It's my fault. It's all my fault.

I gave a Bukowski anthology as a Christmas present to a fledgling poet friend of mine. I got one for myself as well just so we would always have a strange literary bond. Last night, this friend calls me up after I'd been asleep for a good few winks. He's hating it. He's hating his job, he's hating that his girlfriend is always around, he's hating the general public and he's hating the fact that his poetry is far from acceptable for himself. He's caught the Jungle fever.

"I don't know when it happened exactly, but after college, everything turned gray," he told me late in our late conversation. I knew what he meant. This was the real world everyone talked about and simulated on cable TV shows. It's a world where you have work a demeaning job because you're in debt. It's a world where you work, come home from work, rest, realize that you didn't do anything besides work and rest all day and go to bed to do it all again the next day.

I caught the fever. For the first two years after sleeping with and ultimately ditching the academic world, I was hating it. I hated the poverty, I hated the ignorance, I hated the fact that no matter how much I tried to help in my own little way that things did not get better. I didn't want a plaque or certificate commemorating how well I worked. I just wanted things to get better. Then, a strange thing happened. I stopped caring.

People told me the hardships of one group, and I told them about another group that was suffering just as much. Women would look at me, and I couldn't see anything but all of the screw ups and pain from women long since out of my life. The people who smiled were blind, and the people who weren't blind were disgusting. I could sit in one spot for twenty-four a day and not mean anything to anyone. And it was easy to do. The real world.

Now I get by on the money. I still look at everything and shake my head in disbelief, but as long as the checks keep coming, I'm pacified. I can go for months without any accomplishments as long as the rent gets paid, food in the fridge and a couple shiny new pairs of shoes every year.

It may be better not to know these things. It shouldn't hurt to watch television commercials, it shouldn't bother me to see everyone with new worthless toys, it shouldn't bother me to see people dressed up, smiling and talking through conversations of no consequence. It especially bothers me when it is me. And now, I'm bringing friends along for the downward slide.

People stay in relationships because they don't want to be alone. People stay alone because they don't want to deal with others. Kids grow up wanting the money and accumulate enough debt to end up needing the money. The rich spend millions to become important public servants, and then forget that they serve the public. It's not right to think this way. It leads to nothing but trouble.

Think of the hope, think of the future, think of the possibilities. Those are all better than this. Those stories have a happy ending. When does the world start going gray? When you start to think about it.

I'll get through, though. I have my escapist tendencies. I can hide in a crowd, or a book, or a drug, or a woman, or a mountain, or a playoff football game, or a movie, or a new set of clothes, or an album, or a hole. Then it won't look so bad. It will look okay. It will look like it's not my fault.

But it is.

Who are you blaming?

Chris Jungle knows no cure for Jungle fever.