Freedom Point: Part V

I want to ask some questions to the people playing pool, but I can barely hear Chris when he asks me, “Who do you want to talk to first?” He's yelling at the top of his lungs, and I'm trying to listen while my cochlea feels like it's going to start evacuating fluids.

We walk back outside, where we run in to some of Chris's old friends from high school. They're Mexicans, and are speaking in Spanish. I ask them some questions that I prepared while walking to Freedom Point. I ask them why they come here.

“There's nothing to do around here,” one of them replies in Spanish. “We're just waiting till we turn twenty one, so we can buy drinks for ourselves.”

I start to think that maybe what Seymour needs is alcohol—and lots of it, legally—for the kids. It'll keep them busy, I think, instead of rotting away in boredom and ennui. Hell, after being in and around Freedom Point trying to ask questions to people that either I can't hear or tolerate, I need alcohol.

I finish with the questions, but all I've heard so far are the same things the first guy said, so I decide to head back inside. There, it's as loud as it was before, and the clerks I spoke to before aren't there. I go near the pool tables again and look around. It's the same sight as before. I begin to consider that the disco ball hanging over the dance floor must have committed suicide, because I can almost see it hanging by a noose, which makes me start to think that the strobe lights are making me delusional.

This place is also making me extremely depressed. I seriously regret ever deciding to write about this place. There's something very disconcerting about this place that makes me want to get the hell out. So I do.

I say to Chris, “Let's get the fuck out of here.” So we do.

***

As we head to Chris's house, I see that there is no point, no big revelation or epiphany after visiting Freedom point, except that Freedom Point is pointless. I thought there would be something interesting to observe there. Something that would help me understand small town life. But eople there are there just for the sake of being there—inspiring dismality and suicide—instead of being cooped up in their rooms every day. That is the extent of their freedom.

My only realization, rather, simply an idea that just began to solidify in my mind, which I verbalize to Chris, is that Seymour sucks. Small town life sucks. And he just nods and says, “I told you.”