Nice Guys Finish Last

A little ignorance can go a long way, John Barrymore as Mr. Hyde

I am tired. The days are shortening, the air turns snappy, and the sun no longer has the power it commanded through the summer months. I am blanketed in perpetual shade. The week moves quickly through a new, but very familiar sequence. I often see cars approaching, and I challenge them, no, I invite them to run me over. That, or I want to perform vehicular manslaughter myself. Except I don't drive. So silly things like someone ignorantly taking up two seats on a busy bus, will set off fantastic violent visions. I imagine myself repeatedly smashing the offender in the face with my bloody fist, over and over again. It feels reckless to think these thoughts, it feels good. I am angry, but I am weak.


Every night this week, it's the same. Get home, make dinner, wash dishes, pour a drink, and watch Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The John Barrymore classic. I often fall asleep at different parts, but tonight, the fourth viewing, it's beginning to resonate. Henry Jekyll is ashamed of his goodness, and at one point, is ridiculed by his peers for it. Being a medicinal chemist, he devises a way to allow himself to succumb to the darkest corners of his mind. As the gruesome Mr. Hyde, with the egg shaped head, the scraggly hair, the abnormally long, vein covered hands, and the hunched over walk of the slighted, Jekyll is allowed to live out the ugliest features of mankind. He rents a shit hole apartment in London's Soho district. He immediately procures the services of a slut named Gina, although she is quickly discarded in the pursuit of more women and good times. Drinking and carousing around London, Henry Jekyll's personality fades, and the evil Mr. Hyde eventually takes over and begins to protect his longevity. He throws a fit and beats a young boy in the street, and tries to pay his way out of the mess, but once Mr. Hyde murders Jekyll's future father in-law, suicide becomes the only apparent escape.


Night falls by 6pm, and so does the rain. The image of Mr. Hyde shuffling through the dark London streets comes to me often as I stroll the arcades. To live out ones evil nature, to care for no nothing, except for your own selfish needs, or to have little respect for life, so as to risk it wholeheartedly. These are the characteristics I crave right now. To be a mother fucking asshole.