Ishmael Rosewater Kurtis was born. He never agreed to the terms of existence, but he enjoyed it enough that he didn't feel any need to file a complaint.
Ishmael had never thought about his own existence, he figured those sorts of things were beyond him in a sort of way. He often found himself putting the job of knowing things into the hands of people he considered to be smarter than him. He was, sadly, a sheep. From the age of 1 when he started babbling his first nonsense syllables to the age of 29 when he was still babbling whatever the most recent opinion he had heard was, Ishmael just never seemed to see why people were so obsessed with free thought. For example, after he would get finished watching a movie his first thought regardless of whatever he had just witnessed was, "What a nice picture". The only exception to this rule was a movie he had mistakenly seen called "Bloody Exposure 6: The Blood Geysers Of Planet 79", He did not much care for that one.
Throughout his childhood, Ishmael had often been described as "gentle". He had never hurt anyone or even been rude, but because of that no one had ever truly cared about him. The only feeling that was aimed towards him was one of pure indifference. He would've hated this if he spent any time thinking about it.
When he was in the third grade, Ishmael had noticed that some kids in his classmates were selected to go to special classes because of their intelligence and he thought that he should have been one of those students as he did fairly well on all of the tests he took. That was the first ever independent thought that had ever been created by his mind. But because he was taught that it was improper to be jealous of others, he felt so terrible about thinking such things that it made him physically sick to his stomach. He ended up missing two weeks of school with the absurd moral sickness of wanting.
The elementary years of his life seemed to fly by like they do for most and in middle school it was rare for anyone to perceive the boy who had never done anything more or less than what was expected of him. The most notable thing to happen to Ishmael between the ages of 13 and 19 was getting accepted into the university of Lanesburry, the most prestigious university in the entirety of the western United States. Unfortunately, he was incapable of paying the high fees to attend, so he ended up settling for Pete Morts Community College.
At this school however he would meet a woman who he would fall madly in love with. Of course, this was only because she fit into all of the boxes that people had told him a woman he should be madly in love with should fall into. Ishmael was actual far more attracted to men than women, but due to the part of his brain that made those sorts of decisions being as smooth as a stone that one would use to skip over a large body of water, he never acted upon any of the dormant feelings that had laid inside him ever since he saw small recreation of the statue of David in a little rest stop outside the city of Indianapolis. Why the statue was placed there was a mystery that puzzled Ishmeal for most of his life. However, he never pondered his love for the woman he wanted to love, Maria Rune.
He had first met her when they were 20, in a class that taught people how to do they're taxes in the most confusing possible ways. Maria and Ishmael met by pure chance and everything that had led them to be a successful couple was a cruel coincidence. The truth of their relationship was that neither of them were happy and both of them were extremely closeted homosexuals.
They both graduated and they both continued to live out terribly boring lifes. Ishmael obtained a job working for a morally bankrupt company that held the Guinness world record for most sweatshops operated in the country of Bangladesh. Why they would award a record for such a morbid, terrible thing was beyond most people.
In opposition to the man she was seeing for reasons she couldn't justify, Maria was a journalist who wrote about sports for the local news station. It was not uncommon to see her at a high school football game with a laptop and a gloomy look adorning her face.
The couple never treated each other with any cruelty but all of the attempts at actual love were less like actual attempts and felt more like both of them doing what they thought was right. They floated through life like ghosts searching for a reason to do anything at all. Over the course of their 9 year relationship, Maria had been patient with Ishmael but on their ninth Christmas spent together, something finally snapped in her brain.
That year Maria had expected a gift that she wanted would finally give her life meaning and she hoped that through meaning she would finally be able to find some kind of happiness. All she needed was for Ishmael to get down on one knee and propose to her. When it came time to open presents however, the only thing she found inside was a football that was signed by every member of the Morts County High School football team.
This gift finally put a word to what had made her life so miserable.
Men.
She would leave Ishmael only 6 days later, abruptly moving to a lush island located off the coast of France, where she now lives a thought and joy filled life in an all women commune with her wife Whitney and where she hadn't thought about Ishmael in quite some time, but that's not relevant at the moment. At the time of this story's beginning, Ishmael sits in his living room, surrounded by New Year's decor, holding in his hand a letter to him from Maria explaining why she had left. It simply read:
Dearest Ishmael,
I Love Women. You are not a woman. Please do understand.
Best Wishes,
Maria.
This letter caused the Ishmael to think his second ever independent thought
"Oh."