What Would Patrick Bateman Do?
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
What Would Patrick Bateman Do?
Hmm. I wonder what I can do with this.
This, is Patrick Bateman. Or, this is Patrick Bateman played by the well-respect actor, Christian Bale. I've always liked Christian Bale, he brings to his characters a certain amount of depth and sophistication that cannot be achieved by a lot of other actors working in the very same industry today. His intensity on screen can only be managed by a few others, and his role as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho demonstrates that statement to its fullest potential. His intensity in this film has the ability to scare the audience, and I was genuinely frightened by this man the first time I saw him, running down the corridor of his home butt naked, with a chainsaw in his hands. Patrick Bateman is a rich New York investment banking executive who has a psychopathic nature that he cannot wholly control. He likes to kill people for no apparent reasons, and he does so to unknowing victims that visit his home throughout the film - sounds like a b-grade horror movie already. Without Christian Bale, this film would have went straight to the shelves in the local Blockbuster I am sure, but he brought to this manic murderer so much style that it became difficult for the viewers to not root for his psychotic murder sprees.
The question came to my mind moments before I decided on the title to this entry: what would Patrick Bateman do? The intention of this entry really is to regurgitate to the readers what happened this morning at exactly five past ten, a rude awakening from my slumber that caused quite an uproar in my family. As some of you might have already read a few months ago, there was a similar entry about my harrowing encounter with the renovation workers from hell. It is probably bad luck, or karma, or maybe just a combination of both. It has been seventeen years since I have been living in this same house, and I don't remember a single year without any disturbances from upstairs in the form of a dozen electric drills. It is kinda ironic if you think about it, mathematically speaking. By living on higher floors, you'd think that the chances of you encountering with an inconsiderate neighbor who is never satisfied with his or her internal renovation works, is lower. If you are living on a twenty stories apartment, the chances of you experiencing such neighbors on the second floor is exponentially higher, since you have more people living on top of you than, say, someone living on the eighteenth floor. Apparently, however, that is not the case here.
I don't know my neighbors upstairs very well, in fact I don't know them very much at all. They have a very blurry and vague imagery in my head made up of distinct sounds that they make in the day and in the night. Children yelling in the bathrooms, marbles rolling across the floors, electric drills even at night and hammering in the wee hours. They don't last very long most of the time, but then you can't help but wonder when they are going to be satisfied with what they have. My family have been in this house for seventeen years, and nothing has changed a lot ever since we moved in here. Given, we might have created quite a bit of disturbances with the furniture being moved around over the years, or that period of time when I scooted around my house in one of those micro scooters. But that was a long time ago, and the only possible noise pollution that I might contribute these days is probably the volume of the music that I play, which really isn't 'noise' pollution in the first place. Anyway, they are always drilling something upstairs, which was why when the news of them moving out came to the attention of my family, everybody was delighted - for a while.
They were all out this morning - lucky them. So much for my holidays, and the last thing you want after sleeping at five in the morning is to be woken up to the sound of even more drilling five hours later. My sister was out at school, parents at the office, and there I was lying in my bed, unaware, unarmed, unsuspecting. And then it happened, like a great wave crashing down upon the shores, it came over me like a blanket of needles somehow. I jumped out of bed, stumbled through the corridors and the sound of drilling was all around me like a very, very good surround sound stereo system. Only, it wasn't playing the nicest sounds in the world, and I cursed on top of my voice to no avail, as my voice was drowned out by four drills bearing down on the floor at the very same time. I called my parents then, I told them to pick up four pairs of earplugs on their way home, and that message alone took me about five minutes to get through because the noise was simply too unbearable. The noise also overwhelmed the music I tried to listen to after I hung up the phone, which was what motivated me to take a walk upstairs to see just what in the world those people were up to.
The sound could be heard all the way down the stairwell, and I stumbled up the stairs with my eyes still not properly opened yet. The doors to the unit above mine were closed and locked, and the sound of those dreadful drills could be heard coming out from the inside. There was an official notice of sorts pasted on the gate, it was from the estate's administrative office. It stated the times the construction workers were restricted to start and end (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.), and the construction is going to last all the way until - get this - 20th June. Next to the letter, there was a picture of a cartoon worker smiling at me, and a speech bubble that says "Sorry for the inconvenience". It looked almost condescending, almost mocking. I cursed some more and went back down to my home with the drilling getting only worse upstairs. If there is a reason why I'd move to Taiwan and into the new penthouse that my parents just bought, it'd be this. After all, a penthouse is the highest unit you can get, no more neighbors upstairs to unleash hell upon us.
So, the question I am asking is this: what would Patrick Bateman do? The workers should be glad that I am not Patrick Bateman, or in any way related to that man. I am sure that he would have rushed upstairs with a chainsaw and started massacring the people upstairs, and perhaps staple them to the walls at the same time. I am reminded of the scene in the film when the girl attempted to escape from him down a flight of stairs, and Patrick is standing at the top of it and dangling a chainsaw over the edge and timing the drop. I shall leave the rest up to your own imaginations, but let's just say that that was exactly what I wanted to do to somebody upstairs, who whoever was responsible for waking me up in the morning. I can just picture him banging down the front door, stark naked, and running down the corridors with an axe. That'd be fun, perhaps an ideal for a sequel, Christian?
For the next couple of days, or weeks, I have made up my mind to get myself out of bed as early as possible and get out of the house to go to, well, anywhere. Things like that really get on my nerves, it triggers that murderous intent in me that I cannot wholly control. Be it an aimless stroll in town, around the neighborhood, or just hanging out with some friends - if they are willing - in a quiet place, I am getting out of this house between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon no matter if the temperatures are at 37 or even 40 degrees. I'd rather die from heat exhaustion than live with eternal insanity. Interested parties may ask me out from now until the end of the holidays, because I have a lot of mornings to spare, apparently. You'd be a lifesaver, not mine but those poor workers upstairs who might fall under the blade of my knives one of these days. As Vanessa witnessed at first hand this morning my rage over MSN, I was completely out of character right there and then. If not for the locked front door, I might have done something that hasn't a return ticket at all.
So, what would Patrick Batemen do? Well, that's not something I want to know, although I can imagine what he'd do with something lethal. He can probably slaughter anybody with a plastic fork, a stapler, a bottle of toothpaste, or maybe a stack of DVDs. When you are mad enough, you can kill anybody with anything, and that is probably a form of resourcefulness I wouldn't want myself to have. Instead, I should ask myself, would would I do? In that case, either go completely crazy or go out of the house completely. There isn't anything I can do about the noise anyway, so perhaps heading out would be a wiser choice. Sometimes, the stone age just seems like easier times, don't you think? You can club your neighbor to death if he is banging on the floors of his cave upstairs too loudly, and nobody is going to say a thing afterwards. Who knows, he might even end up as dinner on the stone table later at night. Times were much simpler then, whatever happened to that.
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