The Boys
Created | Updated Jun 21, 2005
The Boys
A soft, warm breeze is coming in from the Atlantic Ocean. The sun is shining, as it does most of the year. The temperature is 32°C ; it is hot.
Four boys are sitting on the sand at the beach, staring out at the sea. One of them has a radio and they all listen to the heavy rock music. I call them boys, but they are really men. They are over thirty.
They look like boys because they have been boys for such a long time. They are burnt dark brown, their hair is bleached from the sun. They are dressed only in shorts and do not wear shoes. Evenry day they sit in the sand and smoke pot.
All these four boys still live with their elderly parentes, with whom they have lost all contact. From time to time one or the other gets a job for a short time. They do not hold their jobs for long because years of smoking pot has dulled their brains. When they do not have money for pot, they drink alcohol because they need to be high all the time; life is not much fun for them if they are not high.
During the last four months they have buried three of their friends. All had died in motorbike accidents because of pot and drink. They lost their sense of responsibility. With each death, they all got high and drunk and cried a lot for three days. One of the boys got wild at a religious service and had to be led outside.
They enjoyed going to the hospital, then to the wake and finally to the burial. A sense of honour was involved there and it gave them something to do. It gave them a chance to show how muh they loved that “brother” and how they stuck with him even in death. After each hospital visit, wake and burial, they went back to the beach and talked about all the details they had noticed, over and over, day after day. How they had sort of wandered in, looked at the body, respectfully shook hands with the mourners and walked out in line.
They talked for days about how they had dressed up not knowing that always there was something wrong about their clothes, the fashion was not quite right, they stood out. Most of them had pleasant, innocent faces and some were very good looking. They all walked with an easy swing of their legs and smiled a lot, but at the funerals they looked exaggeratedly serious, like bad actors.
There are thousands exactly like these young men in the country of fools. They have no hope for a normal life, marriage, work, babies, an apartment, a car. They live from one rock concert to another, from one burial or barbecue to another and nothing can shock them out of their present alienation.
I know one of them very well and I remember when he was a bright little boy, always joking intelligently and saving every penny. He was very good working with his hands and could fix almost anything. Two nights ago, as he came home drunk at two o’clock in the morning, he went on a rampage because he could not remember where he had hidden his drug.
I wonder what will happen to these young men in the next ten years.... and beyond.
A soft, warm breeze is coming in from the Atlantic Ocean. The sun is shining, as it does most of the year. The temperature is 32°C ; it is hot.
Four boys are sitting on the sand at the beach, staring out at the sea. One of them has a radio and they all listen to the heavy rock music. I call them boys, but they are really men. They are over thirty.
They look like boys because they have been boys for such a long time. They are burnt dark brown, their hair is bleached from the sun. They are dressed only in shorts and do not wear shoes. Evenry day they sit in the sand and smoke pot.
All these four boys still live with their elderly parentes, with whom they have lost all contact. From time to time one or the other gets a job for a short time. They do not hold their jobs for long because years of smoking pot has dulled their brains. When they do not have money for pot, they drink alcohol because they need to be high all the time; life is not much fun for them if they are not high.
During the last four months they have buried three of their friends. All had died in motorbike accidents because of pot and drink. They lost their sense of responsibility. With each death, they all got high and drunk and cried a lot for three days. One of the boys got wild at a religious service and had to be led outside.
They enjoyed going to the hospital, then to the wake and finally to the burial. A sense of honour was involved there and it gave them something to do. It gave them a chance to show how muh they loved that “brother” and how they stuck with him even in death. After each hospital visit, wake and burial, they went back to the beach and talked about all the details they had noticed, over and over, day after day. How they had sort of wandered in, looked at the body, respectfully shook hands with the mourners and walked out in line.
They talked for days about how they had dressed up not knowing that always there was something wrong about their clothes, the fashion was not quite right, they stood out. Most of them had pleasant, innocent faces and some were very good looking. They all walked with an easy swing of their legs and smiled a lot, but at the funerals they looked exaggeratedly serious, like bad actors.
There are thousands exactly like these young men in the country of fools. They have no hope for a normal life, marriage, work, babies, an apartment, a car. They live from one rock concert to another, from one burial or barbecue to another and nothing can shock them out of their present alienation.
I know one of them very well and I remember when he was a bright little boy, always joking intelligently and saving every penny. He was very good working with his hands and could fix almost anything. Two nights ago, as he came home drunk at two o’clock in the morning, he went on a rampage because he could not remember where he had hidden his drug.
I wonder what will happen to these young men in the next ten years.... and beyond.
