Miami Mean

He's what the locals call "Miami mean", with a duly vetted motto: "Living better means being better." He had to think that. He had nothing else to point to.

During the day interacting with wage slaves, monetary sycophants, prissy pretenders, jealous juveniles, gold dust women, body bitches, political priests, watchful pickpockets, opinion-less store owners, tongue-biting salesmen, and those so unaware they deem awareness itself to be their fatal enemy, he tolerated these creatures in a cloud of rude arrogance. Sharing the sun with them was a burden he must endure to maintain his life of unrequited guilt, rage his only pursuit left.

"Fuck you, I deserve this."

For every Ferrari, every fine dining meal, every day spent yachting, every single thing that kept the yawning world at bay, he justified with anger. Angry at having been born on a dying planet, angry at the easily seen falseness he as able to view from his high perch, angry at never leading the life he wished to lead. Having virtually limitless money was like trying to dig his way out of a hole whose walls crumble at every touch, an endless series vain clawings and scratchings leading nowhere. Sometimes he envied the lesser man whose sole objective was to buy a home and having done so, could declare victory.

"Yes, I deserve this lifestyle, but..."

He never dare finish the sentence. The idea of an honest living didn't seem possible to him. With his billions he was supposed to be "free." He could be as honest as he chose. He could make a movie, or write a novel, or paint the days away. Instead, he chose the safety of his inner cell.

"Honesty can take you anywhere - even the poor house."

The fuel for his rage was his fondness for fraudulence. What he'd found most interesting was he was not alone. The club of the super-rich and the famous hid an underbelly of perversion and deceit, other decaying souls also lost without their funding. Sex parties, slavery, driving servants to suicide - all in a day's work. This was their way of crying out for help - not that they'd ever take it. These beings take their wages in duplicity.

"They want me to die."

His contempt for his fellow man was based on the universal struggle for the money god. He could ask for love, but who'd love a fraud? So everybody's in on his destruction, taking what they can along the way. Why give them any regard? Why care about any of them? Without his cash, they'd leave him to die in a ditch in a heartbeat. Keeping this lie alive would grind his teeth at night into painful sores, stealing elusive rest.

"I must have been born without a purpose."

A purposeless man is free to pursue his lifestyle above all else. What else has he to do? No purpose equals no responsibility. He saw those who took pride in their work knowing that could never be him. To try to do something "real" would truly expose him as a fraud! His stunted existence perpetuated the need for him to drive himself deeper into his debauchery.

"Where is she now?"

He drove away his one chance for love. It never failed to flabbergast him how his illusion of wealth allowed so many people to think he could be happy alone. They imagined him with a different beautiful woman every night, a carefree playboy living the dream. Like all anger, part of it was based on fear. Fear that one day everyone would stop and point at the loser, a man without love. These were the thoughts that consumed him in his locked and secure penthouse.

"I don't know what to do. I was right to betray her."

Oh, God, how he had wanted to believe, to step into the Light at last and rejoice in a reborn life. She believed in him and that belief triggered his greatest rage of all: it meant he's wasting his life. He cheated on her every chance he got, "proving" his unworthiness, sacrificing his love so "she can be free to get a better man." All it did was make them both hate his guts.

"Now what?"

He climbed onto the bench by the outside wall of his penthouse. Engaging in his favorite activity whenever he felt down, he urinated on the unsuspecting masses below. What they get for trusting such an obvious asshole as him with an exalted position. With secrets like these he had to hide "where the sun don't shine." Maybe it was time to stop trying. Maybe he had finally hollowed himself out to be the purposeless creature he always professed to be. Then he could die without apologies.

"I couldn't have done anything else, right?"

And that's what made him "Miami Mean".