, as to him the music’s volume was too high to allow peaceful, joyful sleep, but simultaneously too low to really take pleasure in Lil’ Josh’s ruminations on Jigga Juice. Perhaps if Randall was more familiar with the music Jacob latched onto while once traveling to Alabama, he would take jo…
“Fuck that. That shit’d be just as annoying at noon as it right now. Lil’ Josh, Lil’ Boosie, Lil’ Crackseller, it doesn’t fucking matter. Whatever, man, I’m going to bed. Just turn that shit down, OK?”
It really was okay. Randall turned and walked down the hallway, at which point Jacob noticed Randall was fully dressed. Perhaps he slept in his clothes, or, more likely, he thought it would be inappropriate to travel to his upstairs neighbor’s door with improper clothing. Jacob shut the door. Oddly, Jacob noticed just now the weight of the scotch in his hand, which reminded him that he held a bottle of scotch in his hand, which led Jacob to take a pull. God, that shit was good. The process of turning down the music was simple enough, but it brought Jacob neither joy nor un-joy, which upset him slightly, so perhaps it did bring him un-joy after all, which made Jacob feel better, though not necessarily more joyful. Scotch, scotch, scotch, into my belly you go. Jacob sat down in front of his computer and although the aborted sentence presently on screen began with a description of the city code on the license plates of Heidelburg, Germany (HA – which was going to lead to a description of the awful discovery that one particular plate in this terrorist-sympathizing town ended in MAS), Jacob resumed the sentence thusly: “…the funniest thing about my childhood was that little did I know I was only a child! As an adult that I find that fucking hilarious.” And the words flowed rhythmically through his fingertips as Jacob continued to write.
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