Ego Death

               I WAS WALKING DOWN MAIN STREET thinking about Ego Death. My headphones
and Tom Perry’s voice weren’t enough. I could still hear the dude’s voice in my head.
“Once, I smoked too much weed and forgot who I was. I don’t look at the world like I used to.
That’s why I am the way I am: chill, one with the world.”
               My classmate’s confession came through breathy words. He stared at me––very
intensely––through the gap between his lowered, red sunglasses and his eyebrows. I just wanted
to laugh, but he was so serious!
               Surely, philosophy was the wrong major to pick if he was my classmate. What a bitch,
huh. I figured that if I’m still judging people’s worth so carelessly, then I must need a philosophy
major to fully understand human value––or, well, give up on it and judge without guilt. Or even
better, have knowledge and quotes and books backing me up so I can judge with style, Flying is
falling with style: I fucking love Buzz Lightyear. I FUCKING LOVE HIM, can’t you understand
that I haven’t cried as much as I did with Toy Story 3. Andy left, and now I left for college and
my toys are dead––and I’m dead too. But, hey, my Ego lies with me in the casket. It is Ego that
goes to hell, not the soul. Ego Death is a fucking scam, my dude. Pass the dutchie.
Don’t mind the running water that is my thoughts, though. I don’t mind it anymore.
               I WAS WALKING DOWN MAIN STREET, but I kept thinking about Ego Death ever
since my classmate’s victorious confession. I think he might have a crush on me. Is this flirting?
Because if it is, I have been doing it wrong all along. Next time I’ll remember to say that I have
no sense of self and therefore no sense of morality. I’ll cheat on you, honey, no remorse; and
while I’m at it, it’ll be in the shape of raw, violent sex because I’m not even a self and I am the

world and who wouldn’t want to get pregnant by the world? Birth a tree or something. Get
choked by the giant mountains, spanked by the ocean waves. No?
               I WAS WALKING DOWN MAIN STREET, and I remembered I had gotten my
bellybutton pierced last week for no good reason. Every time I looked at it or thought that I
couldn’t go swimming for a year, I lost it. It was the stupidest decision ever. I knew it was stupid
from the start because I had no particular drive to get it pierced––it just kind of happened. It was
the lack of conviction that convinced me. If I don’t want a hole in my skin to defy authority
through self-laceration, then a piercing must not really be that detrimental to my autonomy and
adulthood––no reason is the best reason because it doesn’t showcase any deficiencies. (I’m
going to pretend that the conversations I have with myself sound like that; I am smart, I study
philosophy without being a stoner. I am God.)
               The point is, I still did it. I still pierced myself and now I’m not God, I’m not morally
superior, and I am a woman, again. I now belong to the crowd of women who automatically get
labeled as sexually promiscuous by half-naked, visible-boner men; I now belong to the Das man
and my Dasein form has been inhibited by a piece of metal and a glorified open wound.
Don’t mind the running water that is my thoughts, though. I don’t mind it anymore.
               I WAS WALKING DOWN MAIN STREET, and I didn’t know the word navel before I
fucked it. I felt like a young, drunk rapist. I felt like I semi-non-consensually assaulted a girl
whose name I never bothered to learn; I just called her “babe” because it was cute and I had no
clue what else to call her. Although it was technically consensual because who would not want
me and my deliciously-small penis, it didn’t feel like it because I didn’t love her; and somewhere
in my frat-dude-brain my Christian morals shone through, and Jesus personally told me that sex

was sinful if I didn’t love her. Love, not pleasure, is the only true way of consenting to sex. Love
is only true, however, if you make a legal contract out of it. Justice doesn’t exist in the state of
nature, and Love must be just. And so, Love doesn’t exist in the state of nature either. It exists in
the state of war where the mountains will prudentially choke you clean.
               But who cares about Love! Here’s my real concern: If Jesus really looked anything like
Western art portrays him (regardless of skin color––I’m talking about the brows, the navel, the
beard), I find it hard to believe that he died a virgin. I find it easier to believe that Mary, the
virgin, had a baby than a 30-year-old hot Jesus crucified along with his untouched Jewish penis.
Come on! Do you think Jesus had children?
               Speaking of kids: oh, the perks of college and youth. I love the feeling of helplessness––I
mean, idleness!––and it is here, present, with us. Present in the flesh. I wish I could be an adult
without any holes and metal bars crucifying the small navels in my fleshy body. Whatever.
“Bellybutton” was not a thing until the 1800s––like many, many things. Like barbed wire. Have
you heard that barbed wire inhibits our deep, dark green forest? Maybe the world is fuckable
after all.
Don’t mind the running water that is my thoughts, though. I don’t mind it anymore.
               I WAS WALKING DOWN MAIN STREET thinking about Ego Death, D.H. Lawrence,
and the hole in my navel and how I could never be whole because death was wholeness for a
Dasein and––should I just kill myself then, if I can never be whole when alive? And how I was
such a common whore now, as opposed to before when I was not a whore at all without the tiny
hole in my navel, because that is clearly the difference in the whoreness scale––not the
wholeness scale.

               Then, as I walked past a parking lot, I saw the parking lot sign graffitied by an angel.

               Too pretty PARKING LOT.

​

               Who’s too pretty? The parking lot? Are you too pretty to park in this lot? Is this the lot for
people who are too pretty? And why am I concerned? Do I think I’m too pretty? Fuck, do I think
I’m pretty and does that make me a wholeless whore? A whole whore? A wholelessnes whore
with a hole? Maybe just a hole. A big, black hole.
               There was a window next to it, reflecting me.

Don’t mind the running water
that is my thoughts, though.
But it is I who minds them
when they call for me, alone.
Within signs and written notes
by angelic strangers with a cursive thought,
I finally see myself through a window

and I am whole.
My Ego, numb.