WITH A FATALISTIC SIGH AND A SHRUG OF RESIGNATION, I ATTEMPT TO CONTINUE THIS CHARADE WITHOUT BEING SO DAMNED DRAMATIC ALL THE TIME BY BRIAN POLK | ART BY JASON WHITE ONE SUMMER MY ROOMMATE EXPERIENCED SOME KIND OF SPIRITUAL AWAKENING, SO HE GAVE AWAY ALL HIS THINGS — ONLY TO REALIZE HE WASN’T REALLY ALL THAT AWOKEN, AT WHICH POINT, HE ASKED FOR HIS THINGS BACK I remember telling him at the time that he probably shouldn’t give me his first pressing of Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, but he insisted. Likewise for the old issues of the zine Burn Collector he all but forced on me. “Are you sure you’re not going to need this stuff?” I asked. “This is some cool shit.” He just smirked and said, “I just don’t want the things I own to start owning me,” which I think is a quote from Fight Club — a movie he must have just watched. (He also used the word “minimalism” a lot during this era.) So I allowed him to liberate himself by keeping the cool shit he just gave me. A couple months later, he realized that his new spiritual path wasn’t as fulfilling No. 127 as he thought it would be, and he subtly asked if I was super attached to my new things (his old things). I told him I was. Then he launched into this super sad sob story about how he missed having record and zine collections, and how he wasn’t the type of person who should be dabbling in spirituality, etc. Long story short, I kept his shit and wished him the best on his future knee-jerk life decisions. THAT SAME SUMMER, MY OTHER ROOMMATE READ CATCHER IN THE RYE AND STARTED REFERRING TO EVERYONE AS "PHONIES" I’m pretty sure he was supposed to have read the novel in high school, but was too busy smoking weed and skateboarding to bother. But then when we started going to college, he realized he didn’t want to be uncultured anymore and started reading all the books he skipped in his younger years. Anyway, between my one roommate giving away his possessions because
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