[Vince]

Synopsis: A semi-autobiography about a twenty one year old man who wants to stay a boy and refuses to mature. A view on society's standards about growing up. "Shit man, we're becoming our parents."

[sic]

Part I

Silence. Silence. More silence. Then, came the rings. And there were a lot of them too.

Shut up!

Shut up!

Shut up!

I turned the alarm clock off. Every single day, at the same exact moment, that little thing killed a whole world of mine. This time it killed me swimming in the ocean. Since I moved to this new apartment I regularly dream of oceans. Oceans of milk, whales in the ocean. My whole life is an ocean and I'm the little fish that dwells inside it. Sometimes I'm a coelacanth or a holocentridae. It depends. But I'm never a shark. A giant white shark, patrolling the sea and annihilating every obstacle it comes across. However, as they say, dreams are for dreamers. The question is whether or not I wanna be a fearsome predator who depends on himself for surviving, without friends, only enemies.

I'm a boy of twenty one years and my name is Vince. At least that's how I'm gonna call myself on these pages. I'm a university student, that's what the papers say. The fact that I have nearly stopped attending my classes is irrelevant. Maritime industry student. My dad works in a shipping company; he used to tell me the money is good. Apparently money is the only thing that matters when you're fifty two. The same doesn't apply when you're eighteen years old, sadly. My aspiration was to be a director. You know, like the young kids who watch movies, and say with all their innocence: "I wanna be an actor!" Then you laugh, you bend over - so you can look at their eyes - and you reply: "I'm sure you will!"

When you have finished school and you're ready to send the applications though, they have a different approach. My father is a straight man. "Directing isn't gonna make you money. You'll struggle to find a job and when you do, it's not gonna be the Hollywood movies you watch on Saturday nights. It's gonna be shitty commercials." And you think to yourself that hey, I have thought of this too, dad. You don't have the privilege of insight in this family. But out of the millions of directors, some are good enough to make it. Don't you have a little faith in your son? Maybe I don't want to be in front of a screen making calls and sending faxes for the rest of my life.

You're young, you think you can change the world. You want to change the world. You forget one thing. The world does not want to be changed. That's it. During two hours, during one evening, your life is decided. At the age of eighteen you will go to the university. By the age of twenty two, you must have finished your studies. Two years abroad - you want a Master's degree, don't you? Then, when you return home, it's another year of your army obligations. You're twenty five now, you must find a job. Perhaps a nice girl. Before your thirties, you should be married. Make a kid or two. Work harder, you have a family. Work for the next thirty five years. You're sixty five. Your wife died, your kids are married - and divorced - you live alone.

At last! Time to live your life! Now you're gonna spend your hard earned money. Now you're gonna have that threesome you always talked about. Now you can spend your evenings with your friends, the ones who are still alive. Now, now, now... Now you're dead. You died in your sleep. The kids cried a bit and then they went to the lawyer's office for the will. And your tombstone reads: "He worked in a shipping company."

It was less than two hours in my case. We had a talk, me and my dad. I agreed with him. What's the point of fighting when you can't win the fight? So I set off. Three years later, it's the present. I moved out of my parents' house. They said they weren’t willing to pay for a punk, a lazy failure who wasted his days drinking coffees with his "buddies". I don't hold a grudge against them. They were right, I would do the same if I were in their shoes - maybe that's because they raised me with their own beliefs and passed them down to me, I don't know.

Anyway, I'm my own man now, or should I say my own boy? The alarm clock rang again. I removed the batteries with a violent move. Such an easy thing. You remove its core and it stops functioning. Can I remove my core, can I stop functioning and start living? I decided I could, so I dressed quickly and got out the door. I had a date with a cup of coffee and a couple of friends, and I never set them up.