Drinking Decaf Feels Like Performance Art
The art of depriving ourselves of joy

We’re all phonies. Don’t worry about it. Maybe you're not, but the rest of us are so why fight it?
We bought too much. We flew too high. We drank till we passed out. We smoked till we saw God. We got so knowledgeable about coffee, we thought it was wine. We redecorated so frequently, that we couldn’t pick out our living room in a lineup. We married for money and got pissed we didn’t pay extra for love. We bought love. It overcharged.
We raised chickens in our backyards next to our bouncy houses. We cooked up suburban moonshine in our solariums. We created private rocket ships on our yachts. We hired doctors to live with us besides our butlers. We grew mango trees in the Midwest. We raised fish in deserts. We amazed ourselves.
We did so much yoga our joints formed a union. We plugged our cars in, next to our floor lamps. Our vacuum cleaners fought the Terminator. We got our news from comedians. Our food arrived on our porches almost cooked, but not fully, so we could still say we cooked it.
Our children became depressed. We sent our parents to old people Disneylands, to deserts, to oceans. Away.
America, the plentiful. What else could we do? Deprivation, some clown suggested. Brilliant, a jester agreed. It twittered and became a fact. They joked about it on SNL.
We quit everything. We were so tired. How had we woken up before? How had we danced? Made love? Made mistakes? Bad choices? Everything we did became performance art. Drinking decaf was performance art. We broke coffee. Our doctors put lipstick on us to make us look alive. The bill got us evicted.
Who were we? What was real? We agreed fast food was religion. We were so hungry.
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