There Are No Answers

by Sean H. Doyle


There are no answers.

A lot of people will tell you that there are all sorts of answers out there, floating in the ether -- just waiting to be snatched up -- but they’re making that shit up. There are no answers. I know this because I have spent the majority of my adult life waiting for answers to fall into my lap, as opposed to just going out there and finding them for myself.

Yeah, I’d call me “lazy,” too.

When you’re in your twenties, you don’t really care about answers as much as you care about fine-tuning those feral parts of you. The fuckery. The imbibery. Those parts are very important. When you’re in your twenties the most important thing you can do is slide your tongue over as many different body parts on as many different people as you possibly can. Race and creed don’t matter much, nor does sexual/gender identity, really -- just go out and get your fuck on. You’re never really going to know yourself until you find yourself in as many awkward sexual situations as you can fathom. Nothing tells a person who they really are like waking up in a trailer in the woods with four or five hunters and their wives, mountains of empty Steel Reserve tallboys all around and the smell of burning latex hanging in the air.

Not that you’ll find any answers there, either.

You might think that you’d be able to find answers in speaking with your fellow humans, but that would also be a fallacy. Talking to other humans about anything usually results in them unlatching the top on their secret box where they keep their wounded ego, and then they release that Kraken on you. Kind of like this, but different. Most other humans are just shells holding broken pieces of light. Worker bees. Drones in veal fattening pens, answering phones and stuck in traffic. When they get the opportunity to wax on about the answers, you’ll get hit in the face with their dreams, their fears, and the sudden realization of “I feel afraid that I will die while spending time with someone I do not like.”

Not an answer.

I once thought that maybe the answers were found in our blood. I was wrong about that. I cannot talk to you about what I found in my blood, because I promised I wouldn’t.




Sean H. Doyle lives in Brooklyn, New York -- where he now pays $11.50 for a pack of cigarettes. His favorite pair of sneakers ever were the pair of first edition Air Jordans he received on Christmas morning, 1985. Sean believes in working hard to get better, and most of his writing can be found on his site. Sean would also dig it if you followed him on Twitter, because The Angry Owl God knows he could use more friends in far-away lands.