Two people stop to let me go by on the sidewalk as if we are on a hiking trail. They smile and i smile and it is pleasant. i finish work and feel exhausted, depleted, extremely sad, without willingness to talk to anyone or interest in seeing anyone. i sit at the bar at Little Dom’s and listen in on the conversation of a couple to my right; they seem like a new couple, as the woman says “Have I told you this story yet? It might be my best story.” The story relates the woman’s life in New York, which has just begun as she has just moved there, and one day she receives a DM from a woman she does not know who effusively expresses her admiration for the woman and invites the woman to get a drink. “I look her up, she seems like a real person, very successful, I don’t know why she has contacted me, if it’s a date, I go to the bar and she’s a total square, so incredibly boring. She invites me the next time to a party and I go, I don’t know why, everyone is there, CEOs of every company, she invites me to join her business partner’s personal hero, I don’t remember the man’s name, at his table, he invites us to a sport’s game, we go, it turns out he owns the stadium.” The rest of the story follows exactly this pattern, small anecdotes whereby the woman is invited mysteriously to some exclusive function by a person without any interiority, instead of interiority this person has and displays a great deal of wealth, always a man. After the fifth example of such a story the man who is the woman’s audience says “Well, it’s because he wanted to fuck you,” and the woman says “What?” and the man says “Well, obviously he invited you to that thing because he wanted to fuck you,” and the woman says “Oh,” and i feel sad for her. “Well, I didn’t read enough this year,” says the man, “Well, I’ll have to be better about that. And, well, it’s my goal to walk more,” he says. i am reading short stories and sopping up marinara sauce with slices of sourdough. Has anyone ever died of interiority?
Jared Joseph is boring.