The Zen of Hatred

Hi, my name is Snotty McShot and I've been hate-free for a year now.

I used to be a hater, make no mistake. The worst kind. I went through life from one volcanic outburst of fury to the next, the troughs in between not so much periods of calm as preparation for the next gut-busting personal-Pompeii. I'd be practically incapacitated with rage during these times, my eyeballs burning in their sockets, my brain spitting sonic thunder like a thousand sociopathic howler-monkeys. And by Christ it felt good. It felt real, vivid, life-affirming. When I wasn't angry I felt scooped out inside, and I craved that next delirious fit of apoplectic wrath. People, I was a hate-junky, and in this town the next fix was only ever just around the corner.

But anyway, like I say, that was then. I'm free of it now.

Or so I thought.

I admit that I haven't looked into the evolution of hatred much. I don't know much about what effects a lifetime of bowel-loosening anger might have on the average human being, for example. I can only tell you my story.

I think I first noticed it about around this time last year. I'd be on the tube or the bus, at work or at a public gathering - the sorts of places where any number of tiny incidents can induce in me veritable geysers of righteous, steaming bile. And inevitably, those incidents would occur - some shitsucking mutant bastard would climb onto the train before the disembarking passengers got off, for instance. And then ... and then nothing.

Huh. Where was that instant homicidal urge, that paralysing, caustic spasm? I'd look at my palms and I couldn't see the the little crescent moons of broken skin where my nails should have bore down. My teeth were not clenched, my right eye did not twitch. The moment had apparently not registered at all. It seems crazy now, but gradually I took these various phenomena to mean that I had been cured. It seemed that all of a sudden, and with neither warning nor explanation, I had become calm.

I guess that's sort of true. For you see, the reason I did not notice the sudden rushes of blood-boiling, hysterical frenzy was simply this: I was at least that fucking angry already. I was, and remain to this day, in a state of permanent, all-conquering hate. I wasn't missing those spikes of furious anger at all - I was missing the interim periods of relative tranquillity. After a while I just didn't notice it anymore, like the noise of a new apartment, but make no mistake, those howler-monkeys were still there and in rare form, all set to shake the whole fucking tree right out of its roots and fucking kill something with it.

I can't be sure what exactly occurred, but I can say this much with confidence: at some point a little over a year ago, the sheer inescapable mass of my anger attacks caused the whole yin/yang structure of my psyche to collapse in upon itself, causing a curious sort of stasis. I had become calm. But it was a calm unlike no other.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold. I am a fucking black-hole of fucking hatred.