Steven Zultanski
from Bribery
If there’s one thing that’s certain for everyone, at all times, no matter where they live or what they obsess over
unreasonably, it’s that one can’t, at any given moment, get any worse than one already is, without sliding into another
moment altogether. Of course I’m already awful, but only as awful as I am right now, and just as one holds out hope for tomorrow, knowing it will be better than today, if only because, finally, today will be gone, I hope when I’m worse
I’ll be better too: better, for example, the way women are better than men because they have to put up with men, like saints, while men go around giving the impression they’re men, like assholes; better the way poor people
are better than rich people because they take what the rich people hand out to them, like monotonous jobs and fast food and jail time
and work-related bladder cancer; better the way non-white people are better than white people because they aren’t allowed to write
the oppressive laws they live under or order the police into their neighborhoods to beat the shit out of their kids; better the way children are better than adults at being unable to fight back when their parents take out their failures on them; better the way whoever is being bombed right now by American planes is better than
the pilots of those planes because they’re scattered in more pieces and cover more area; better the way every other person will always be better than me simply by being bigger than me, their thoughts and actions everywhere I’m not — and so on
and so on, one thing is better than another forever, until you die. But for now, if I live even one more day — if this isn’t the last time I taste water, sweat through my shirt, squint,
run my tongue over dry lips, find myself unable to speak, cover my eyes — then I won’t escape a certain extra degree of dipshit eternity, I’ll end up
giving myself at least one more thing to hate about myself, either by doing something I think I dislike, or by doing something I think other people dislike, like committing
some more crimes, which, like the laws they protect, are every- where at once, written down. There are plenty to choose from. For example, robbing a store at knifepoint.
I did that.