Joe 3

I was on a midnight stroll with Joseph yesterday. We’ve had our ups and downs, but I’ve grown to find some sort of reassurance through his continued presence in my life. I’d describe our relationship like that of an estranged sibling. I loathe him for his behaviours, but I do feel a kind of divine attachment to him, due to which I would probably be distraught if something were to suddenly happen to him. Nevertheless, since I had no other company, I decided to let him accompany me for a walk while we talked about life and other dull affairs. 


Unlike the company I’ve kept for my past midnight strolls, Joe was quite the mood-killer. And that’s coming from me. So very pessimistic about life, with an unhealthy obsession with being right about his misguided ideals and outright refusal to be the ray of sunshine I needed on my walks. For a man who craved to be outside the norm so bad, the only things that seemed to interest him were your usual vices in drugs and alcohol and sex, and even these only satiated his boredom for as long as his sobriety was absent. A bad influence in all forms of the word, but I was forced into his company for lack of better options.


This particular evening, he presented me with his usual philosophical arguments and I brushed them aside as ramblings of a mind slowly going, “If dung beetles ever develop deductive reasoning, they will think into existence tales and theories which justify eating shit”, he said.


I ignored the politically charged implications of the sentence and managed a chuckle. “If dung beetles ever develop deductive reasoning, I wouldn’t have to spend my walks with you”. He didn’t care much for my witty retorts.


Joe went on to talk about a girl he met the other day, rather crudely, as he often does. “I do feel your scepticism about life would disappear if you were to open yourself up to love”, I said.


“Do you hear yourself? A girl will give me a reason to live? Let’s just say I do find a person who has all the qualities I’m looking for and, for some reason, seems to be equally infatuated with me as well. What if I’m still not happy? Surely I ought to end it all then, as I have failed to find meaning in what you say is the most meaningful substance. I’m not banking my chances on another human, thank you very much.” 


“Well, you’ve never been in love, so you can’t really say. It’s quite lovely.” I smile, knowing I’ve triggered an outburst.


Joe snorts, “You’re a child with your silly little ideas that you think protect you from the greater truths of life. When you reach the ripe old age of 44, or 21 depending on who you ask, and have kissed and slept with as many women as I have, you will realise the immaturity in such fancies.”


I’ve never liked the term ‘ripe’ old age. I’ve always associated ripe as something fit for consumption- perfect, so surely the age to be ripe is in your late twenties or early thirties, but no later than that. But I digress, back to the matter at hand. Love. I chose not to say anything else to Joe; perhaps he was right to some degree. My idea of love was of those in poems and movies, and not those rooted in real life. I don’t know why I had these idealistic notions of love, but I’m told it's what everyone has at my age and we gradually grow to learn otherwise. Unfortunately for me, my first encounter with real-life love seemed to match my imagination, so I wasn’t privy to the adolescent disillusionment towards love, infact this established my beliefs even stronger. I’d gotten quite lucky, others might have said, in the way they do about high school sweethearts and childhood friends who get married. Mine in particular had not been around long enough for us to adopt these terms, but this made me more sceptical towards the universe in general than at the love in particular. Calling me immature for that seems a tad excessive. How do you not expect me not to believe something whose proof I lived through? After all, I'm not even of ripe age yet.


Joe didn’t believe in love or marriage, presumably because his parents didn't love each other, but neither did mine, so that doesn’t seem enough of an argument. I guess we are all just hardwired differently after all. “Must I focus on the more important things in life then? Like math and science and law?”


Joe scoffed, “Nothing matters. But I’m assuming math didn’t kill as many as love did.”


“I suppose so. But then again, I don’t think math cured as many as love did either.”


Joe squinted his eyes at me, “You’ll learn. If you live long enough to find out, that is.”


We walked the rest of the night in silence. Joe must think me a regular Pollyanna, but on most days I’m more of a pessimist than he is. I’ve found out that I’m quite a performative person and now, due to a lack of audience, I direct my act towards him. Or maybe I just like to refute people. Either way, I have a slight suspicion Joe sees through my little charade and plays along anyway. After all, he’s quite lonely too.

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