The Dark Underbelly

What the outcast teaches us about ourselves

Writer Charles Bukowski drinking a beer

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The Dark Underbelly

Scattered and drunk on narrow streets. Floating in and out of bars. Stuffed three to a room in midtown bungalows. Sleeping in till the afternoon. Living amongst the shadows. Whores. Dancers. Drug dealers. Drug addicts. Outcast musicians, writers, and artists. The aimless degenerate. The twilight kingpins. Those unbound by our morality and social codes of what “should be”.

We’re attracted to the dark underbelly because of our own lack of freedom.

We don’t have the guts to floor the car. We rationalize. We protect ourselves. We only peak at the underbelly of life; the pornographic curiosity of the other side.

The feeling is no different when exploring a dark, languid, inhospitable jungle as walking down the wrong street at 2 am in the big city. The eyes track you as you move. The senses are overloaded by smells, sounds, and the dull roar of hidden commotion. You’re in it. The human jungle. Off-limits, taboo, dangerous, and bursting with compulsive action and hedonism.

That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

- Charles Bukowski

Alternate Histories and Charismatic Drunks

We’re both disgusted and fascinated by those who choose to live in the darkness.

Our rules of rationality, morality, and longevity don’t apply to them.

We imagine the outcast, criminal, bohemian, or addict, as someone who has consciously turned off the impulse to think of “the consequences”. The truth is that they have. Those of us who share a sense of normalcy and routine in our life can relate to a tingling jealousy; an occasional grudge match with our values, morals, and outside expectations. We can’t stomach falling into the darkness so we explore it in our mind:

“Who would I be if I decided to fully pursue my music career and decline that corporate office job?”

“A stripper can make $1000 dollars a night and my self-respect, my moral compass, keeps me working as a secretary.”

There is a question that each of us wrestle with as we progress in life — what am I willing to give up in order to ensure, financial, personal, and moral responsibility? The music career that we pursued with relentless energy in our twenties hits a wall when you meet a girl you really like, or get a job offer you can’t refuse. In an alternate life, you told the girl the truth: “I was put here to create. And that’s what I need to do with this one life I have”.

But you didn’t say that. Maybe you wouldn’t have meant it. Maybe you were being realistic. In the underbelly, you see an alternate reality; the babies who grew up into teenagers, who, eventually, ended up here, in the darkness. Maybe they wanted it more? Maybe they fell into it on accident? You’ll never know unless you’re in with them, and you chose not to be.

The underbelly is a mirror of our dark compulsions.

We dip our toes into this darkness because we need to know. We escape before its gravity traps us. Just as some dedicate their lives to building companies that change the world, there are those whose waking hours are spent chasing the thrills of the darkness: sex, pleasure, status, money, and “real” people. In this respect, the dark swirling biomass, the human zoo of the underworld is as necessary for society as top Ivy League colleges. 99.9% of people can’t get into Harvard. And 99.9% of people cannot embrace a life of corruption, shadow, and hedonistic exploration.

It’s for this reason that many criminal underworld gangs like the Yakuza, and Italian Mafia, are permitted to operate by the authorities. It’s why Singapore, despite having the most strict drug laws in the world, permits alcohol and legalized prostitution.

Outside of our moral code, the underbelly exists in a shady proximity to the world of normalcy in which we all live.

Those who choose to sink into the neon glow; who forego families, day jobs, and a stable life, are simply the other half of humanity’s spectrum.

They are part of the caste of outliers; a collective of muses that give us “normal” understanding. Without the underbelly, art doesn’t exist. If you’ve ever spent some time in the underbelly, you’re aware of the wishy-washy mask that most people put on in their day to day lives.

A conversation with a charismatic drunk is always more interesting than a bar table talk with a suit-and-tie professional having a lunchtime martini. Outcasts have the best stories and they are almost always exceptional storytellers. Tragedy and triumph. Death and rebirth. Loyalty and betrayal. A sense of nihilistic purpose. The daily confrontation with the shadow realm. War stories from the street of broken dreams and empty promises. They court an audience like an ancient fire-wielding shaman, and through them, we laugh at the dark reality we ignore with our normal routine.

What would Icarus say after his fall? What would he say when he was pulled from the waters? We all want to know.

As always, thanks for reading

-Joe