3:33 are you kidding me?

There was a band once, that I played bass in. The singer wrote this song that shared the title of this entry. He was up at some apartment that was either full of women, men, or both. He looked at the clock and couldn't believe the time.

This was almost 10 years ago.

I look at the time now and don't even think twice. I'm drunk or high or both. I'm working on finding a bed, finding a couch, or finding my own. Or either. I'm telling stories of lost friends, him, lost ways, mine, and lost hopes, ours.

The clock on the bookshelf is counting away my heartbeats; it's inching me closer to death. I leave and the counting stops. It moves to the next one in the room. Or the bookcase goes to a new apartment, a new room, a new hall. And that things holds books I've never read, from people I will never know, but leaves spots for the books that you gave back.

Those books sit on my counter and I have no space for them; I have no bookcase. But I'll keep them, and find a spot for them.

I got a new bookcase today.

I hope she has room for my books, my life, my shit, and me.

tiburon

Another mid-afternoon in some poorly lit watering hole. The sun shines under the door. Ray takes off his hat and props open the door with a barstool. This makes you feel less then you did. Someone in the corner is fishing for pills. Orange. The same color as Ray's beer, or what is left of it. The sweat on your glass keeps piling on. So you take the forty-three steps to another bar she has always wanted to go to. A farmhand sleeps in a recliner. Some lady stumbles and shows pictures of her family which might be missing, or she might just miss them. It's a blur of rum and cigarettes. You take her hand and lead her back to the first bar. Not the woman with the pictures, but the woman the small feet and a taste for vodka. You spin her once halfway between the two doors being held open. The sun reflects off the windshields of passing cars. You lead her inside and play a song she wants to hear. An old woman finds a place to hang her purse.

Texas Plates

Another long day. Nothing to mull over, or try to fix, just a long day. The sun set hours ago and nothing will be better today then this tall can I am holding.

I can see your skin between your shirt and your jeans; enough to put my hands on, to push them up towards your breasts if we are pressed full against each other in the corner of a dirty club/bar/parking lot/bed.

But I'm behind you in line at AM/PM. You almost drop your H&M sweater three times while trying to pay for your cigarettes. Camel Crushes... You say them like you've never bought them, like some poor kid outside has enough money for them but not the dignity to get Newports and save the difference for booze.

But you never drop the sweater. Because if you did I would totally pick it up. And you look briefly at me; me and my can of beer. I smile. You don't. Or might.

I'd ask your name but forget and the whole non-exchange would be ruined.

So take your Texas plates and drive out of my life.

This hasn't gone where it was supposed to. Parts are true. Parts are lies. Parts are shit. I'm just working on getting things out of my head. I need space for new things. Let us try this again. From somewhere else.

Your clutch purse holds very little space for

the 8 quarters

I am going to use to buy this beer that will just put me more into the spot in my head where

I

forget to tell you that

I would have probably thought that

you were beautiful had

I not been so concerned with if

you were going to drop that sweater and if

I was going to pick it up.

There. That is a little better.

Time to close the window

For the second time today I opened this thing and let it sit here.

I don't have anything to say.

Maybe tomorrow.

My own bearded lady

The only explanation for

that can of man's shaving cream sitting so

proud

on your shower ledge is

that you are a bearded lady.

That's why you are always

first up

naked in the dark

growing your hair out

and so proud of that flannel.

Or you are fucking someone else.

death and my feet still on the carpet.

1.

Two weeks late the phone rings and I think I hear

tears or mine just start to fill that spot in sound

where you know there should be sound but something involved just cannot hold their end

of the bargin that is grief

and news

and condolences

and a map to someplace where it makes sense.

I fall back on the shit couch made to a bed and let me feet hang from the end and they didn't quite touch.

2.

Me.

Bill.

Smirnoff.

Tonic.

This is what you drank.

This is what you had me make you.

When I couldn't have a voice.

When I couldn't have a space.

When I had to wrap my own presents.

Those fucking overalls never fit and it wasn't your fault and that was how it had to be.

That wasn't your fault.

This wasn't your fault.

But I sat there with my best friend and toasted and drank to a man fifteen years gone.

I let my feet hang from the end of the barstool and they didn't quite touch.

3.

Random bathroom before a set of songs I felt I had to rip my skin open to get out, I'm pissing and breaking pills in half for time and chasing with beer and I get in front of a mic and sing about how all of this won't ever fucking work and you smile from wherever you are. You always smiled from that chair that you needed help out of and you fell from and yelled and screamed and cried and lost something that you could never get back. I could map that room. All I wanted was that fireplace to burn. Something. It never happened. I walked out on the deck and looked into yards of families that were what television said families were and I hated them and now I know my family was it. My family was life. Me wedged in one of those chairs, feet hanging from the edge, not quite touching.

4.

Fuck

your

middle

name

if all you ever need is

pussy

pills

and booze.

5.

You were the ultimate Booth.

Your son and grandson rolled into some sort of superhuman with shaky steps and strong opinions.

I admire your taste

I admire your swing

I admire your contentment.

But that was after the clubs, the cigarettes, the pussy, the booze, the service, the wives, the crazy secret foreign country marriages, the surveys, the second (first) family, the lies, the damage and then finally the three times I saw you a year.

What I really admire was the way you pointed, while holding your vodka drink, at whatever was wrong.

You always meant those points.

And I always mean to keep my feet where they reach.

They are mostly gone. 1 & 2.

1.

Some television with knobs

two

sits in the corner and protects me

from the poodle that is going to attack while

I dig my nails into a carpet that runs

under a wall and into a house where

I

Alone

decide I need pink chalk bullshit medicine for my tummy

and the oozy insides of some long prickly leaf to dull the burn on my skin from being outside

chasing cars

little girls in skirts

and this boy who has a toy I want

and a nest of wasps that some poor kid would die from fucking with in the movies.

Don't make fucking eye contact with the poodle.

Steal the soap from under the sink and pour it into the gas tank of my lawnmower

cuz we all need some goddamn bubbles

and that girl in the blue skirt will only look at me then.

Blonde hair.

Big grin.

Boy muscles.

Pushes that lawnmower so fast the bubbles don't even fucking show up.

The blue skirt girl doesn't either.

She is mostly gone.

They are mostly gone.

2.

"What about your frustration levels?"

Buy a lunch you can't afford and steal

french fries from a guy you admire for reasons you will never

admit or understand but appreciate that his plan is a plan and your plan is not dying.

"Or you'll have an emotional breakdown..."

Let tears well up enough that if you didn't have glasses on someone would ask about them.

The glasses, of course. Not the tears.

Keep the glasses.

Avoid the questions.

"We're good on trips, right"

There was a video of a river from really high up with no sound.

Be that river.

Be that video.

Be that answer to the question that says which person you know will be the mostly like to..

"You call at the worst times."

You can count on your arm the things left from that very first

house,

You.

Some combination of money, love, cat poison, personal safety, old age, the environment, social improvement systems and your own bullshit ideals leave just you.

That house is mostly gone.

You are mostly gone.

A New Month

It is 6 in the morning. There is some sort of snoop dogg joke that fits in here, but it's not worth it. 

There are friends on a couch, maybe the angriest man I know, and this woman who wants nothing but to take care of him. I admire them both, for different reasons, and some of the same. 

There is this other man sleeping in a chair that used to be his. But he owes another guy money so it sits more than a hundred miles away. He used to nurse in this chair. Now he snores every twenty minutes. 

There is a birthday boy, officially joked about being a man now. And there is the woman he spends most of his time with. She is crying. Apparently things aren't the way they are supposed to be. 

I don't care. 

I sit on a chair without a back. The sun is rising outside. I can't sleep. I don't want to. I've spent hours waiting for fights to break out. For things to happen that someone regrets for seconds. For things we, myself included, blow up to be better, more interesting, more exciting, more important then they actually are. 

And that is my life. 

When you write, or blog, if you will, for so many years you forget that the only things that make you different are the words describing what happens. I'm loud. I'm obnoxious. If you know me you know what I did last night. 

But sometimes I want to be quiet. I don't want to be the couple in the other room. I don't want to be the guy with the emo heart exploding. I don't want to cry in public. 

Because it's hard to be on the otherside of that door. It's hard to sit on this chair and hear walls being destroyed or built up. It's hard to listen. It's hard to be. 

I'm going outside. I'm going to watch the sunrise and figure out how to make it through the rest of Wednesday. 

I'm not sad. 

I'm not lonely. 

I'm not warm. 

I'm not content.

1225 or 7994

I used to fuck this guy. We met outside of this club a mutual friend was dancing at. He had an Altoids tin full of various pills. He told me to take what I wanted; I only took one. I was pretty fucked up on vodka sodas and key bumps. I remember I wouldn't shut up about how I wanted to be a writer. He just listened. At the end of the night we exchanged email address so I could send him some work. Two days later he made me breakfast in bed.

I had just gotten out of this pretty intense thing that I was way to conservative in expressing my opinions about and led to me just getting destroyed. In hindsight I probably overreacted, jumping from barstool to stall to cab to bed, but it was the only thing that felt right. Sometimes I would be floating out of my body, watching and trying to figure out what exactly was happening in these dark corners I was spending so much time. This guy tried his best to pull me out of it. And he did pretty well. I still had some intense self destructive tendencies that would come out. There was a night in his apartment when I cut my feet up pretty bad walking on some wine glasses I had broken in an argument. I bled and bled on his hardwood floor while he begged me to let him help me. I just kept drinking vodka.

He was no boy scout either. He always had pills. All sort of things. Some nights we would pick a color pill based on how well it matched what I was wearing and we'd snort as many of them as we could. Sometimes my entire face would go numb and we would fuck and take shots of irish whiskey till I blacked out or wasn't numb.

And I heard about some of the things he did when I wasn't around. There were always whispers about one of his exes and what they did together when he was supposed to be working. After the third or fourth time I heard this I took one of his friends home to show him that I wasn't waiting around, that I didn't need him.

But I did. I wouldn't hear from him for a day or two and be convinced he was finally gone. Someone else would get his breakfasts. Someone else would get his text messages. Someone else would get him. I would sit around my place with a couple bottles of wine and whatever sad bastard music I could find and just fucking cry.

In the morning he would always show up. Everything was fine. There was work. Or a friend needed him. Or he got to drunk at happy hour after work and took a cab home and left his phone at the bar. I believed him every time.

Until the last time.

He didn't come over.

He didn't give a reason.

He didn't call.

He was gone.

I spent two weeks stuck in my apartment. I would go out for fruit and wine. I had a friend drop off pills. I broke all my light bulbs. I threw out the shirts he had left over. I took bath after bath after bath. I watched war movies and cried the whole time.

Then one morning it hit me. He was just a fuck. He gave me drugs and booze. He bought me dinner. He'd say nice things. But I wasn't the only one. I knew that. So I stopped caring. I stopped giving two shits about running into him, hearing about him at bars or seeing him move on.

That night I went back out. I made out with some nameless stranger in a corner booth. I bought myself shots. I danced with some friends. And I went home alone.

The taller the can...

It's not every day I sit in a booth at my job and talk to a coworker about if you had a plan for suicide. Today was one of those days. I like that she asked if there was a plan. Like my house was on fire and I had to get out. Or everything finally caught up to me and I had to explain to everything to everyone. A plan. Well, there are plans. There are scenarios, situations, dance step charts, and assembled pieces of puzzles. But it is no big deal. I also have a plan for the money I'll win in the lottery. And a map of places I want to take the pills I've collected. There are a lot of push-pins in that map. I'm not one to waste. Sometimes. I've been most comfortable drinking in bed. It feels easier then drinking in an empty living room with no tv on. I keep waking up thinking I'm in my old house, the last one, the last day. The day I slept in the living room on couch cushions. The day I burned a bunch of things and cried because all that was left in that fucking house was me and the pots someone else bought for us. I keep looking at my hands and seeing the blood of that guy I punched in the face repeatedly. I was protecting a friend I just made. I was getting out the things I was going to pay a man one hundred dollars a week to listen to. Fighting in the street is free. And doesn't ease your soul. I keep putting money in a box next to my bed that I'm going to give to the county because they caught me drinking and driving. I also keep whatever drugs I am stockpiling in this box. It's a poor-man's version of the drawer I remember as a kid. My bed frame is wide enough hold all the bottles and cans I've been having. So I put them there. The stack of boxes in the corner of the room is slowly collapsing. It makes noise in the middle of everything. I could probably leave it there for years. I just might. There is never enough of anything on a daily basis. I run out of all of it. My skin is dry. My hands don't shake. My tears only show up in bars and booths talking about places and procedures to making things right, atonement, or a cure for boredom. I drive at night, and at day, and bite the insides of my mouth to keep me awake, alive, and interested. I spit blood into a cup from a sandwich shop in the valley. I smoke menthol cigarettes that aren't mine and ash onto a freeway that isn't either. I don't shower for days. I'm an experiment in the unexamined life that is documented. I scream and punch and pout and throw tantrums. I borrow money and spend it on snacks. I sit in the cabs of trucks testing drugs for quality and price, suddenly more knowledgeable then I ever thought I'd be. I sneak. I steal. I lie. I beg. I decide my own fate on minutes of sleep and liters of booze. I listen. I bleed. I write a bunch of self serving statements that may or may not be true. I exercise.

New Clothes

It isn't so much the feeling of looking down at your hand and seeing your blood mixed with the blood of someone you just met. And it isn't quite this desire to rip open your own face in hopes of some dramatic releasing of crows. And I don't even think it is the possibility of someone making a crown out of newspaper and putting it on your head and letting you lead a parade of one down an empty street.

No.

It is about being comfortable. Being selfish.

I am not treading water anymore.

I am actively pulling myself down

-or-

I am actually going to shore

-but-

I am not standing still.

These things always start one place and end another. They are shit with directions. They are shit with sympathy. They are shit.

I am sorry I broke your heart.

one

The first time I met your mother it was overcast. She was sitting alone on a swing set. I was walking around the park, the one across the street from the middle school, thinking about picking up smoking again. It was never really a habit up to that point, but I was giving a series of other things in my life a serious push and cigarettes were about to join them. I had on that red flannel, the one you used to wear to bed in the winter, and some hand-me-down jeans. When I stopped to light that first smoke I noticed her. She had her feet crossed in front of her and was using the heels of her boots to make circles in the sand. Her hair was covering her face and when she tried to pull it back some of it stuck to the corner of her mouth. She smiled and pulled a small bottle of schnapps from her inside vest pocket.

There was a day when I was half your age that I was at the same park. My great-grandmother and I were there. Some middle school kids sat at the top of this rocket ship that stood in the middle of the park. You would climb ladders to the different levels, the second highest had a metal slide that burnt your skin in the summer. Those kids were on the top level, drinking schnapps and smoking cigarettes. My great-grandmother kept muttering under her breath about them as we walked around the park. At one point she bent down to my ear, and pointing at the rocket said "Don't you ever be like those kids".

continued...

Lost and Found

The train smells a certain way. This one smells different then the others. Everything references drugs lately. Today, this second between the inhale and exhale is full of minutes from the summer. I stop trying to find it. I just let it wash over me and think about how it could be so much easier. Instead I'll drink malt liquor, tell stories about people I don't miss and ride this train alone.

This is your regret, backwards

Exhale.

Turn the key.

Turn some song up about someone else louder than you can bear.

Scratch at your skin.

Get in your car.

Walk outside.

Pound your drink.

Eye fuck gently those blue eyes over there.

Sip.

Practice makes perfect.

Eye fuck the shit out of the painting on the wall.

Sip.

Inhale.

(fuck. you accidentally exhaled. you weren't ready. the room wasn't ready. this isn't how it was supposed to be. it is ok. no one noticed. sneak this one in.)

Laugh. Laugh. Laugh.

Sip.

Fix your bangs.

Scratch your nose.

Sip.

Count ex-lovers on your phone.

Count ex-lovers in the pool.

Sip.

Pick at the shit in your teeth.

Pick apart the man leaning next to the fireplace.

Pick apart the woman in that short dress.

Sip.

Dart your eyes around the room.

Inhale.

Three things

1: A freshly minted woman is crying in a hallway. She is pouring her self out to a man in a studded jacket. She is covered in scars and bruises that she doesn't remember or care enough to know their history. I try to recall those days long enough ago that they are all happy. Maybe the drugs have caught up to her. Maybe the lighted scarf and glow stick wand didn't make up for the lack of cards. Maybe I'm too over caring to care.

2: People keep walking into the kitchen and turning on the stove. They are making ramen. It is various times between 5:30 and 6 in the morning. There has been too much this evening. And that is fine. Sometimes these things have their place. Myself, here, not so much.

3: This month is the end to a lot of things. The first year in a new decade and the final year for things. It is shit how most of this ended. But for some reason, in this house, where someone I loved lives, my head against a wall by a fireplace, hearing beds hopped on built up and destroyed, things make sense. I keep hearing loud voices from a hall. I keep hearing tears punctuate sentences that start with he. I keep being not be able to find answers. But excitingly, I keep closing doors, turning pages and finding things to burn. I had plans and goals tonight. I did not accomplish them. But that's good. Because the couple on the couch seem to be accomplishing enough of these things for me. And I don't need that anymore.

For someone, maybe

There is rain. And a large tree is missing. It has been weeks, but it isn't so much worth paying attention. Did it fall on you, your car, your wife, or your future ability to make a living? No. Move on. I only practice my speech for quitting my job while waiting to make this left. I also come up with plans for rapid evacuation and/or decent into hell. It is fine.

These are the perfect shoes for you. Enough lift to separate you from boys and enough angle to attract men. Those three months in that room with grayish walls and a nearly consistent empty bed taught you only how to keep from going back there. But nothing else. I can tell by the way you bite the lip of those unsuspecting girls you kiss.

A stomach turns and you can't tell if it is because you skipped a meal to keep the evening going or you are sick of the thoughts in your own head.

Decide to stop yawning because you aren't tired, you are just bored.

I was thinking about crying. Everyone turned off their phones. Everyone fell asleep, or is fucking. And I'm not doing either of those. At least tears mean something. Something shallow. Something forced. Something.

But fuck all that noise, right?

You can't even give away the parts of your life that matter. You can't fill the holes with an open casting call. You can't expect phone calls, thoughts, lust, desire, boredom, shots, baggies or the occasional peeping tom.

You can't keep fingers crossed for anything.

Everyone is mad.

Everyone is leaving.

Everyone will be gone on Christmas day.

So you'll sit on a couch and count ghost steps to beds and doors that get no use. You'll listen for the water to boil that will heat the noodles of your twenty cent Christmas dinner. You'll say something to no one at all. And the sun will set and you will got to bed.

(I can only imagine you occupying sixty-four seconds of space in my life. They are non-consecutive. No foreplay. No conversation. Just this list of how one would make it through an evening: 8 smiles. One on accident, more than a year ago, when no one knew anyone's name. 2 occasions in a spa and/or jacuzzi both times with no reasonable ambition or ability to control your actions. 1 car ride. 3 sloppy fucks. 1 and a half intense sessions of lovemaking (the half time interrupted by a shitty DJ and the constant looking over one's shoulder). 14 text messages, most from when you were too drunk to spell "miss", "honestly" and "soon" but 3 from a valley while I was stuck on a mountain. 2 sunrises, one with vomit, one without. And the rest of the time is just me putting your hair behind your ear so I can kiss you. I spent some time with a woman a while ago, and I put her hair behind her ear, and it just made me want to cut my fingers off so I never thought about doing it again.)

This is nowhere where I wanted it to be.

Sorry.

Live from some spot in the world

There's a tendon that is sick and tired of being in my foot. It is trying to leave my body. I totally understand it's argument. I've been wandering around this airport deciding if I'm hungry, thirsty or just adjusting to my new surroundings. I am about an hour into my layover. I have more than an hour to go. It is worth it. I'm in Oregon for the first time in three years. For the first time since I was on my way to Chicago, the great quarter life change that lasted almost a quarter of a year. I have less bags, but more baggage this time. I've never been in this airport, but it feels right.

They all feel right.

All these airports over the years. Either alone or with a love or a friend or a lay or still alone. They all seem like a vacation home I'll never own, a timeshare I'll never pay for, a friends floor I'll never sleep on; except for the times I have.

It is almost time for the beer and the shot combo. I've had one at every airport I've been to, except for that stop in Cleveland. It is me leaving my mark. A quick indention in a soft wood stool that will forget me sooner then I will forget what I wanted to say in this.

I guess I want to say this: things are good. And totally fucking different. I'm sitting in an airport and I'm not missing someones body, or looking into someones eye, or sharing a drink with a best friend. And I'm not full of should haves. And there are no what ifs. And I don't really care what everyone is thinking anymore.

But there are a few people I want to be here with me.

So I am going to do the things necessary that we can do things like this together. For a long time to come.

Coffee mugs for the damned

A couple of old men were knocking at the door. I was looking through the lower peephole that had been recently installed in the front door. I thought it was there because I was short. Actually it was there so I could be left home alone and people would feel better about it. I opened the door. It was Saturday and I had no shirt on. They were from a church I had attended a few weeks earlier on a whim. I filled out a visitor card and put in in the offering basket. No money though. I didn't have any cash on me and they hadn't earned it yet. The old men asked if I had been back since the first time. Then they asked why I hadn't. Then they asked if I liked coffee. And if I would take their gift. And if I would come back, or at least think about it. I said No, I was busy, No, I would, I might, I will. I closed the door while they walked back to their station wagon. The coffee mug they gave had old man candy in it. The wrappers made to look like fruit so you would feel better about sticking hard candy in your mouth that tasted like shit. I unwrapped one, put it my mouth, and promptly spit it into the trash can. I did this to every peace of candy. My mouth felt sugary and rotten. Maybe that is what Eve tasted so long ago; maybe that is what they wanted me to think. I put the mug on the proper shelf in the corner cabinet and got something to wash the overwhelming taste of sin out of my mouth. A little later I made some coffee to drink from the church mug.

I moved that coffee mug from house to house to house to apartment to house to apartment to apartment to house for a few years. I used to wrap it in this old t-shirt and toss it into the suitcase full of things I almost forgot. I never saw those men or the inside of their church again. I kept drinking coffee from their mug though. One morning in a kitchen that wasn't mine for very long the handle broke off. It was full of fresh coffee and a sugar cube. I was staring out the window at a yard like one of those robed fathers on Christmas morning in a coffee commercial when the business end of it crashed to the floor. It wasn't Christmas. I wasn't a father. I was naked.

Flexing

There is a fancy, nice, dress sort of style sweater from last Christmas. There is a beanie of orange and blue from a house a few houses ago, a couple of girlfriends before. There is a shirt left over from an art project, and pajama pants from a mother that wasn't yours but wanted to be. Other then that it is all the same. Another holiday. Another work week. Another Sunday distraction of beer and football. Or maybe champagne. Or pills. Or biscuits and gravy. Everything sounds good lately. Everything then some. I'd count the days to and after on my crooked fingers, using each separation to mark the rise and fall of the sun. But that is easy. The countdown is this: is it Christmas? No? Then put your head down and wait. Or plow though it. Or peek between your folded arms while your thumb is up and sneak a peak at the shoes of the girl who touches your thumb. But don't pick her. Pick the girl you think should have a life ending crush on you. You know what to do. Drink some orange juice. Take some vitamins. Spray some shit into your throat. Medicine. Then more medicine. You know how to heal yourself. Too bad you don't stop whatever happens between your sheets, in your bathroom, on the road or inside your own head that keeps getting you sick. Or at least let you stay healthy for the last eleven months. You'll be fine in the morning.

I know.

Because you are always fine.

Sidenote: go back to March. Stand up for yourself, your desires and your lust. Are you still sleeping in an empty bed? Does it hurt more? Does it hurt less?

Tomorrow, there is this idea that came into my head, about my hands, my tiny hands, that I want to expand on. You always think you can choke the life out of someone. But what if you can't even grip tight enough to make someone cum?

I waited till the Internet stopped working to write this.

I took a month off. I needed a break. There was a birthday. There were shows. There was anything, any sort of excuse to not look at this. Anything to not think about my head being empty. Nothing felt right. No love. No interest. No desire. Just surface feelings, entertainment that barely scratched the skin. I threw it all at the wall, trying to get anything to stick, anything to make my heart beat faster, harder, more intense, more sincere, anything to make me feel. I wanted tears, pain, love, orgasm, hate, desire, lust or just some fucking interest in something. I wanted to not sleep at night. I wanted to toss and turn. I wanted to loose the desire for a partner, a warm body in bed next to me. I wanted a hand around my throat, I wanted to be shaken awake, I wanted to have my hair pulled, my direction changed, some sort of not very Devine intervention that made me take a left where I had been taking rights.

But that hasn't happened.

The parade has been beautiful. It has been nothing but party, one exciting day after the other. Did I say exciting? I meant empty. Faceless names. Nameless faces. Cold bodies. Warm bodies. Swallow. Sip. Chug. Snort. Smoke. Sneak in corners. Drag others along for the ride. Fake an orgasm. Forget a name. Develop a nervous reaction to any possible confrontation, or anytime someone remembers your name. Embellish. Divide. Conquer. Lie. Steal. Cheat. Be underhanded. Be divisive. Be manipulative. Forget. Don't care. Don't bother. Don't worry. Open the front door to let someone in while another is slipping out the back. Play wounded. Be hurt. Whatever. Make jokes. Be a joke. But make sure, no matter what, no matter anything else you might fucking do, don't feel. Don't let anyone in. Don't get hurt again. Hurt them. Fuck em, hurt them again. Then hurt them one more time. They didn't do anything, but they earned it. Go too far. Get bigger knives, twist them harder in backs. Because you are fine. No, I am fine.

I'm not the one taking a specific path to work to see a freeway overpass where I had the most passionate kiss of my life. I'm not the one repeating inside jokes to anyone within earshot just so they won't laugh and I can think "well, no one will laugh like you". I'm not the one finding excuses to take a shower because it is the only time I can feel free, comfortable, and close to happy. I'm not the one trying anything in their power to spin tales of fucking, drugs, drinks, women and cities not that far away to look interesting. I didn't mortgage my brain, my thoughts, or my passion. I didn't leave my heart on a beach, or was it that train, or was it that snowed in bus station in Denver that I have never recovered from.

I might be coming down. I might hate the holidays. I might miss everyone that has walked out of my life. But at least I'm writing, right?

If you could call this writing.