Scene 3: "Sunday"

The sun has been up for several hours, and it pours light through the curtains of his bedroom window as he takes a moment to wake up and establish himself. He braces for the gravity of a Monday morning, but as he opens his eyes on the day, he is met with the soft relief of a Sunday. A wide-open day with nothing to do, and no responsibilities to meet. The weather outside is exactly what one would expect out of a July day in San Francisco. The sun peaks out from behind the fog by mid-morning, and all that remains are a few puffy clouds underneath a bright California sun. Still lying in bed, he is momentarily charmed by what lies beyond the window, and he considers what to make of his day. He had heard about some beautiful hiking trails at a place called Lands End Lookout, complete with stunning views of the blue Pacific and the Golden Gate Bridge. The idea entertains him, and most of him wants to go, but more of him wants to avoid the profound sadness that he might find in going alone, without any companion to experience it with. Plus, seeing other people hiking together would only make him feel that much more alone. And all those people would look at him, see that he’s alone, and wonder why. This, he is sure, would also make him feel more alone. So, no. No hiking.

Instead, he whittles away the day, locking himself in his room with nothing but his own existence to entertain him. The room that he occupies is fairly bland – not much other than the faded yellow paint on the wall, a twin-sized lofted bed, and a metal dress rack. The room’s only decoration hangs directly above the chair that he rests in – a wooden sign that had been left up by his sublettor. “ENJOY LIFE,” it says in big block letters. For a moment, he looks up at the sign, enjoying the irony of its message. It almost makes him want to disobey it, and he revels in this little rebellion as he opens up his laptop to watch TV. It’s 1 pm, and other than to eat and piss, he won’t close it until bedtime.

The binge starts with Bojack Horseman – one of his favorite television shows. It takes place in a world of anthropomorphic animal characters, and its bright, visually pleasing animation makes it an aesthetically pleasing viewing experience. It's clearly not real. He closes the blinds as the show begins, closing off the outside world and choosing instead to interact with the distant, fantastical world of the cartoon. The main character’s name is Bojack – a cynical and depressed horse still reeling from the downfall of his celebrity acting career, who often ends his nights surrounded by empty pizza boxes and beer bottles strewn about his floor. Throughout the series, Bojack remains in touch with his former agent, Princess Carolyn - a cat struggling to find her purpose in life beyond her career as a talent manager. He sits in his chair and watches several episodes in a row, somehow identifying more with the animal cartoons on the screen than with the actual people in his life. He understands Bojack’s cynicism and hopelessness, and he feels that he knows the inner workings of Princess Carolyn’s mind. He enjoys seeing himself in them, and he is pleased with how he’s chosen to spend the day, noticing that he’s lost all track of time.

It's now 6:30 in the evening, and the once brilliant sun has begun to sink, casting long shadows over the San Francisco streets. But he remains unaware of this, satisfied at his ability, thus far, to remove himself from the day. Time for Fight Club. The main character of this movie is also the narrator, and he remains unnamed throughout the film. He opens up the story with an extended monologue on insomnia, explaining that under such a condition, everything feels “far away,” as if it were “a copy of a copy of a copy.” This man lives his life on auto-pilot – in a monotonous, cyclical routine of aimlessness – until he meets Tyler Durden. Unbeknownst to the narrator, Tyler Durden is actually his own hallucination of himself. Tyler represents an idealized version of everything that the narrator wishes he could be – a brashly confident, no nonsense, sexually charged archetype of masculinity – a man who doesn’t evade, but rather welcomes, conflict in its most primitive form. The narrator interacts with his hallucination as if it were a completely separate individual, finding a much-needed injection of life in the relationship that he forms with his subconscious creation. Together, they manage to form a popular underground fight club to escape from the bore of everyday existence. Although initially successful, the club ultimately destroys the narrator’s life, and before long, Tyler Durden is abusing the narrator both physically and emotionally. Through Tyler, the narrator literally beats himself up, as Tyler is shown repeatedly slapping the narrator in the face whilst dragging him through a parking garage towards the end of the movie. Ultimately, the narrator realizes that Tyler is his own hallucination, and he finds control over his self-contrived “character” in a beautifully triumphant moment to close the story.

As the credits roll, he remains fixated on his screen, shaken by the movie’s conception, development, and psychological illustration. It mentally drains him to the point of inactivity, and he spends the rest of his evening in an idle state of indecision until he checks the clock above the door and realizes that it’s 11 o’clock. The 12 hours that he’s been awake have gone by just as swiftly as the 8-hour workdays tend to go by slowly. His sense of time tells him that he hasn’t been up all that long, but the exhaustion that he feels tells him otherwise. Yearning for sleep, he starts towards the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face, but he can’t seem to leave the room. Going to the bathroom would mean walking through the living room, which is where his roommates sit, absorbed in the spectacle that is Game of Thrones. Even so much as exchanging the courtesy “hey” upon passing them seems too daunting of a departure from the little world that he had carved out for himself, and occupied, all day. So, he just crawls into bed, fully clothed, leaving the empty pizza box open in the middle of the floor.

As he shuts off the lights, he thinks of the long week that lies ahead, reaching for something – anything – to look forward to, but all he can clasp at is the next time he can leave. He tries to recall the last time he looked forward to something that didn’t involve some vehicle for escapism, but his effort bears no fruit. Too weary to be disturbed by such existentially disruptive thoughts, he sets his alarm for 8:15 AM and begins his nightly comb through social media. The never-ending stream of selfies and salads and beach photoshoots and dog casualties only serve to frustrate him, so much so that he looks forward to the end of his queue – when he finally runs out of all the curated, fraudulent, masturbatory bullshit that he inexplicably subjects himself to suffer through every night. Who cares, he asks himself over, and over, and over, and over again. The answer is probably nobody. And yet, his eyes remain stuck to the screen, tallying one more viewer or one more like to each performer’s self-serving metric of affirmation. Several minutes later, the barrage finally ends, and he clicks the screen dark, setting it down on the dresser.

Unsettled by the day, he closes his eyes and attempts to fall asleep, cherishing it as its own unique form of escapism to indulge in. But he can’t seem to get comfortable. The joints in his back tighten and crack, creating just enough tension to keep him awake, but not enough discomfort to force him out of bed. Instead, he just tosses and turns, grotesquely twisting the alignment of his spine every so often to see if he can jar any of the cracks free. If he’s lucky, a few of them will relent with an audible pop, but he can never get to all of them. And even if he does, it won’t take long for them to come back and nag him once again for yet another release. Most of the time it’s just his back, but sometimes, the joints in his elbows, neck, fingers, and wrists also join the fray. The maddening process of relieving all these pressure points is one that he undergoes every night, but never completely finishes. He merely engages in the frustration until his weariness wins out over his discomfort, and he is finally able to doze off.

That night, his dreams are particularly vivid. He dreams that he is back home in New Jersey, sitting in his usual spot around the kitchen table, surrounded by family and far removed from the slow torture of nine-to-five office life. In the middle of dinner, his mother tells him that he is welcome to stay for a couple more days, and he nearly breaks down crying as he embraces her. This emotion, of course, is just in the dream, but he can feel it potently in his sleep, as if it were his true reality. Later, he dreams of coming down with a fever and not being able to go to work. He calls in sick and proceeds to remain in bed all day, watching movie after movie after movie until another day has idly passed him by. The bliss of this dream, however, is cut short as something calls his mind back into consciousness, waking him up and forcing him to confront the disappointing realization that the manifestations of his subconscious are pure fiction.

His back is once again tight, and every time he tries to jostle it loose, the wooden base of his bed emits an irritating high-frequency squeak – like an old wooden swingset about to cave in on itself. The clock creeps towards 8:15 AM, and he watches it in hopeless frustration as his remaining time for sleep, and for escape, slowly whittles away. By 5:30 AM, the five-hour goal that he had set for himself around 2 had long passed, and his annoyance starts to turn into rage, which only makes it more impossible to fall asleep. At 5:41 AM, he snaps into an impulsive moment of furious surrender, hammering down on his mattress repeatedly, and striking it in concert with an epic string of cathartic, biting profanities. He continues on this tirade until he feels that enough of his anger has been transferred onto the mattress, at which point he eases up, and allows himself to feel the tingling sensation that is left to course through the nerves in his fingers, hands, and forearms. He enjoys how he looks in the wake of this moment, and suddenly, his rage subsides back into weariness.

At long last, the soothing glaze of sleep returns, and it begins to come over him like an ocean wave washing over the shore at high tide. But just as soon as his mind begins to shut off, it is quickly called back to attention by a buzzing sound that seems to hover around him. He feels the sharp pinch of a bug bite, and then the buzzing continues until another biting sensation lands on his neck. He turns on the lights to investigate his trespasser, but he can’t locate it. When the lights go back off, the buzzing comes back on. He flickers on the lights again, this time for a little longer, but he still can’t find any bug, and he begins to question whether it’s all a dream or a hallucination – another figment of his subconscious. As he’s reaching to turn off the lights for a third time, he sees some movement out of the corner of his eye. He quickly flips the switch back on, and sure enough, there it is. It’s a mosquito, smugly perched onto the wallpaper beside his mattress. He takes a moment to stare down his enemy, hovering over it in victory just as it had done to him a few minutes earlier. A tissue, he declares, is too generous for this evildoer. He wants to smash it in, and he wants to do so hard enough that it molds into the wall, forever engrained into the cement so that the room’s next occupant can look and see the deed that he’s done. He closes his right first, winds it up over his left shoulder, and absolutely crushes it against the wall with the outside of his hand. The bug explodes, and his hand throbs as he twists it into the wall for good measure before ultimately drawing it back and taking in the bloody aftermath of his kill. All that remains is a tiny black speck on the wall, surrounded by a bright red smear of blood and guts. He surmises that it must be his blood, freed from the intestines of the mosquito that it had once sustained. There is also blood on the outside of his fist. He doesn’t know if it’s the mosquito’s or his own, but regardless, he feels proud, and even empowered, by his slaying. He wipes his hand on the sheets, and shuts off the lights for the final time. His head hits the pillow, and he finally manages to fall into a deep, complete, and restful state of sleep. But after what feels like a mere five minutes, he is jolted awake by the tenacious ring of his alarm. It’s 8:15. Fuck.

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