There are some very large misconceptions about Hell as we know it. Some people think that Hell is this terrible place in the afterlife where the Devil resides while exerting his fiendish control over his evil dominion filled with people who have done appalling things during their time on earth. Some claim that the heat is unbearable, while others are terrified by the horrible acts of cruelty and torture that await them as repentance for their sins. All of these hypotheses may be true, but my problem with these theories is the fact that Hell does not exist in the afterlife. It exists here on earth.
I’ve seen Hell. In fact, I’ve been to Hell. Hell most certainly does reside right here in the living world. Hell is hearing, ‘Did you clean your room?’ when you are twenty-five years old. Hell is hearing, on a daily basis, ‘Did you find a job yet?’ while you are confined to the room where you grew up, with music posters from 1986 pasted all over your wall. In short, Hell is moving back in with your parents.
It doesn’t seem like Hell at first glance. In fact, it even seems like a great idea. Free rent, your old room back, and a chance to reconnect with the ‘rents. Sounds like a virtual paradise, but what you soon discover is a living, breathing, functioning ecosystem filled with all the classic torture and evil somehow confined to a 3,000 square-foot space located in the suburbs.
I was back in my old room, all right. The music posters were still barely covering the seafoam green walls, and the aquamarine carpet was still making me seasick. The difference this go-around was the fact that all the washed-up pop stars on my walls were mocking me.
“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,” some pop star with a fucked up 80’s haircut sneered.
“Shut up,” I said, sitting on my crappy twin mattress.
The last thing I needed to hear right now was some poster of a singing pretty boy making me feel like shit because I had to move back into my old room at my parent’s house after I had just spent $90,000 on law school.
I was trying to piece it all together. What the fuck happened? My sister (who was living with me at my parents’) didn’t weigh in on the issue yet because she was too busy looking for a man through various online dating services. My Dad had just bought a computer and had actually installed an Internet connection - shocking - welcome to the “future”! However, she was getting annoyed.
“I wish this thing would sort these people by religion. I mean, I’m looking for a Jewish guy and I have to keep flicking around until I find one. Meanwhile, I keep finding all these attractive, Italian guys.”
“Well, why don’t you go out with one?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? And what, celebrate Christmas? Whatever!”
It was nice that she was so open-minded. I’m sure she’ll find someone soon.
I was glad that Michelle was living at home with me because somehow it justified the whole experience. I couldn’t be that big of a loser if my sister was sharing the same house with me. After all, she had graduated college and now she was right across the upstairs hall from me. But there was a huge difference between my life and my sister’s: she was working.
Every morning, I would awaken to a cacophony, as I tried to remain asleep with springs piercing my skin in my broken twin bed. At 0527, with military-like precision, the alarm clock in my parents’ room would trumpet. My father would hit the snooze button and instantly fall back asleep. But I was now up, listening to him snore. Was this man part elephant? How in God’s name the sound of the snore could reach my room from the other side of the second floor and through two, closed doors was beyond me. By 0530 the alarm in the room right across from mine would go off. I could hear my sister hit the snooze button and make some weird choking/snorting noise, then silence. At 0532 my parents’ alarm would go off again and I would hear my mom shriek, “Richard, will you get up already? I don’t want to hear that goddamn alarm again.”
My confused father would answer, “What, yeah, okay,” and then with lightning speed race into his bathroom to start shaving. In his world, people shave every day. I’ve known the man for 25 years and I have never seen him once walk around with stubble.
At 0535 Michelle’s alarm would go off again and this would rouse her from slumber. By 0540 two showers are running simultaneously, cleansing the occupants. At 0550 both subjects are in the dressing phase, each putting on the proper attire for Mr. Boss. At 0615 - on the dot – Dad and Michelle are out the door on their way to New York City to start their work day.
Their commute is not simple. First stop: the fifteen-minute jaunt to the Park and Ride on Route 16. The Park and Ride is a parking lot where everyone drops off their cars to catch the E-Zee Express Bus that will take them to the train station where they can catch the express train to New York City. The commuters who brave this daily haj have lost their minds. The crowd ranges in age from 21 to 60, but vary little in appearance. They are highly disheveled and half asleep, as they line the curb waiting for the bus. No one talks, and if you turned your head quickly, you’d swear that everyone was in some crappy suit with a sad, white carnation tucked in the lapel.
The Park and Ride is not the worst of it. The real horror show starts at the train station. Here, the commuters have gotten into the habit of standing at the exact spot where the train will stop and the doors will open. They strategically begin boxing out their competition, moving around like caged animals waiting for the exaltation of the 6:47 train arrival. I’ve even seen some men use their children as obstacles to keep other people from entering the train ahead of them. At that magical moment, the commuters clamber onto the train.
The quest for a seat isn’t easy. You run at top speed through the cars but to no avail.
The one available seat is always the same. The middle seat. You’re usually wedged between a fat mess of a man who insists on eating his three egg, bacon and cheese on a bagel sandwich and pushing his overstuffed briefcase into your missing legroom. It’s a bad habit for him. He’s already pushing his overstuffed body into your space anyway so what’s the difference if his briefcase jams into your calf? He regularly nabs the window seat.
The guy on your right is usually sleeping. So, you gingerly try to step over his legs on your way to this hell sandwich. Inevitably, you wake him up, albeit briefly. He snorts at you, but then falls right back to sleep. You find your seat, repulsed by fatty to your left, put your own briefcase down and then try to relax for the next 40 minutes. Except, sleeping guy’s head starts bobbing and, ultimately, ends up on your shoulder. What can you do? You’re so exhausted that you usually just let it slide and accept the fact that for the next forty minutes you’ve got a commuter boyfriend.
Thank God, I’m not on this train.
I wake up at nine and prepare some breakfast. My mom has already left the house, as well, to teach at the elementary school around the corner. I have six full hours to sit and enjoy the day, but I usually spend the six hours trying to write some stories for publication and pondering where everything went wrong.
Maybe everything went wrong in college. When I received my acceptance letter from Catskill University it might as well have been a judge sentencing me to four years hard labor at a maximum-security correctional facility. I’m not saying this was a bad school, but if you’re into friendly people, a beautiful campus, fine dining, impeccable living quarters and brilliant teachers, this was not the place for you. Maybe it was the sheer physical beauty of the school that saved me from insanity. What was not to like? Four, identically beautiful towers of concrete comprised the stunning perimeter, with a lovely, cylindrical skyscraper smack dab in the middle. The Fountain, as it is affectionately called by the students, is the focal point of the campus. This beauty, rained its majestic waters and flowed bountifully at least five days of the school year. What fun! I remember sitting outside by the fountain on the three days of warm weather we had during my senior year thinking to myself, does it get any better than this? And now sitting at home I can confidently say, “No!”
Entry in Journal: After further deliberation I am of the belief that moving home is contributing greatly to my mental breakdown. College is only a minor contributing factor.