It was sundown before I made it home. Settling into my couch, I
nestled a broken heart and a hefty bottle of bourbon, and faced the
epicenter of the modern living room- the television. I had always
heard that the traditional cure for being dumped, deserted or
destroyed by a girl was alcohol and television and I was going to
adhere to such medical advice to the strictest standards.
Slowly, getting drunk as a craft rather than a
pleasure, I disengaged any function of brain, and just vegetated,
with glazed eyes and open mouth, in front of Friends,
Family Guy, Bones, House, True Blood, Torchwood, Misfits, Blackadder
and Modern
Family. Numbed by the line-up and the
liquor, I almost felt like life was worth living again. I glanced at
the clock mounted on the wall; her arms jutting out at awkward angles
to indicate what a grotesque and ungodly hour it was.
I resolved to retire to bed and take some much-needed sleep to
restore sanity.
My drunken hand spidered about the floor for the nook in which the
television remote was meant to be.
“Hello” the television said. “Are you
looking for something?”
There was whisky sitting on my lips. I wiped it off with the back of
my sleeve.
“You already have the best seat in the house”
the television piped up, “though it is the only seat in the house”
I cracked the knuckles of my left hand.
The television sneered “if you don’t have the remote, I suppose
you could say that you’re not in remote control!”
“Oh shut up!” I slurred.
“No, you shut up!”
I paused.
I blinked.
I faced the television set.
“Good” the television sighed. “Are we
sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin”
“You can’t be…” I leaned forward by the
length of a fingertip, but I was definitely enthralled. Being
allergic to such absurdity, my eyes squinted and when I did, I could
see every smudge and pixel on the screen.
“Yes…?” cackled the television, slowly
waddling towards me. Rubbing my eyes, I moved to the edge of my seat.
“Am I dead?” was my first question.
“Are you God?” was my second.
“If I were God, or any divine figure, I don’t
even want to unravel the insinuations of society I’d be making by
appearing to you through this” the television shuddered and paced.
“I’d make a strange sort of deity though I know all of the lines:
‘worship me!’, ‘convert those who do not already love me!’,
‘you must get up early on Sundays!’, that sort of thing”
I knelt in front of the television. The warmth from the screen thawed
my cool cheeks.
“You can’t be hearing me!” was my defiant
outcry, but it was hollow and unconvincing, even to me. “You’re a
television set. You can’t hear, or think!”
The television only mocked me for saying that. “You’ll have to
speak up I’m afraid! I’m a little hard of hearing! Ah, don’t
worry too much. It’s just your best friend TV come to have a little
chat”
I was arm’s length from the power-point in which the television set
was plugged in but an irrational fear told me that I shouldn’t
touch the switch.
“This is impossible!”
“You know, dear viewer…” the television gave
me a conspiratorial look, “I think you may be right…quick…what
shall we do? Anything might happen… oh come on! This is why you
don’t watch late-night television! You don’t know what kind of
adults-only shows you’ll stumble upon”
The television laughed, but looked rather disappointed when I didn’t
share the joke.
“Tough crowd”
“You’re not real” I decided aloud. “This
is all just some…drunken hallucination. This is me coming to terms
with my break-up. This is not…true”
“Truth?…been there, done that, bought the
T-shirt. Not quite sure what I need with a T-shirt. There is no truth
in television, but there is no real truth anywhere else either so
we’re square”
“This. Can’t. Be. Serious.”
“Itdoesnthavetobeserioustobereeeeeal!”
the television shrieked at a volume which showed pent-up frustration
and a manic nature. “You should know that by now. Shall I tell you
what it is to be real?”
As my heart skipped beats, my body recoiled in horror from this
thing.
“I don’t want to know-”
“Shut up” the television smacked me in the
face. “Do you have any idea how annoying it is to talk while the
TV’s on? Let me tell you a little something about what you want.
Your hopes, aspirations, desires, et cetera-aa-aa! You want the same
old things as anyone else; you’re really not that special. You want
to be happy, with a lover who you can call your own, in a house you
can call a home, and with friends who you can call when you’re sad
and alone. I know you do- I pretty much fed you this idea since you
could drool”
“Why are you saying this?!”
“Because I come in a box”
My fingernails gripped the carpet as something primal came over me.
“Look, no one told you what me and my sisters
and brothers are worth. There are no billboards or bus ads extolling
the awesome might of the medium of television. You watch me because
you found me and you keep watching because you like me. I can’t
tell you how influential I am, I don’t know exactly, but believe me
when I say that control you. Every day you let us into your homes and
switch us on, and we play our merry hell for you- because we come in
boxes”
Any onlooker would probably have mistaken the whole incident as
normal. I was watching television while television was talking down
to me.
“This is what you get for never dusting me and
pulling my plug every day. When you look into my face and just see a
dead box, you can see the never-ending nothing which I have to live
in- and it’s cold in there”
“That’s right…”
“What is?” the television snapped but my
epiphany had already struck.
“You’re a television- you broadcast trash, and
most importantly, you’re nothing without me. Without me, you might
as well not exist”
The thought of a powerless television galvanized my last scrap of
self-worth. With one moment of bravado, I pulled the television’s
cord from the socket. I sat a lick away from the set, looking at my
stupid face in the black reflection of the screen.
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