guess who's coming to dinner

Occasionally I run into futility, he finds me at odd times and I either turn and hide or look straight into the glare, inevitably ending up in tears. One time futility found me I was on a plane with J, I look over and he's hunched over his seat eating bullshit airplane food and there he was, futility. The futility of all of us trying to be good people hunched in bad airplane seats eating the crappy food they give us and we have no say whatsoever in the matter and worse, we are hurtling through the air at a million miles an hour and then one day we die. I started sobbing right there and then, J looked at me in confusion. I was pregnant so we let it go but I knew what it was, it was that bastard futility showing his face.

Futility, that bastard, he found me again this weekend. I was with a couple of friends yesterday and one of them, the crazy one he wanted a cheeseburger so we stop at a place and order some food. My friend, the crazy one he wanted to eat inside so we do. We sit inside a fast food place and eat, something I haven't done in at least twelve hundred years. So we are eating and my friends are talking and my mind is wandering and that's when I see him, futility.

He's sitting next to the couple in the booth in front of us, the woman she's talking and talking and talking about errands and home redecorating and the man, he's totally checked out and nodding and staring off into space and not paying attention but she doesn't notice or doesn't care and she keeps going and keeps going and he keeps checking out and checking out and it's like their whole life flashed in front of my eyes and I want to cry. I look around the restaurant and see other people engaged in similar acts of futility, moms trying for the eleventh time to quiet their kids or get them to eat or older kids looking bored as hell with their parents or people like me sitting with friends but not really paying attention and all of a sudden it's hard to breathe.

So I tell my friends, the crazy one and the other we need to get the fuck out of this place, it's full of futility and they look at me and at each other and shrug and nod so we leave and as I walk out into the sun I look back to see if he's coming, if futility is lurking behind us because that fucker is everywhere and I see him, he's on the hood of the car next to us and he's walking down the street. And it's this feeling I want to change, this awareness of settling, of all of us collectively settling because we don't know what else to do.