Fiction
Anything But Silence
A college student, a weekend-long bender, and the fear of being boring
Simon hated silence. It was his worst fear in conversation. Silence legitimized his biggest insecurity, that he was boring. Deeply boring. When Simon found himself fielding moments of silence, he grappled with the fact that he was a deeply boring person when he wanted so badly to be perceived as clever, intelligent, and funny — traits he wasn’t sure he had.
At the tail end of a weekend-long bender, the 21-year-old rising college senior at a local Connecticut state school was laying in bed in his small but adequate bedroom. He opted for predictability when selecting his respectable but far from prestigious college a mere 40 minutes away from where he grew up. School was fine. His summer internship was also fine.
His brain buzzed with the last remnants of drunkenness. The patternless splatters of his drop ceiling came in and out of focus. One window poured golden-hour rays all over his face. Although he’d always enjoyed drinking, this was the first time Simon felt inclined to stay drunk for so long. He rather liked it.
Simon was especially tickled by how much mental focus he needed in order to remember which day it was—the facts of his own life had become as elusive to him as the…
