The Leisurely Generation

Photo by Taylor LaShae

Have you ever watched us—our leisurely generation? We drink, we dance, we smoke, we fuck, we laugh. We build up a facade of familiarity to mask the frailty. It’s all over us, it seeps into our being. We perpetuate an assumed common happiness that everything is okay. That everything is all right in the world so long as a drink is in our hand, a woman in our bed, and a cigarette in our mouth as though living through these vices brings us closer to life. I wonder as I watch our tanned bodies and muscular frames gyrate across the innumerable dance floors: Were we built for this? It seems we have become solely concerned with whom we date and how we look in the search for who we are.

But maybe that’s all just part of youth. Perhaps growing up has always been tinged with a mild narcissism and self-loathing. Surely it can’t be just us—we know our parents are as screwed up as we are, that’s for sure. We know that they have made the same mistakes, or at least those of similar ilk, and that they still do. We’ve seen them, heard them. Those moments where the godhood of age and maturity come crashing down, when parental strength is left in tatters. The moments where ill words are mixed with muffled crying and the loud sounds of hate and rage. The moments when we have watched our mothers and fathers fight like children, where we become the mediators when we should be the mediated. It’s like we’re all complicit in this endless cycle of fantasy: That somehow age brings wisdom and maturity, and that as we grow older we grow wiser and less prone to the emotional irrationality of childhood.

And so, we drink, we dance, we smoke, we fuck, we laugh. But I am yet to meet one of our smiling number who doesn’t have cause to cry. We’re so concerned with hiding away our foibles and acting out this grand play that the whole game of life boils down to; “Who did we sleep with last night”. I’ve watched so many of our wounded cohort numb away the pain by smiling, laughing and pretending that it brings them joy, and I’m yet to understand why.

It’s all just a stage, and all of us just players waxing and sawing the air, acting out our part in this game we call ‘growing up’. We hope that there is some point to it, that the endless nights that we stay up late enough to see turn into days are bringing us closer to something. To age. To maturity. To growing up. We’re all throwing ourselves off a cliff and praying that we land on our feet. We’re clawing at a misconception that if we pretend that things are okay, they will be. We medicate away the pain and drink away the darkness in a desperate attempt to be ‘normal’. But it is this very darkness, this sadness and frailty that makes us human; that gives us a reason to live. Yet we find this so hard to come to terms with, so hard to speak about publicly. And so continues the endless cycle of fantasy. The truth is that no one in this world is ‘normal’ or truly living the charmed life we have been taught too lead. This disease of self-erasure has dug into us so deep that we’ve started to eat away at one another. We bitch and we gossip about each other’s debauched exploits as though we actually care—but we don’t. No one does. It’s just more fuel for the fire, more to keep the wheels turning and the social gears greased.

I lay with a girl last night. She seemed so together, so well kept, so beautiful. We sat outside beyond the dark hour of 4am—both of us in no state of coherence, our bodies itching and shaking from the chemical cocktail of lust, nicotine and illegality. And for some reason we talked about what didn’t make us beautiful. One of us suffered depression, one of us anorexia, one of us had self-harmed and one of us suffered severe anxiety. Behind the sexualized beauty of youth was pain and fear; the hidden scars that make us who we are. And she seemed so ashamed of it all, of the interior not being as perfect as the exterior. But that was the most beautiful part—a reminder that it was okay to be broken. That it was okay to carry scars if she did, too. That maybe they were the best part.

None of us are perfect, so let’s stop pretending who we are. Look at the person closest to you. Are they smiling? Do they have a dream? What do they want to do? Who do they want to be? Who are they? We’re the leisurely generation, sinners until the end. We drink, we dance, we smoke, we fuck, we laugh. But why are we here? Who are we? We are a generation without purpose—that much is beyond doubt. We’ve been taught by the world not to care for our future. Our leaders both in politics and business play for the quarterly report and the re-election campaign. What about in 20 more years or, lets be bold, 100, when a whole lifetime has passed. Will we remember who we slept with then? As we lie in our graves will our decomposing corpses wonder if we couldn’t have fucked just one more beautiful person or drank just one more drink? Perhaps.

We can all feel it; it’s like we’re waiting for something to pull us from our slumber. We’re just like Tantalus, standing knee-deep in water but unable to take a drink. Dance. Smoke. Fuck. Laugh. Love? It’s all the same.

I wish I had some closing call to action. Some great defiant statement of being ‘as mad as hell’ and unable to take it anymore. But I don’t; I’m just as lost as you are. I just hope that some of it matters in the end. That as the nights blur into one another, they form some coherence in the melded colour.

We are laid down broken, standing in the heat.
The tortured hope of hearing spoke the worlds of our conceit.
A corner of the pavement, all ours to stamp our feet.
The foundation of a framework that we try to make complete.

We are laid down broken, standing in the heat.
Twisting in the changing wind, back turned towards the sleet.
Each ageing heart a lonely lie from which we do entreat;
The question of our worthiness, our ‘second hand physique’.

We are laid done broken, standing in the heat.
The tortured hope of hearing spoke the worlds of our conceit.
A corner of the pavement, all ours to stamp our feet.
The foundation of a framework that we try to make complete.