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I keep a foam cover around my beer. I don't want to feel it so cold against my hand. Or notice it gets warmer while I spend my time sending suggestive text messages to women who don't want to hear from me or who want me to propose. I'll rub my hands on my face, gouging my own eyes, not completely out though, coughing into my palms for something, a sort of relief. Six or seven gulps of beer that has been warmer but never less want to collapse into my chest. Everything is falling into bed around me. Branches are crashing to the ground. Roommates are fucking their girlfriends until they are both breathless and sweaty and trying to explain away a slip of a tongue, finger or thought. My phone beeps, chirps, cries; whatever. I walk over to where it sits and check it. I don't respond, I don't care. I'll spend my night listening to songs from men about the end of their lives, the worthlessness of their education, the hatred they have for where they are from and how they cry too many nights. I'll avoid their eyes and stare out the window through the cracks in the blinds at the light that shines on the yard full of the loudest dogs of my life. No. The loudest dogs on my street. This is life. Nothing before today matters. They just bark. I just stare. Someone will call, ask me to say something nice. I tell them I love them. Why not? When I love them the fuck other men, loan me money out of spite, drive me to counties I am not allowed to be in and want me to slow dance. I don't slow dance anymore. I don't cry. I don't miss the women who mattered most to me. I don't miss the women who meant shit. Everyone is part of a list, an entry into a phone book, a number, a regret, a promise or a chance. Some people collect plates, or cards, or pushpins in maps to show where they were. I collect heartbreak, lovers, hopes, dreams, words and pushpins in my skin. They show where I am. I am not calloused. I am not hardened. My heart still pounds for you, still bleeds for a different you, still pains for another you. I still smell you in grocery stores. I still feel your hand in mine on crowded streets in a haze of whatever the newest drug we felt would help keep us together. I still write about your curves. I still pray for you. But it all depends on the night. Sometimes I pray you die. Other times I pray you come home.

What it takes.

It has taken almost five years. Days of writing. Weeks of silence. For what?

I don't know.

This is shit.

The new me or the new new me

I took a solo cab ride home tonight. During this ride I talked with the cab driver about what I am doing, my age, my desires, and the meaning of words.

All I did was lie.

I told him I was twenty two. He said my glasses made me look thirty. I told him I was a journalism major about to transfer to UCLA. He was confused by this. I told him to make a right on to the street Tribune. He kept asking what that word meant. He was talking about Times, Chronicle, and Daily. He stopped at an ATM so I could take out money. I left the door open just to fuck with him. He dropped me off and I tipped him $3.95. I had to pay into that karmic jar; I work tomorrow.

This is just a symptom.

Why lie to a cab driver? Why not??

I lie to people I care about and to people I could care less about. I rehearse stories and scenes to seem interesting and appealing. The stories are true; and my retelling is flawless. But I feel empty. How many times can I tell someone about the time I dumped a girl because she interrupted my first viewing of Swingers? Apparently one more time.

I'm nothing without my words. I'm shit with out my stories. I'm worthless without my past.

And I guess that puts me at this spot I've been seeping in the last two weeks. Why I'm not writing her, why I don't care about this.

I keep cutting open my chest for someone to see. But I don't know if anyone notices. I bleed enough in my own head.

My emo heart has taken a beating, and I am running out of ways to talk about it.

I'd rather be

I got a letter from a good friend in rehab. I am supposed to be writing him back. I should have been writing him back for a week now, at least. I don't do it though. I don't know what to say.

That isn't it.

I don't want to write him.

I think I am good friend. I use being a good friend as an excuses to get out of doing things and for doing other things.

But I'm not really a good friend.

I'm selfish, greedy, calculated, needy, emotional and a drunk.

I don't even want to write this.

I don't want to write anything.