I made a decision that I would try really hard this time. Even though I didn’t want to. God knows just how much I didn’t want to. But I could hear my mother’s voice in there, begging me to hang on. “You have to try, Yasir. I want you to work really, super hard!” But I didn’t WANT to work really, super hard. I didn’t even want to work the normal kind of hard.

But I heard her voice while I was in that Intro to Stat class. “Everyone always says: Yasir is gonna do great, amazing things!” And I tried really hard. Even though I didn’t want to at all. But you know what happened?

I sat in that class, honestly about to cry but holding on, and I noticed once again that there were absolutely no clocks in that room whatsoever. So I took a quick peep at my phone. 7:33 A.M. I looked at the whiteboard and noticed something interesting. There were absolutely no numbers on the board. It’s a statistics class. There were only letters on the whiteboard in the statistics class. They weren’t even actual letters. They were Greek. And I thought to myself: Who, in this Intro to Stat class, understands Old Greek? It was 7:34 A.M.

I’m somewhere in Queens on the edge of the city, when the hunger begins to take hold. The opening scene of Fear and Loathing of Las Vegas plays on my phone and through my Elantra speakers which have protein bar crumbs sprinkled inside of them from a one month period when I thought I would start working out. 

Johnny Depp slurs his words into my ears, words I’ve heard a thousand times. I am entirely unashamed of my love for Hunter. He’s lived his life like a man who has always wanted to be a super spy but could never pass the entrance exams to the CIA. In fact, he couldn’t even get a college degree. He started his career as a journalist by lying about his work experience. You could get away with that stuff back then. Now they can just find you and everything about you. I would try doing what he did, but the only way into the New York Times is by applying for a summer internship with your college transcript and relevant work experience. It is neither the summer, nor is my transcript good enough. I also have no work experience aside from volunteering at my local library in the seventh grade. (I never got my community service ribbon at graduation.)

I want to make a right turn but I’m not in the right lane. I am actually amazed it isn’t the summer right now with how damn hot it is. I’m in a loose wife-beater and the shortest shorts that a male can wear. And I’m STILL boiling alive. I speed up. What the hell is this? Now I can’t stop thinking about it: Why is it so goddamn hot?! 

I hear Dr. Gonzo scream out in terror. It’s because of global warming. The incessant, unstoppable HEAT. There are some bastards out there, old rich bastards who have done nothing despite the incessant warnings of scientists and researchers, all telling them that things are only getting hotter. The sun and the sky have got it out for us, and all the helpless people have been betrayed by the congressmen who have got government-funded air conditioning. AIR CONDITIONING. Can you believe the insanity? The sun and the sky seek to burn us all to crisps and yet the treacherous suits are all quite happy to let it happen.

Well, they’ll all burn in hell soon enough anyways. The scientists too, if I had to bet. Though for entirely different reasons.

I drive with the rage of a man who may actually put his “wife-beater” to good use. The road is clear and my stomach is echoing with pangs. I hear Johnny Depp stumble around the Circus Circus with nothing but ether in his belly. When I first saw this part I thought that he would die in there. Not even knowing it was happening until it was already over.

I make the next left and see a Subway that I know has only brown people working inside. I once thought about going there one day with Connie, but that was also the day I was finally made uncomfortable by her Englishness. There was something in my brown blood that made it feel wrong. I once pulled out a tupperware container of chicken biryani that made her laugh. Then she spent the rest of the meal just watching and smiling. Like some kind of colonial anthropologist taking mental notes.

I drive into a Taco Bell drive-thru as Lucy trips out and passionately discusses Barbra Streisand in Johnny and Dr. Gonzo’s hotel suite. They’re all out of Diablo sauce. 

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Could you try checking in the back for my size? –I mean, for more sauce?”

“Listen man, we don’t have it, alright?” I drive away. Goddamn colonizer. The time is 8:54 AM. There’s probably a whole ‘nother class going on in that room. I left my backpack and laptop in there when I walked out. I sit in the Taco Bell parking lot and eat my bean burrito, while for the first time actually watching the movie. 

I shut it off and find that one YouTube video of a guy reading Hunter’s letter to a guy who asked him what to do with his life. I’ve listened to it three times now. Still haven’t gotten anything out of it yet. But I can recite the words from my brain like a song. Words are like music to me. Hunter said that too. 

“…to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania.”

My mom says that I’m an egomaniac. I would never admit it to her, but I’ve known that she’s right about that for a while now. She says that I think I’m smarter than everyone, that’s why I don’t take anyone’s advice when they know more than me. I think she’s right. It scares me but I can’t help it. 

People seem to think differently than me. I don’t know how to change that. It’s not that I don’t like myself, but I also haven’t seen much good come out of being me and not someone else. Someone else wouldn’t be here, in a Taco Bell parking lot. Someone else would be back in class. With a community service ribbon hanging at home. 

Goddammit it is HOT. Nobody can think straight in this climate. I’m sure one day I will find a cool day alone to find a journalist position that requires no transcript or resume. For now I drive back to school. My stomach is full and I’ve got to try super, really hard.

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Sante