LOCAL TEEN FIRST IN HISTORY TO FEEL ANGST

SEATTLE, WA - The desolate teenage wasteland of adolescence is a redoubtable obstruction; one that each man, woman, and child has to face eventually. But for 19-year-old Brandon Gillette, who frequently sits alone in his bedroom with the lights out listening to Danzig and scrawling dark poetry on black paper, it’s a never-ending road of Hell. I ventured the long and lonely road to Gillette’s otherwise sunny suburban home to find out more about the life and times of this Iron Man of Personal Pain.
As I entered Gillette’s private “Cave of Sorrow” (it says so, written on a piece of cardboard hanging on his bedroom door), I struck my knee against an unseen foe.
“I\'m all black inside,” claims Gillette. “I walk alone. But I will strike up this candle for the benefit of your mortal eyes. The night allows me to see. You don\'t know how utterly cold I am.” I remarked that he should just turn the heat up a little.
“The moon and I are one; it understands me as no other mistress can,” he interrupted.
He then began reading out loud from a leather bound journal: “I have my books and my poetry to protect me. I am shielded in my armour, hiding in my room, safe within my womb. I touch no one, and no one touches me. I am a rock. I am an island. And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries!”
He closed the cover and sat back in his chair to allow me the time to absorb the magnificent weight of his words. However, he was most disturbed when I pointed out that these were, in fact, lyrics from an old Simon and Garfunkel song.
“You must leave my realm, never to return,” grumbled Gillette. He pulled the hood of his black silk cape over his face, and refused to speak.
Then his mother called him for dinner: “I made your favorite!”
The Prime Minister of Personal Pathos has a long road ahead of him. One can only hope that meatloaf, mashed potatoes with gravy, peas, and jalapeno cornbread will give him strength to see the dawn.