The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

by Marina Keegan

I felt an odd nostalgia for my high school friends and the days when everyone shared the same world of people.

I genuinely fluctuated between resenting my hidden worship of their rural hipsterdom and declaring (internally) that their fun was a little too intentional.

We push and shove and wet whales all day, then walk home through town past homeless men curled up on benches—washed up like whales on the curbsides. Pulled outside by the moon and struggling for air among the sewers. They’re suffocating too, but there’s no town assembly line of food. No palpable urgency, no airlifting plane.

In theory I can say that our resources should be concentrated on saving human lives, that our SAVE THE WHALES T-shirts should read SAVE THE STARVING ETHIOPIANS. Logically, it’s an easy argument to make. Why do we spend so much time caring about animals? Yes, their welfare is important, but surely that of humans is more so.