Short Story: The Meaning Of Life? Part…

Short Story: The Meaning Of Life? Part 2

In the weeks following Guy, Fingers and Charlie’s funeral, I thought about how I would discover the meaning of life. Charlie would have told me to stop being a tit and get on with something else. I considered that I would never find out until I died, on the basis that perhaps God tells you. I then decided that this would be unethical as life had just ended, and God must have employed some rational conduct in the whole Life and Death transition, unless he is some kind of connoisseur of pointless playground antics and wind ups. I pictured the great bearded figure pulling a disciple’s trousers down, prompting mocking laughter and endless penis related jibes from the surrounding motley crew of angels and spirits.

Despite creating the universe in seven days, (supposedly, personally I subscribe to the scientific theory of the big bang) blessing the world with incest from the very beginning was God’s way of saying, “I’m the boss,” Adam and Eve. Surely being master of the universe he could have made two sets of non-related couples to spawn our race from. But no, God sat on his fat arse for the whole of Sunday watching sky sports and eating his Sunday roast. No consideration for the millions of incestuous tearaways roaming the earth for ever more. Manchester United were playing.

I soon decided that conjuring stupid ideas about the mythological idiot that is God would get me nowhere. So I decided to go to the pub. I walked along the four hundred yard stretch to my local, The Cathcart & Korn, feeling that drastic improvements were needed to sustain and improve my community. I counted at least four street lights that were dead and I passed numerous graffiti ‘tags’ on my saunter. I couldn’t quite grasp the point of all this ‘tagging’ malarkey. Why scribble your name on the back of a rotting garage? It doesn’t do or mean a thing, and one day, the spotty sweaty teen that mustered the courage to ‘tag’ such an inanimate object will be dead. Possibly the garage will be destroyed before the death of the hooded youth. Possibly the spotty, sweaty hooded youth is delirious and believes that anything which bears their name belongs to them. Perhaps I am delirious for believing that you have to build or buy property in order to physically own it.

I soon arrived at the pub, having been flustered and windswept all the way there, bloody weather. I ordered half a pint of lager, found a comfortable seat in the corner by the fire, though not so close to the fire to arouse perspiration or discomfort and read the days papers, forming my own opinions on the latest crisis that the Daily Mail had invented. The headline read;

NEW SUPERBUG EMERGES IN HOSPITAL WITH RISING FATALITIES.

Having read the whole three page exclusive, the tit of a journalist was more or less saying that this ‘could’ happen and if it did, the worst you would get is the trots. Anything could happen at any given time, so there’s no need to report on it, unless it is relevant or going to happen. I remained looking smug for the duration of my drink, until Tony walked in with some of his Church friends. At which point, I turned away sharply and turned to the sports pages. That would definitely fool him I thought, as I rarely read the sport pages these days. Though unfortunately, my orange striped cardigan blew my cover. It’s always that Bloody cardigan.

“Hello Yossarian! I didn’t expect to see you down here,” Tony bellowed in his sinless God worthy voice, the obvious sarcasm I detected in his voice didn’t delight me either, as he knows I’m at the pub almost every night.

“Hi Tony, such a pleasure it is to bump into you guys,” I delivered my sentence with an obvious blend of cynicism and sociability. He’s such a nosy bastard. I had hoped my obnoxious tone would make them bugger off, but they didn’t. They instead took the surrounding seats and ignorantly occupied them. I was disgusted at their lack of social etiquette, which I made evident by sighing distastefully.

“What have you been doing since the funerals then Dougie?” Tony asked, in a manner which displeased me. What sort of a nickname is ‘Dougie’? He is a shit.

“I believe that should be funeralae. I deem poor Douglas has experienced more than one death in the family and suffered more than one funeral, therefore you should have employed the plural of funeral which is funeralae.”

One of Tony’s disciples piped up, Ed was his name, or Judas as I secretly referred to him. Ed always tried to get one over on Tony, he was jealous of his popularity. He wore gigantic thick rimmed spectacles which gave his eyes a googly, magnified stupor. He stood at only 5 feet 4 and a half inches tall, with narrow town house shoulders. His head was peanut shaped, with a little dip in the top which was very noticeable when stood over him. Ed looked as though he could be in his late seventies, though had only lived 53 Christ-numbed years.

“Ed, the plural of funeral is most certainly not funeralae. It’s funerals,” Tony dismissed Ed’s village-idiot-esque know-it-all-remark with ease.

“He’s right Ed,” another disciple Tom, squeaked in support of his messiah, whilst Ed’s face filled rapidly with blood, he overflowed with embarrassment, spilling his cranberry juice neatly on the beer mat.

“Blimey! Have we got a few geniuses in tonight?!” Ed half yelled without realising the irony.

“Its genii, Ed,” Tony grinned with menacing intelligence from across the table, he knew he had Ed’s balls in a vice. “The plural of genius is genii.”

And with that life shatteringly witty remark from Tony, Ed stormed out the pub in a flushed fit of embarrassment, collecting his coat on his way. The group watched Ed’s embarrassingly elongated exit from the pub in silence. A minute or so later, Tony spoke once more.

“So Yoss, What have you been doing since the funerals? Must be hard getting your head around things.”

“Mainly remembering the good times we had, making a few decisions in my life that I should have made a long time ago. In a way, I’m glad they’re gone. All of them. Guy was just a prick, Fingers led a tedious life and Charlie just held me back somehow. Whilst Charlie was alive I was a nowhere man. I followed him around, asked him what I should do and how and when but never questioned why. I have a new found independence that I never realised I could achieve. I know what I have to do now,” I burbled, realising they had destroyed my attempts at social reluctance.

“Good news. I suspected you would be miserable for a while but you seem to have accepted everything. What’s this big thing you have to do then? Have you finally found God?” Tony rattled on like an old lady.

“Don’t be bloody stupid!” I was satisfied with the balance of dismissal, aggression and friendliness in my delivery.

“Well what is it then?” Tony relentlessly enquired.

I was in two minds whether to tell Tony and his band of holy spirits of the epiphany I had had whilst at Charlie’s funeral, I feared ridicule and social dismissal, even amongst these bible bashers. Although they might appreciate my exciting endeavour and may provide me with links to the true meaning of life. Even if they were religious links.

“Well basically, at Charlie’s funeral I watched him hit the ground in that box and that got me thinking. What is the whole point of life if that’s all we end up as? What am I supposed to do in life? I felt the need to achieve something, before I feel the icy hand of death grasp me by the wrist and pull me away from my mundane life.” I felt incredulously certain in what I was saying, though not entirely embarrassed.

“So you seek the meaning of your life? Or everybody’s?” Tony posed a question that I had not previously considered. I was also delighted that he did not scoff at my intentions, nor did his chums.

“I think, just mine. The meaning of life is to reproduce in my opinion. I find the idea of living on an island somewhere in the south pacific totally alone, completely fascinating. Living out my existence there, nobody to get on my nerves, no taxes, nothing. Just me, some things and the thriving wildlife. Not that that’s my meaning.” Once I open my mouth nothing short of a chainsaw to the face will shut me up.

“Well, I’m not sure whether living a solitary existence is what your supposed to do, Harry. What about Helen? You can’t just leave her to go and be Mel Gibson on a desert island.”

“Firstly, I haven’t even seen Helen for eight months, and secondly it is almost certain that I will not live out the rest of my life in the tropics on an uninhabited island and thirdly I will under no hypothetical circumstances be taking a hypothetical volleyball which is hypothetically called Wilson, as that is utterly ridiculous” I was pleased with my level of conversation, although my dreams of island life were just pure fantasy.

Tony took a hearty swig from his pint of bitter, causing Tom and the other four nameless disciples to follow. The fire crackled pleasantly in the background, as a delicate spring drizzle began to settle on the lawn outside, filling up damaged old ash trays with a temporary purpose, floating old cigarette end to the surface. We had reached the point at which every conversation inevitably manages to hunt down. The awkward silence. After, what felt like hours of unbearable torture, Tony finally managed to pull back the conversation which had slipped from our grasp.

“So basically you’ve become aware at long last that you have a classic mid life crisis, which you’ve decided to dress up as a medieval type conquest for the meaning of life?”

My heart sank through my stomach and I could almost hear it hit the floor. That’s the thing I hate about Tony. He’s always right. I stared at him in love and hate. Once again, I felt empty.