Jack lay unmoving face down in the grass. His brother Tim walked down from the back door of his father’s house to where he lay.
"Dude."
"Fuck off, Tim."
"You need to move, man. Your spirit will catch atrophy."
"Nothing 'catches' atrophy, numbnuts."
"Whatever."
"Now, Tim…" Jack continued, still motionless, his deep voice only slightly muffled by the grass, "am I mistaken or did I very clearly instruct you to fuck off?"
"I can deal with your hostility, dude," replied Tim, sitting down cross legged and taking out his tobacco and rolling papers.
"Because if it wasn't clear before, I'd be glad to tell you to fuck off again."
"What do you want me to do, man? I'm worried about you. You spend all you time lying about or consciously seeking out the worst program dad's satellite dish has to offer. I caught you watching a rerun of 'The Love Boat' dubbed into Japanese. That's self-punishment, man."
"I taped that episode. I can watch it whenever I want."
"You need life, man. I have an idea. Let's go to the zoo."
"I don't want to go to the zoo."
"You've always dug animals."
"I don't want to go to the zoo."
"Be life-affirming, man."
"I DON'T WANT TO GO TO THE FUCKING ZOO!"
There was a moment of silence.
Tim spoke again.
"It's not worth it, dude. She was a fucking whore."
"I really am going to get up and beat the God-living shit out of you."
"I wish you would, dude. That would be active, energetic, and dare I say almost life-affirming behavior. The violent aspect of it would indeed be bad karma, but still..."
"Tim, please. Please fuck off. Please, I'm begging you. Fuck off. Please."
"Dude, turn around and look at life around you. It's beautiful."
"It's a sterile wasteland, Tim. Wake up. And I repeat, fuck off."
"No, man, it's a beautiful garden, full of possibility and hope."
"You're in denial."
"I live in hope."
"Denial."
"Hope."
"Denial."
"Hope."
"Denial."
"Hope."
"I hope you fuck off. How's that?"
"Well, dude, you're getting closer. At least linguistically."
"Fuck off, Tim."
"Well, dude, I'm going up to the kitchen to get myself some orange juice. Don't worry, this doesn't mean I'm giving up on you."
"Believe me, I'm not worried."
Tim ambled up the smooth slope to the house. When Jack heard the screen door bang closed, he turned around and looked at the sky above the dark green pines. Damn. He had to get away someway, Tim would never let him atrophy in peace. Atrophy, not "catch atrophy." Tim was an idiot. And his tiny hippie mind had not the slightest understanding of what was happening to Jack. True, all hell broke loose when Susan dumped him. She was the last tie for him to the world, the last chance for him to really give a shit. But losing her was no tragic loss, nothing to be mourned. Indeed, she only left him when he had pushed her completely over to periphery of his interest. It was a stale and moldy link to things, it broke gratefully of his own accord.
For all the killer weed Tim smoked, he would never understand the glory of bad television. Jack wouldn't be able to stay at home were it not for his father's satellite dish, which pumped, twenty-fours hours a day, the most amazing quantity and variety of unmitigated shit into the living room. He could never tire of it.
"You see, Tim, you see, Susan, you see, Dad..." began the speech in his mind to the uncomprehending people around him, "Given the state of things..." "What state of things?" one of them would interrupt, surely. "Now we've talked about these things before. We've had long conversations about them in my head when you're not actually here. We live in a world of television and advertising. Look..." He picked up a pine cone and used it to change channels on the imaginary TV set before him. "Now, of course, I could choose not to watch television. I could read books, go for walks, occasionally see a subtitled film. But then I would not be a man of my time. I would be a dinosaur, a Luddite, a dust-covered reactionary. I might as well use a typewriter, listen to vinyl records, and smoke. Well, I do smoke. But that might be the exception that proves the rule, the flaw in my Navajo sand-painting, the... I'm getting off track. Anyway, I am a man of my time. But does that make me the passive receiver of slickly advertised consumer values? A non-thinking worshipper of the blasphemous sacralization of the vulgar object of desire? Not at all. I dive into it whole-heartedly. I go for the worst, because then I'll never fall, I retain the purest ironic control. True, I'm physically passive, because I'm a man of my time, but I'm mentally active in the only way I can be while still being modern. Or postmodern. Or post-postmodern. Ahhh..."
Jack felt weary and dizzy, and turned face down again. His imaginary audience had departed.