I will die depressed.  That, at least, is what the depression would have me think.  Who knows?  It may be right.

Also, I will die unpublished.  Hah!  That's rich.  One needs to have written something to be 'unpublished', doesn't one?  I mean, if I am an unpublished insurance salesman, what does that mean?  Or, more precisely, an unpublished bleeding-heart liberal, doesn't that place me right in the middle --no, not the middle, that would be a special kind of anonymity; I would be somewhere off-center, even among the anonymous, perhaps more toward the rear of the middle-- of a crush of thousands just like me?  Oh!  The humanity! 

Oh, the opressive boredom of it all. 

If I did what scared me, I might be interesting.  I do absolutely everything that does not scare me.  That's where I have been, pretending that inconsequential things were crucial, manufacturing arabesque complexities and imposing them upon the moments of my life as if such moments were worthless without the application of a rude and vulgar disfiguration of my own creating.  Like an adolescent brat. 

I like adolescent brats.  Adolescents who are brats, are so mostly because they are scared.  I like anybody who is scared and admits it.  I especially like anybody who is scared and has not yet gained the sophistication (or corruption) necessary to produce denial.  Unsophisticated + scared = adolescent brat.  I like them. 

Of course brattiness is not the only way in which adolescents express being scared.  Some cry.  I hate that.  I mean, it's like they want somebody around them to act like an adult and be responsible and care.  Jeesh!  Others flee into dark gothic isolation and silence --with a sidelong glance to see if you might persue.  That intrigues me, but in order to figure it out it usually requires far more concentration and energy than I have handy. 

But brattiness --now there's a behavior I can get behind.  It says, unequivocally, "you all suck!" and, "I wouldn't trust an adult if it was the last person on earth!"  The latter is brattiness's way of saying that it really wants someone to trust, only it is getting fed up not finding anybody.  Oh, how well I know the brat. 

The brat and I are friends, even if he doesn't know it.  Indeed, the brat and I are brothers, borne of the same unsophiticated cynicism, and sharing the same hope that we might find in another the rescuer we need.  We brats doggedly refuse to resign ourselves to the inevitable --is it inevitable?-- that we must build our own rescuer within ourselves. 

I'm bored already.  We brats hate when our stories take a turn toward positivity.  What are we, little goodie-two-shoes?  NO!  We are infantile and self-centered, and we are not going to do anything about it! 

It's not the brattiness I love so much as the camaraderie --the not being alone.  I love the "we" in "we brats."  We brats don't want anybody; we brats are brats forever; we brats are family.  And it is a permanent brotherhood, too.  I mean, what goodie-two-shoes-loathing brat is ever going to grow up and reject my vituperously pro-brat platform? 

All of them.  The answer is that all of them grow up and reject the brats life.  And the ones I miss most are the ones who left first, the ones who knew better than to invest any more than a season --much less, a lifetime-- in the brats gang.  What are they, adults now?  What'd they do?  Rescue themselves? 

Huh.  Damn adults can't be trusted.