I remember the day the world ended so easily that whenever I happen to close my eyes I watch that day unfolding with such vivid clarity that I find it hard to believe that I still remain in the present. Some would claim that the world didn't actually end that day since the sun keeps shining and the world keeps turning. If I concentrate, I can even verify for myself that day continues to turn into night and people all over the world are continuing to go about their little daily routines. However, I never can seem to manage to care. My world, at least, ended on that particular day.
Like so many other days before it, I was spending it wasting my time sitting idly in a booth inside a nearby diner seated amongst the three companions with which I had wasted almost all my life up to that point. Next to me sat the man called Kramer, a wild man with thought processes that were as alien to those of 99 percent of the population as an ipod would be to a tribe of neanderthals. Across from him sat an anxious little man named George Costanza. George always seemed to be so badly beaten by the world around him that it always seemed sort of amazing that he somehow found the strength to get out of bed each morning.
Next to George sat that one special woman who managed to make life tolerable for me and brightened up even the darkest corners of the dismal grey city which surrounded us. I don't remember who exactly it was but someone once told me about how Plato said that each of us is half of a soul that was split in two before any of us were born and we spend all our lives searching for the other half. I think that on some level I often found myself thinking of that story when I was fortunate enough to still have the opportunity to spend time with her. Her name was Elaine and the sound of that name is still enough to leave me feeling as though my stomach is beginning to slowly dissolve. She was clearly the one and only shot at true happiness which was put into my life by God or Fate or whatever and unfortunately I can only see that now that it is far too late.
"Oh, by the way, don't forget that it all starts at seven in the evening but you guys are supposed to be there an hour earlier. It is VERY important that you aren't late tonight," Elaine said between bites of the big salad she was eating. She said it almost as an afterthought but this conversation was destined to change the lives of everyone sitting at that table forever.
"Why? What happens tonight," I asked in what seemed at the time to be genuine puzzlement. Since then, of course, I've gone over everything in my head countless times and I now find myself wondering whether on some level I already knew what was happening and found myself unable to face it. The way that everyone seated at the table turned at that moment to stare at me in disbelief certainly strongly suggested that I at least should have known exactly what she was talking about.
"Umm. my rehearsal dinner is tonight. You know, my rehearsal dinner for my wedding. My wedding which is going to be tomorrow. The wedding which I've been planning forever," Elaine said sarcastically while giving her head a slight shake that sent her raven hair flying and turned my spine into butter.
"What? You mean you are really going through with that? You're tying the knot with that STOCKBROKER?," I said derisively,"The one who collects old Wall Street Journals?" I began to feel a sickness spreading through me that I sensed had little or nothing to do with the cheap, greasy food I had been working at devouring.
"Well, duh," Elaine replied with mock bitterness," You know I am. Hopefully you can avoid that kind of talk at the dinner tonight." It appeared that she figured I was only joking around or something. Well, why not? What have I ever been besides a fool and a clown?
The other three at the table then proceeded to resume the inane banter they had been engaging in before Elaine had decided upon reminding us of her impending nuptials. As for myself, however, I heard nothing of what was being said. My thoughts had turned to static and my mind spun in circles. A short time later, I ended up just making my way back to my apartment because of instinct, habit, or the complete inability to think of anything else to do.
Sprawled out across my bed, I struggled vainly to keep from crying like a small child. Making sense of it all seemed impossible until I spied a tiny statue of Superman standing atop one of my shelves. The statue was clearly designed for children, or at least adolescents, but it made perfect sense that it would be sitting there so prominently displayed inside my humble apartment. Except for perhaps the sort of movies I occasionally enjoyed watching late at night, there was nothing even vaguely adult about me or the little world that I lived in. My days were spent telling sophomoric jokes to jaded to faceless middle class crowds and hoping that they at least laughed at my jokes a few times before they forgot them completely so some sullen night club would still agree to hire me to come back again . My time seemed to be always spent in either exactly that manner or in pointlessly arguing with my friends. I shook with a mix of shame and despair as it hit me how all of my life up to that point was spent either laughing at life to disguise how painful it could be or doing anything I could think of to avoid growing up to keep from having to deal with situations like the one I now faced. I was the living embodiment of that old cliche about a clown laughing on the outside while crying on the inside suffering from what some psychologist would probably call a "peter pan complex ". Despite how many times I had been on the tonight show, my problems were more common than the common cold and it suddenly seemed to me that I was actually a completely dull and ordinary sort of person.
"Ah, but what does that matter," I thought despondently,"since I'm losing Elaine?" Elaine was different from all the others. Usually, once the sex started getting boring and I'd gotten some material for a routine or two to add to my little comedy act, I traded in whatever woman I'd been seeing for a newer model and never for even a second considered seeing the older model again. Of course, that's if they didn't grow so tired of all my little neuroses and my difficulty dealing with life that they dumped me first. However, after I drove Elaine away because I couldn't handle the depth of emotion I felt for her, I found that I couldn't bear the thought of her being out of my life completely so I managed to add her to my little circle of friends. I think that, at least to some extent, I always sensed that Elaine was probably the only woman I could see myself having any kind of meaningful relationship with. I think that, somewhere in the back of my mind I saw myself getting back together with her and eventually marrying her and settling down but I kept putting that off just as I tended to put off everything to do with adult life. Ok, ok, I don't know why I keep using the word "think" since I know both those things are true. Never in my whole life have I been more certain of the truth of anything.
I closed my eyes then and the image of Elaine's gorgeous face rose up before me. Her eyes shone with the joy which seemed to radiate from every fiber of her being. Her smile, more enigmatic by far than the Mona Lisa's, suggested that she had just figured out the answer to several of life's questions that hadn't even occurred to me yet. I wanted to sink down through my bed and continue floating down through every floor of the building until I passed through the basement and ended up in some dark corner far beneath the earth's surface where no one could see me and I wouldn't have to see anyone else. As the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes turned to hours, I stayed there on my bed and just kept staring at the image in my mind.
My brooding was eventually interrupted by the sound of my door being opened and someone loudly making their way into my apartment. Ordinarily, such a thing wouldn't have bothered me. I got used to people bursting in and out of my apartment but that day it felt as though the way that everyone felt free to just enter my place whenever they wished to do so seemed to somehow illustrated the way that all of the more unpleasant aspects of existence were free to enter my life despite whatever defenses I might come up with against them.
"Hey Jerry," I heard Kramer shout,"have you seen Brenda?" I found myself flinching slightly at the sound of his voice. That often seemed to happen. Perhaps it was because his voice always sounded as though it were more than a few decibels too loud and his voice seemed to speak of some sort of insanity within Kramer's psyche much more clearly than whatever he was actually using his voice to say.
"Wha'?," I mumbled because coming up with anything more complex than that seemed to be beyond me. Kramer rambled on excitedly about how Brenda was a goat he somehow obtained from some petting zoo and how he felt that the milk he got from her would be nutritious and save him money but the goat apparently managed to escape when Kramer was out getting a pedicure as he had often been doing recently and he wanted to see if Brenda had wandered into my place. Usually, in situations like this, I would try and discuss with Kramer the absurdity of everything but I couldn't seem to gather up enough energy to care so I sighed and said,"Sure, fine. Whatever." I then closed my eyes and tried to avoid thinking as I heard Kramer checking for his stupid goat in all of my closets and under my furniture so loudly that I thought for sure the neighbors would being calling to complain about the noise.
When Kramer had satisfied himself that his goat hadn't wandered into my apartment and rushed out of my apartment as awkwardly as he came in, I expected only the briefest of respites before something annoying happened but ended up getting an even briefer one.
"Jerry," George frantically called out as he flung my door open and rushed inside,"You've got to help me. You shop at that new supermarket four blocks over, right? Did you get any lunch meat the last time you were there? Because I am CONVINCED that the butcher has been putting some weird spice in my food ever since he saw me flirting with his wife."
I couldn't bring myself to say anything but that didn't seem to matter because George had already begun going through my fridge anyway. He eventually took out a package of roast beef off a shelf in there and began tasting it with a look on his face that showed he was mentally comparing it to some lunch me that he himself had purchased. I found myself wondering if Kramer would also have not bothered waiting for me to respond if I hadn't said anything when he came in to look for his goat.
"I knew it," George suddenly shouted with great conviction as he placed the now almost empty package of roast beef back inside the fridge,"Anyway, I suppose I'd better go get ready. You should, too, Jerry. Elaine's rehearsal dinner starts in an hour and a half. We SURE don't want to be late."George then left the apartment and entered the hallway. The bright lights on the hallway ceiling were probably reflecting off his little bald head as he reached back to close the door but I wouldn't know for sure because I was still burying my face in my pillow in a vain attempt to make the world go away.
Thousands of thoughts continued to race around my poor skull. Elaine was actually getting married. She was REALLY going to go through with it. I was no longer able to convince myself that she'd break it off and everything would continue to be as it has been for the rest of eternity. She was marrying someone else and there was nothing I could do about it. Oh, I figured I could go over to her place and make some big long speech about how she should call off the wedding and get back together with me because I was madly in love with her. Elaine's always been a really nice person so I at least know that she wouldn't simply laugh in my face. All that I could see coming from me doing that would be her staying up all night having a long, painful talk with me about why she had to marry the stockbroker. After all, what did I have to offer her?
I supposed I could go drink a toast to her at the rehearsal dinner and dance with her at the reception after she married that stockbroker. I could continue to play the part of the casual friend, of the old chum that she and her idiot stockbroker husband could invite to parties along with twenty or so other acquaintances. Actually, I knew that there was no way I could possibly do that. The thought of trying my best to look innocent and carefree while standing around making meaningless, pointless small talk with the woman I'm madly in love with at a thousand pointless social functions that I would undoubtedly end up running into Elaine and her new husband at would make me go insane. Such a life would surely be unbearable.
"Yeah, right, as if my life hasn't been completely messed up for a long time now," I thought to myself bitterly,"My two best friends in the world didn't even begin to notice how miserable I was when they saw me just now."
A lot of things seemed as though they were starting to look a lot clearer at that point. I realized then that my whole life at that time consisted of going along with whatever insane schemes my "friends" came up with and hoping fervently that enough people continued to find me funny.
Just then, I decided that I had enough. I was sick of getting up on stage and begging an indifferent world to like me. I was tired of pretending to care about whatever childish ideas the lunatics that I called "friend" came up with each day.
I knew what I had to do. I gathered together a few of my belongings and left the landlord a phone message containing instructions about what to do with the rest. I drove until I reached some random town and decided to settle there. It was a small suburb outside Cleveland and I lived off the money I made telling jokes to drunk people until I was able to get a job in the mail room of some large, faceless corporation that operates out of a skyscraper in downtown Cleveland.
That was almost twenty years ago. Much has happened since then. I've had a local barber turn my unkempt hair that was approaching the longish side into a hairdo that was neat and presentable. I've donated every piece of clothing that I was even a little comfortable in to charity store and purchased clothes that are far better for navigating the business world but far less comfortable. I've married a woman I don't love even a little bit because she was the daughter of my boss and I've had two children with her that I am thankfully on too many business trips to see. I've made friend with several sane, sensible people that bore the living daylights out of me. I've risen quickly in the company and now am in charge of numerous other employees whom I order around as though they are slaves.
For an unbearably long time, I've gone through most of my days feeling dead inside. The only times when I feel at all alive are moments like these when I'm just sitting up late at night and thinking over all the wild times I had back in New York. Often, I find myself calling up images of Elaine inside my head because often that seems to be the only way I can manage to continue with this bleak existence. I picture her smile or the way that her eyes lit up when she laughed and everything seems to be tolerable for at least a short while. Many times I can't help wondering whether she thinks of me or of the time that we were together but I find that impossible to believe. I also often find myself wondering what could have been done to keep everything from crashing down around me but am unable to think of a single thing. Undoubtedly, that is what wounds me the deepest.