Midnight Oil

             Every night, before I clock in to fulfill my purpose, I look in the mirror and I see nothing, because I am an invisible, intangible, ethereal being that has no need for a corporeal form, that cannot be captured by such primitive things as reflections or three dimensions. While I stare into the nothing and the everything that I am, I repeat to myself the phrase I learned from the ones who came before me: “I am fuel, I am fire, I inspire!”

            I remind myself that everyone wants me, and everybody who gets me loves me, but not everyone gets to have me. For I am the elusive spark of twilight. I am rare and pure and precious. I am the Midnight Oil, and it is my purpose to aid the late-night endeavors of ambitious humans! And so, I snapped my invisible fingers and took off toward whatever human soul was lucky enough to be my assignment that night.

            Last night, I was with a college student cramming for a midterm. Not thrilling, but it got my oil flowing. Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting with a very organized and diligent lawyer as she dug through some seriously dense documents. A bit more fun. I wondered, as I traveled instantaneously down from my perch in the ether toward Earth, what the night had in store for me.

            I silently prayed for another competent go-getter with a straightforward goal to accomplish. Those are my favorite nights, burning my oil for them, sitting at their side as they crack the case at four AM, egging them on as they finally memorize those lines, smash that final punctuation button and click submit. I am so sick of the ones that waste my energy. Please, O Universe, give me a good one tonight, I prayed. My oil is too rare and precious to be wasted on such sins as dithering, doubt and distraction.

            I found myself on a crowded rooftop a few minutes past one AM. Fun lights, fun music, lots of chatter. A party. Great… Parties are the epicenter of wasted energy.

            I couldn’t help but think ugh! as I looked around at all these humans spending so much of themselves jockeying for favorable social positions late into the night, trying desperately to get their witty word in, overextending themselves to be noticed. Don’t they know there are better uses for these wee hours? Any one of these folks could be doing that thing they always dream of doing but only ever mentally masturbate to. Instead they stand around flapping their weird lips and plucking their vocal cords at each other. Hmph. I digress…

            I began drifting through the crowd, searching for my assignment, because I must. I would quite literally stop existing if I were to go too long without performing my duty. I slipped silently through the many bodies crowding around a small table littered with bottles and plastic cups. No one can see me, but I knew all of the people as I moved through them. I saw all their struggles, their dreams, their goals and fears, all of their self-imposed limitations. Some of their inner worlds were alluring, some were even pretty tasty, but none of them were the one.

            Way on the other side of the roof, I found my assignment. Sitting alone at the edge of the party, staring off into the stars above and city lights below. I was immediately struck by the utter nothing I was able to intuit from them. I moved closer. They wore all black in the drabbest way. A beanie, boots, and are those sweats or slacks? I found myself suddenly confounded by their aura, or lack thereof. I was only feet away from them when they turned their head and looked right at me.

            She’s a woman. Or a girl? She had a beautiful, youthful face with the lightest sprinkle of freckles across her button nose, and the blonde hair poking out from under her hat was an almost translucent shade of platinum. She looked like the youngest person there. Should she even be around all these drunk, indignant fools? She looked distant, lost in thought, but the fog cleared when she locked eyes with me. I don’t even have eyes! I got a sudden rush of her thoughts injected directly in my mind, and they all coursed through me like liquid fire. I froze, immediately rapt.

            “Hey,” she said, staring directly at me. Can she see me? Fuck! That’s definitely not supposed to happen.

            “Uh–good evening.” Awkard start. Shit. “Can you–uh–can you see me?”

            “Not really. But I know you’re there.” She shifted in her seat, swaying and squinting at me like I’m a holographic trading card. “Who’re you?” She asked without a hint of emotion.

            I steeled myself to deliver my best professional intro: “I am Midnight Oil, and you are my assignment tonight.”

            She just stared at me with a skeptical frown, and then: “Oh. Cool. What’s up, I’m B.” And then she just turned her gaze back to the view. The apathy this girl is oozing! Who the hell is this little brat?

            “How can I assist you?” I managed through gritted teeth.

            I was feeling disrespected and was about to get up on my high horse to give her an earful when B heaved a big sigh and finally said, “I don’t know if you can. I think it’s too late.”

            “Too late for what?” I said, stupidly disarmed as I sat on the bench beside her.

            “Everything. Anything. It’s over.” She shrugged.

            “What’s over? Wait. You’re not about to jump, are you?”

            “No,” said B as she spat a wad of gum over the ledge.

            “Then… what am I doing here?” B just looked at me with dull eyes, as if the glow of the party lights couldn’t reach her pupils.

            “Good question. Maybe a part of me somewhere deep down still wants to try, but… I don’t know. I’m just… tired. Of everything. I’m bored of everything. I feel like I’ve been going so fast my whole life, and then I had the thought: What if I just… didn’t? What if I stopped? What if I blew everything up, or jumped the tracks, maybe even went off the grid or something?”

            “Alright. Who are you? What’s all this about?” I demanded.

            “Let’s go for a walk. This party sucks.” She stood up to leave. I followed B down the stairs, and when we reached the street she pulled a out pack of cigarettes and offered me one.

            “I don’t smoke,” I said flatly. She doesn’t need to know the truth, which is that I physically couldn’t smoke one of those nasty things even if I wanted to.

            “Huh. Me neither.” B ditched the pack in a trashcan and strolled ahead.

            We were in Chicago, I think, in the summer. I was dying to know this girl’s story. And thank Universe, she gave it to me without my having to ask again.

            “To answer your question, I’m a…” with air quotes: “triple-threat-celebrity-It-Girl.”

            “I’m sorry, I only speak Human to a certain degree…”

            “I’m a child star turned actor-singer-model-celeb-person… thing. Blah blah blah. I’ve been on TV, in movies, at the top of the charts, on world tours, walked in, like, every fashion week there is. I’m the face of a dozen of brands. I’ve had a role on Broadway. My star was on the walk of fame before I turned nineteen. I’m halfway to an EGOT for fuck’s sake. Even Pitchfork raves about me and they hate everything.”

            “What the fuck is that?”

            “Never mind. The point is, I’ll never have to worry about money ever in my life. I have every little girl’s dream ten times over… And I’m sick of it. All of it. I’m sick of being a product. I’m sick of smiling and waving and bowing and saying thank-you to people I hate for awards I don’t really give a fuck about. This weekend is my twenty-fourth birthday, and I don’t know what to do. Part of me thinks I should just sleep for a week and get back to it like a good little barbie. Another part of me wants to become an eco-terrorist. Another part of me wants to fake my own death and disappear to, like, Nepal or something.”

            I stared at B, at her dull eyes, as we walked side by side down the street. That’s what all that nothingness was when I first encountered her: Numbness. Emptiness. Oversaturation.

            “Wow,” is all I could manage at first. I’d never met anyone like her. What a profound joy it must have been to be at her side for all those impressive endeavors of her past. I can only imagine the thrill I’d have felt at helping her prepare to be on a stage before thousands. On TV for millions to see! “That’s a lot. I guess that’s why I’m here, then? To help you figure out what’s next?”

            “Guess so. Good luck. I’ve done pretty much everything worth doing by now.”

            “Have you? Are you so sure?”

            “Did you not hear my super-impressive, ultra-mega-It-Girl list of accolades and achievements?”

            “Well…” I began. And then it hit me: “When’s the last time you did something just for you? When’s the last time you tried something new or made something just for you to keep?”

            B went silent for a moment. I think I struck a chord!

            “When’s the last time you did something that filled your cup rather than someone else’s? What if you did something with the intention of only impressing yourself? What if you started something just for the sake of how good it might make you feel in the act of doing it? And who gives a damn about the end result?”

            B stopped in her tracks and looked at me. It was still insane to me that she could even remotely perceive me. Maybe that’s what twenty-four years of life at the tippy-top does to a human? Who knows.

            “Why haven’t I thought of that?” She asked, with perhaps the first hint of genuine vulnerability I’d heard from her yet.

            “You just did. That was actually a thought that came from deep inside your brain. I’m just here to assist, to help bring forward the parts of you that feel inaccessible, or that you subconsciously close off. I’m a figment of imagination, an ethereal being. I need an assignment, a subject like you who can make use of me. We’re in this together, B, but you’re in the driver’s seat.

            Another first: A smile! With teeth! A real one, not a grimace. Now we’re cookin’!

            “Okay. That’s cool. So, then… what should I do?” She asked me.

            “No, no. What do you want to do? What sounds like the path of least resistance? What would bring you the simplest version of joy?” If I had arms and hands, I imagined that at this juncture, I would’ve done something very expressive and theatrical with them, as humans often do when they really wanna drive a point home.

            B fell silent again. Staring at the ground, she chuckled: “This is gonna sound so stupid.”

            “Impossible,” I declared. “Aside from anything harmful to you or others, nothing that might bring you joy is stupid.” 

            “I…” she began haltingly, as if bringing herself to say these next words was asking something of herself that had never been asked before, “I want to knit.”

            We stared at each other in silence for a few seconds.  Something about those few seconds tickled me to my core. And then I was overcome with the emotions rising up inside her, and we both burst into cathartic, uncontrollable laughter. Our howls echoed off the walls of the city and up into the sky. B grabbed at her stomach, folding over with laughter, both of us cackling with such force I thought we both might explode. 

            “Oh, god! Am I a total dipshit loser?” She asked between gulps of air.

            “Yeah. You are. Is that what you wanna hear?” I said, positively buzzing with the sensation of laughter, which I hadn’t experienced in what felt like eons.

            “Yes, actually. Yes, it is,” said B. “I have yarn and needles my grandma got me years back, sitting somewhere in my closet.”

            “Well, what’re you waiting for then, you nobody-ass loser? Shall we knit?”

            And we skipped away down the street, arm in arm, like two fools gone absolutely mad. But all that any onlookers would see is a girl dressed in baggy black clothes, skipping alone, full of newfound, childlike inspiration, headed toward the most mundane thing she’d ever done, that will bring her the most joy of anything in the entire Universe.