Water in My Lungs

This is water on my face and in my lungs and no ground beneath me and no hand reaches to me and this is water in my lungs.

I swam. I longed for the current and the depth and the sway and pull and strength.

This is water in my lungs. Look, from the beach.

Look, from the shore.

This is water in my lungs. This is water in my eyes. This is panic. This is gravity.

This is weight at my feet and pressure against my chest and I ask what I have done to the river and the river asks why I make it choke on my bones and why I force it to swallow my legs and my arms and my chest and my face and the river tells me I should learn how to swim.

I agree.

This is water in my lungs.

This is panic in my eyes.

She.

"You're drunk," I say.

Marie and I are lying in bed. The warm yellow glow of the street lamp shines through the window and barely grazes the side of her face and her shoulder and her breast as I look at her, into her. She sighs and pulls closer to me. "Maybe, but it doesn't mean it's not, you know, a thing."

Her hand runs across my skin, down my side, my back, my leg. I can feel her breath against my neck. I can smell her hair. She lifts her leg and rests her thigh across me, the skin hot with release and inviting and her hand travels up my back. She kisses me and grips me with her other hand. 

"I couldn't, though," I say.

"Bullshit. You're out, after a show maybe, some bar or whatever. She's in fishnets and a short leather skirt. Curves and long dark hair and you have total permission? Bullshit. You'd be all over it." She kisses my neck. My chest. She grips tighter with one hand and travels with nails with the other.

I kiss her forehead. "I love you."

"Why are you being weird about it?" she asks. "I mean, you always want me to talk to you about things, and well, I am. So... I don't know, never mind."

"No, I'm sorry. I just," I swallow. "I didn't expect."

She kisses my neck and strokes where her grip was and I melt for her. I am whatever she wants. I am whatever she needs. I kiss her forehead. Her cheek. Her mouth. Years have passed and my heart still races for her. Still waits for her. Still craves for her. And then this. As if nothing.

"Is it a problem?" she asks.

Our kiss extends and between breaths I am only able to creep out single words.

"No...I...worry...Love...you..."

Her perfume is sweet and small. Not overpowering and also not subtle and she is a woman whose glance offers either hostility or sex and everyone thinks she looks bitchy and everyone wants to be near her and I could only breathe her in. 

"I know you do," she said. "But,..." her mouth is on me again. Her gripping hand moves forward and back and forward and back and only a few moments have passed since and already, with the conversation and the reaction, I am ready. "Tell me about her."

She bites firmly into my skin and her nails dig into me and she grinds herself against me and I wonder where I am now. What I've done now. 

For her. For me.

For us. For me?

"Tell me," she says. "Tell me about her skin," she says. Her nails scrape sharp against my skin and her teeth press into my neck and my spine chills and my skin walks and my heart races and I say;

"She..."

In the Kitchen, On the Counter.

In the kitchen, on the counter, I had a half bottle of gin. It was just before noon and what passed for light in those months crept through the window and wheezed and coughed and died on my bedroom floor. I laid half uncovered on my bed staring at the water stain on my ceiling. I had been awake for a half hour or so and was getting my bearings. I had no reason to get out of bed. It wasn't wonderful anymore.

I reached for my phone on the window sill near me. Email. Facebook. Texts. Two missed calls. 

I threw the phone into the closet.

Each day was grey and each day was cold and each day was another day of making the best of it and closing my eyes and telling myself; this is what we do. This is what we all do.

December never came as a surprise. My bones would creak and my skin would dry and my heart would sink and I would stare out the fucking windows as some acceptable death crept and dragged his fingers across the trees and the landscape and the people and me. 

I laid in bed half uncovered and the water stain on my ceiling was growing.

Another ten minutes passed and I got out of bed and I was getting fatter. I couldn't look down at myself. I covered it in a robe and walked into the kitchen. I poured a large glass of water and drank it and then another. The clock on the microwave said it was ten after noon then and that was perfectly fine. I filled the glass with gin and set it on the counter while I went to the bathroom to piss.

There was nothing for breakfast. I took the gin to the computer and sat down. The word processor was open from the night before and only two words had been written, spaced halfway down the page;

"What now?" 

I didn't know. I sipped at the gin and it was dry and sharp and my mouth wasn't ready for it, but I had already poured it so I swallowed a large drink down and by the time I felt it, it wouldn't matter either way. I deleted the words from the screen and thought that I would try again. 

Light shown like frames through the cracks where I had nailed blankets over the windows. I thought about running duct tape around the seams. I'd never remember to buy duct tape. In a few hours it'd be dark anyways.

I typed;

"In the kitchen, on the counter, I had a half bottle of gin."

I stared at it and I'd need a new glass soon. My stomach was empty and screaming at me. I'd order a pizza later or walk to the gas station at the corner and buy some nuts or jerky or a pot pie from the cooler. I had to type something worth a shit. I had to write something. I had to write. 

Nothing came. The gin disappeared and I felt okay after a while and the one line floated against the white screen beaming away in the darkening living room and my chair was uncomfortable.

I swallowed down the last of the gin. I wasn't hungry anymore. I sat on the floor next to the chair and thought I'd get a new perspective on whatever the fuck I was writing. I laid on my back and rolled on to my side and thought that maybe none of this was real and that maybe I wasn't alone. 

I have hollowed this place. 

I have hollowed me.

I keep waking up.

What Else is There?

Four years before, a blogger had discovered an old 45 from a band called Death. The first punk band, or something along those lines. There were two songs on the 45 and after a lot of digging and prodding and hunting and begging, five more songs were discovered and an album was released by a smart and opportunistic label somewhere in Tennessee I think. I had heard about the discovery when it happened and heard the songs, but as it goes these days, I moved on almost immediately. A documentary was made of them, filling in the back story and laying down their credibility for the whole world to see and two months before, I had watched it and after watching it I downloaded the record again. I was listening to it in the car that night.

There was a show at Grant's house. A punk band and some band that everyone else was excited about and a band I had seen a few weeks earlier that I was really excited about. I was getting out of the house. I was making an effort. To be sociable. To be more active. To get my heart out of the gutter and my soul out of a coma and to feel healthy and alive again. It was an effort just to make the effort and Grant usually had a shitload of free beer and gin and that sold me. I said to myself in the car; "Don't be an asshole."

The neighborhood was dense and I parked in a line of cars on a side street and for as many shows have happened at Grant's house, I could never understand how they weren't busted up by cops or asshole neighbors, or regular neighbors who maybe didn't want to listen to screaming fucking punk bands on a Tuesday night. It was Friday though. I got out of the car and walked toward Grant's house. From outside the music was muted if at all audible. A light and warm hum in the air. As I came near the door Isaiah came out. Isaiah was younger than me, new to life and the world and yet to be devastated and addicted. Yet to die and yet to live and I loved him. I loved his purity and his innocence. His thirst for new and knowledge and his hunger for all things beautiful. He reminded me of me ten years before.

"James!" he said and opened his arms.

I hugged him. "Hey man," I said. "How are you?"

"Oh, great man. Great. I'm glad you made it out. How are you?"

"Is there beer in the tub?"

"Of course."

"I'm great."

He laughed. "Hey, I'll be right in, I have to get something. I'll be right back."

"Cool man."

He smiled and I wondered how he could feel like smiling all of the time. I thought maybe I made him smile and I liked the idea that I could make anyone smile and then I thought maybe he was just polite enough to smile for people and then I thought maybe he smiled to hide something and I thought I was projecting and I just went inside, shoving my cynicism away for the moment. Grant, Michael, and Paul all stood in the alcove on the other side of the door. It was an ambush.

"Oh shit!" Grant said.

"Oh, my dude," Michael said.

Paul laughed and nodded. 

My friends never had a problem making you feel wanted or loved, even if they didn't mean it or if you didn't deserve it. I hugged Grant and then Michael (whom had been odd and distant lately, adding another reason for me to come out that night), and gave Paul a high five.

"Two shows in a row? You never come out this regularly!" Grant said. "Are you having a breakdown?"

"Yes. Is there beer in the tub?"

Grant laughed. "Of course man. Of course. Help yourself."

I planned on it. "Ill be right back."

The way to the tub in the downstairs bathroom may as well have been a decathlon. A sea of people packed chest to chest and air thick and hot and suffocating. I knew that person. I knew that person. I knew those people. I knew that girl over there, and that one there and I avoided eye contact with that one, and waved to that one and I wanted to go home. To go lay in the dark and to drink a bottle of Nyquil and to slap a nicotine patch on and drink a couple of bottles of wine and scream my way through nightmares into morning. I shoved through the crowd and into the bathroom. The bathtub was filled with ice and water and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I filled my coat pockets with four or five cans so I didn't have to fight my way through for a while and took one to drink and stared at the back of the door, sitting in the relative silence of the bathroom for a moment before I opened it and forced my way back through the crushing tide of bodies and sweat and inanity. 

Isaiah was in the kitchen now and speaking to a few people. I forced my way through to him. He put his arm around my shoulder and I put my arm around his. I showed I was having a good time and I showed I was comfortable there and I showed I wanted to be normal and I showed I wanted to be alive like the rest of them. He was talking to two girls who were younger than me, but if I wasn't thirty then I don't think I would have thought that. One had thick glasses on and I wasn't sure if she was being ironic, but I assumed she was. She had blue hair. The other was maybe Egyptian and had short, almost buzzed hair and a small braid on one side, reminding me of young Jedi. Pretty, in my fascination with oddities sort of way. I couldn't hear what they were saying. I nodded and laughed. The Egyptian touched my hair and I pulled back. Isaiah touched my hair and the Egyptian touched his hair and everyone laughed then I laughed. 

A band was playing in the living room. It wasn't the band I wanted to see. I didn't care. Paul was near the door, in the alcove, still and I smiled at Isaiah and the faker and the Egyptian and walked to Paul.

"Fucking asshole," Paul said staring into the living room.

"Who?"

"Fuckin' Grant."

I looked and Grant was in the living room, dancing with a cute red haired girl half his height, but probably mostly his age. 

"What about him?"

Paul took a large drink of his beer. "Nothing. Fucking Amy." He laughed. I didn't believe his laugh.

"Who's Amy?"

He pointed at the red head.

"Oh. What about her."

He shook his head. "I've been crushing on that girl for like two months, but fucking Grant dude. Dude has a girlfriend and just swoop. Right in there."

"Oh. Does he know you're into her?"

"No."

"Oh, well, then, that's your own damned fault."

"True."

"Fuck her anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, she's already the other woman. Be the other guy. Then fuck someone else. Let's see how awful we can get this mess."

He laughed. "Nah, I don't know. It's fine."

"Okay. You want me to give them the cold shoulder?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

He laughed again. "I don't know, it's fine. I just, this shit always happens."

"Speak up then."

"Easier said than done, my man."

"Don't be a pussy."

He looked at me. "I love you."

"I love you too. Now get in there. You could probably still fuck her."

He watched Grant and Amy. "No, it's fine."

"Okay."

A girl with dyed hair, shaved in places, kept looking at me. She looked familiar but I couldn't place her. I smiled and nodded. I can be all right looking. It wasn't abnormal.

Soon I had one beer left on me and I was going to have to venture to the bathroom again. I had to refill and after a six pack I had to piss pretty fucking honestly. I did and when I came out Zeph was next in line to piss. Whenever I see Zeph he tells me he likes my writing and he talks to me about details about my stories and it makes me uncomfortable to talk about shit I've written, but it makes me feel like maybe I'm not just writing for myself and I like it, in some uncomfortable, shameful corner of my heart. 

"Don't piss yet," I said to him. "Come have a smoke with me."

"I have to piss pretty bad, dude."

"Give me a cigarette then."

"Meet me out there. I have one left. It's a rollie, but I'll split it with you."

"Okay."

I went out to the back porch and it was just as crowded as the kitchen or the living room or anywhere in between. Zeph must have pissed quick because he came out almost right after me, rollie in his mouth and lighter in his hand. He lit it, pulled it and passed it to me.

I don't normally smoke, but after a few beers I do and I do like it's my fucking job. I imagined I'd be out there most of the rest of the night.

"So, what's the smut name?" he asked.

"What?"

"The smut name? Clark told me you were writing smut on the side under a fake name. What's the name? I pretty much need to read it."

I laughed. I had been. I suddenly remembered telling Clark, another writer and a mutual friend of ours, after a few drinks about the best way to make money writing. "I can't tell you."

"Oh fuck, come on man."

"Well, no." I pulled from the cigarette. "I can't. I mean, I don't want to."

"Is it like, super filthy?"

"Have you read anything else I've written? Of course it is."

He laughed. "I mean, like, weird filthy?"

"I look at what's popular that day online and I write that. I write what sells. A lot of BDSM shit with college girls and businessmen lately."

"Oh, like that book...?"

"Yeah."

"That's great. How much are you making from it?"

"I make my paycheck back."

"What do you mean?"

"I make my paycheck from my normal job. I write porn, I make about five hundred a week if I keep writing every week."

"Jesus Christ."

"I know."

"That seems ridiculous."

"It is. I made more in my first week than I have with any other creative endeavor I have ever attempted. It's bullshit. Total fucking bullshit."

"But I can't read it?"

"Sure you can. You just have to read a shitload of erotica online and eventually you'll probably read one of mine."

"But you won't tell me what you wrote?"

"Nope."

"Not even a hint?"

"My pen name is a hundred proof."

"What?"

"That's it. That's your only clue."

"You mean like booze?"

"Fucking obviously. But that's it."

He squinted at me and butted his cigarette. "I'm going to find your porn."

"Good luck."

We went back inside and Zeph disappeared and I stood alone for a moment and went back inside.

A girl was singing in the living room. It was the band I had been waiting for. I went toward the living room and could barely poke my head into it. A smoke machine was billowing out and smelt strange and lights and patterns shone rotating and glowing through the smoke and people swayed and I could almost see the band. Her guitar was out of tune but she sang beautifully and passionately and she meant every word she sang and she seemed unashamed of any of it. Her band rumbled along behind her keeping strong and smiling and having a great time and I thought they embodied the experience of being in a good band, at least at first. I thought they were a perfect band for now and I thought they'd probably break up soon and the band would split into other bands and the singer would play coffeehouses and record into four tracks forever and though I may never know of any of them again after that night, I knew of them now and they spoke to my soul and in that moment, on that night, in that house, they were my band. They belonged to me. I imagined at least a few other people swaying and smiling felt exactly the same way. I sipped at the last of my beer and had to piss. I let the band finish their set. I clapped against the can and meant it. It was time for the gauntlet again.

The scene would repeat throughout the night. Swaying mass of noise and bodies. Shuffling, excuse me man, excuse me, sorry, excuse me. Bathroom. Beer. Stare at the back of the door. Take a deep breath and tell myself "you need this."

I opened the door and with pockets full of cans saw Paul at the counter. I swam toward him.

"Hey man," he said. "You going to talk to Michael tonight?"

"Yeah. I want to. I don't know if he wants to."

"You guys are strange lately."

"I don't know what happened."

"Story of my life," Paul said.

"Story of the world."

A hand crept over my shoulder and a head leaned on it. I turned and saw Shannon. Shannon was shorter  than me and very small. He had been in a bad accident over the summer and for a while we were all very scared for him. He came out of a coma and it seemed to me that he, even months later, was still getting back his bearings. "I miss your cats," he said.

I laughed. "Yeah? Come see them then."

He smiled. "Yeah. Soon man. They loved me I think. They wouldn't leave me alone."

"No man, they wouldn't. They love new people and especially friendly new people."

"They were like little furry sharks."

Paul laughed next to me.

"Circling, hungry for love?" I asked.

"Yep." Shannon laughed loud. "Roar!"

I hugged him. I was glad he was okay.

"You been all right lately man?" I asked him.

"Oh, yeah, you know. This is my first beer since the accident." He held up a bottle. "I don't think I like it anymore."

"Can't blame you."

"I just don't have a reason to like it anymore, I guess. It doesn't taste very good."

"Don't drink it then, Shannon."

"I'm not going to." He set it on the counter. "You know what though?"

"What?"

"Furry sharks."

I smiled and he smiled back and pat me on the shoulder and disappeared into the crowd.

"I'm glad he's okay," I said to Paul.

"Yeah. Different, though."

"I think I want to go home."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I've had enough of this, I think."

"Haven't we all?" he asked.

"Why keep doing it?"

"What else is there?"

I sipped at my beer. I didn't know.

Love

Length turns into depth in relationships. After a certain point, be it two years, or five, or ten you stop considering the length of time you've been with someone as some great mark of achievement, instead focusing on the connection that has blossomed or remains, or both. The amount of shit you've bore through and the fact that in the morning, when even the Sun sleeps in and your head aches and your back aches and your soul aches you roll your ass out of bed and you dress yourself and you don't think anymore about why you go to that fucking job. You know. You think "I do this for us. I have to keep going." There are no other options, and somewhere, under the fog of exhaustion and the slow crushing defeat that rolls in with the tide of age, you're glad for it. You've done terrible things to each other and you never talk about them anymore and you always think about them but you are glad for it. You are glad that you have survived those elementary crimes against your heart and that they still love you after your elementary crimes to their heart, and you get up every morning and you work miserably and you come home lifeless and beaten and lay on the couch again, again, again, but they're there with you. They sit near you. They suffer with you and they celebrate with you and they die slow with you. There comes a point when you compare scars and dashed dreams and sagged skin and the dulling of eyes and you sometimes hold hands still. And you wouldn't have gotten this far with anyone else and you wouldn't have loved anyone else like this, and no one could have loved you like this and you carry a weight on your chest that could be failure, but it's probably love. You lay on the couch again, again, again. You wake and die and lay on the couch again, again, again. You compare scars. Love.

Nothing.

Yeah well nothing felt right.

I kept working and breathing and waking and sleeping and nothing felt right. Eight hour days. Ten hour days. Fifteen hour days. Sometimes my paychecks were good and sometimes they were better but when they were good I needed to spend most of it on something and when they were better I needed to spend all of it on something. I never got ahead and I never saved, no matter what I did. 

Up until a year or so ago, I never worried about money, I never cared. But now I did. Now I do. I wasn't sure what I was saving it for. Retirement, maybe. A vacation maybe. An emergency maybe. All things that really meant nothing. I would die before I retired. I knew it. I'd never have time for a vacation. I knew it. Every day is an emergency. I know it. The harder I work, the more empty my wallet seems.

When I was younger I worked a little and scraped by and people would tell me to worry but I wouldn't and sometimes I could eat and sometimes I could pay my bills and sometimes I would and I wouldn't spend it all on pot or whiskey or records or give it away to my friends. Sometimes I could chip in on a pizza and I never fucking worried. Money was never a concern. I had none. I had none and I wanted none. Twenty something me saw money as only a burden and he was right. 

Surround myself in the moneyless and the hopeless and the futureless and am I still happy forever? Can I still dream then? Can I still live then? Can I still hold my goddamned head high and believe I am right? Know I am right?

I don't want a house. I don't want things. I don't want a boat or a new car off the lot or a timeshare or status or respect because my bank account demands it. I don't want the worry or hope or plans or dominion. I want nothing. Nothing feels right.

Look. The Sun is Rising.

William and I left the party. It was late and we took a bottle of gin with us. We walked through town and down the streets and all of the lights in the houses were off but soon they'd be on and soon the streets would hum and the world would exhale all life back onto its belly and people would stress and work and kiss their love goodbye and comb their hair and frown in the mirror and tell themselves whatever they needed to keep going. But for now the sky was dark and streetlamp sentinels stood tired and brave and two idiots with a bottle of gin strolled between them.

The bottle slipped from hand to hand to mouth to hand to hand to mouth and so on. William and I didn't spend much time together but it never seemed to be an issue. We had gin in common then.

“Well, that's the difference between you and I,” William said.

“I guess.”

“I could kill a man. I mean, I want to. It's a step into knowing who you are and knowing what you're capable of.”

“Sure. But, you're fucking killing a guy. You're robbing someone of the opportunity to figure themselves out.”

“Fuck 'em,” he said and laughed. He swigged the gin. “Look, shit happens and they're going to die and they're going to waste their fucking life anyway, you know? Probably, right?”

“Sure.”

“Then who gives a shit?”

“Their families.” I took a drink and passed it back. “Their friends.”

“I mean, isn't there someone who you wish would just fucking die? Just get hit by a bus or something?”

“Sure, but that doesn't mean I want to be responsible for it. That doesn't mean I want to be soaked in blood until I die.”

“So have someone else do it.”

“I don't...”

“I'll do it. Give me a name. I have guns.”

“How do you have guns?” I laughed.

“I don't know. Life I guess. You get guns.”

“I haven't.”

“Eh,” he said. “You probably will. Some people get AIDS and some don't. Maybe you won't get guns but you'll get AIDS. How the fuck should I know?”

“I don't want AIDS,” I said. “Or guns.”

We came up to a park bench and I sat at it. William sat next to me. We each drank a bit more and looked at the library across the street from us.

“My arm is bleeding,” William said. I looked at it and he held it up and there was a deep cut just below his elbow and blood streamed out steadily, though not in pulses, which I took to be a good thing and didn't panic. “Shit arm,” he said.

He swigged the last of the gin and threw the cheap large plastic bottle into the road. “Shit bottle.”

“I feel like I'm suffocating,” I said.

“Me too, man. You know what it means though?”

“No.”

“You have to die a little sometimes."

“I'm tired of it.”

“Look. The sun is rising.” He pointed to the skyline and the sky was a lighter blue there.

Gin at Five in the Morning

"Well what am I supposed to do then?"

"I don't know man. Keep on."

"Fuck you," I said. "Your hippy fucking horseshit."

"I love you."

I kept looking at the ground. It was night and we were in the backyard of a friend who was celebrating her  twenty-fifth birthday. It was well into the night and William and I had stolen off with a bottle of gin and two ping pong paddles and were standing beside a table thinking about ping pong, but to ourselves thinking about everything else and not ping pong. It had been a year that I had been alone and a year I had been making bills and making time and making a life. It had been a year and it had been fourteen hours since I had been fired. I had been home alone and when Michael called me to come to the party I had refused and when Farrah called me at two or three in the morning and asked me to come I did. I had been pissed at Michael, but that's another story. I had mingled but spent most of the night with William and had drinks and that was a lot of drinks and I had been somber and then alive and on fire and laughing. Now we were splitting a cigarette beside a deteriorating ping pong table.

"I love you too," I said.

He passed me the bottle of gin and I took a large swallow and set it down on the table. William was digging around near the table and then he had popped up with two ping pong balls and set one down and said, "ready?"

"Ready," I said.

He served and it went off into the night and I took another swig of the gin and passed it to him. 

"Okay," he said, "I'll try again." He served and slower this time and the ball bounced naturally off the table and I caught it with my paddle and William caught it with his and another volley between us and then it too was gone into the dark.

"You think I should move?" I asked.

"Why?"

"Why should I move?"

"Yeah." 

"I don't know. Start again. Somewhere fresh. Where I don't know anyone. Where I could be someone people don't know or expect or whatever. I could cut my hair and be someone else."

William set his paddle down and walked to a chair in the yard near a dead fire pit. I followed and sat in another chair. "I don't know man. Aren't you you?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Well, I guess, if you are then why change, regardless of where you are?" He swigged and handed me the gin.

I swigged and then swigged again. From my chair I could see inside the apartment and mostly it was quiet now and not much of a party. Farrah walked into and then out of frame and Michael had passed out somewhere a long time ago. I had had a few bottles of wine throughout the day and now the gin was really coming to me. I wasn't dizzy yet and I hadn't split my face open like the fucking last time, but I was sure it wasn't far off.

"If like," William said, "the apocalypse happened, the end of the world, total devastation, do you think you could eat another person?"

"Sure," I said. "Where the fuck did that come from?"

"Gin. I thought it was a good way to get your mind off shit."

"Oh, well, yeah. I mean, I'm moral and love and respect life and happiness, but, you have to look out for number one," I said. 

"Totally," he said, "but like, I mean, what if you didn't have to be moral,  or respectful,  or like, maybe just because you wanted to?"

"I'm not sure I would."

"But if you did."

"If I just randomly felt like killing and eating a person and if randomly the world had ended and if randomly I wasn't concerned with morals or respect  and was randomly somehow capable of that shit?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know man. I think I'd be pretty on the goddamned fence about it right until I was starving to death and even then, that unlucky sonofabitch would have to be a real asshole."

"You'd eat an asshole?"

"Fuck you." I swigged the gin again and passed it off. "That's not your ticket in."

He laughed and took the gin. "I'm glad you came out tonight," he said. "I don't get to see you often. How've you been doing, since, you know, everything?"

"Fine dude. Thanks. Paying bills. Waking up everyday."

"Gotta do it," he said.

"Well, no. I don't. That's the thing."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I don't have to get up. I don't have to pay bills. I could leave. That what I've been saying."

"You'd still have to wake up." He handed me the gin.

"I don't have to do that either," I said. I drank from the bottle and now I was very drunk and could feel it. I saw Farrah shut the lights off and I saw William play with the lace on his shoe and I saw the porch light bounce and fade into the impending dark and I saw everything that had happened and every move I had made to keep my head above water and every reason why none of it mattered and it was nearing five in the morning and I thought about how nice it would be to never see the goddamned sun come up again, that piercing, blinding beacon of effort and fortitude and endurance. "I never have to wake up again if I don't want to." I handed the gin to William and he fucked with his lace and we spoke more and later I laid in the dark and pretended I would always lay there. I can stop waking up whenever I want.

For What it's Worth

I had thrown back a couple of beers and found myself pacing back and forth through the crowd and gallery. I had donated a painting for auction. In front of all of the donations sheets of paper were taped to a counter and people wrote their names and bids. Eighty dollars seemed to be the average and I didn't want to know I had pulled any less than that. I hadn't worked hard on my painting and I wasn't particularly proud of it, but I was as self conscious and selfish as anyone else. I would drink a beer. Pace through the gallery. Head back to the bar and get another beer. It took less for me to propose to Marie. I stood in the doorway and smiled and nodded as people passed me. I decided I'd try again in an hour or so and headed outside for air.

William was outside. His band was playing later in the evening and he was smoking and talking to a girl we both knew. He looked a mess in a way girls love and employers hate and I didn't think it was an act. He leaned in a brick doorway and saw me and nodded. I nodded back and walked over. 

"Hey man, how are you?" he asked.

"All right. Holly, how are you?" I asked the girl.

"Not bad. I saw you have a painting up for auction."

"Yeah," William said. "Looks good man."

"Let's not talk about that," I said. "I've never done this before."

"Done what?" Holly asked.

"Displayed my shit."

"Oh, you're nervous?" William asked.

"No, I just, I don't want to know how much it's worth to people, you know?"

"Oh, I get it," William said. "But you know, it doesn't matter. You didn't paint it to pay the rent, you know?"

"Yeah."

"Have you looked at the bid sheet?" Holly asked.

"No. I've been avoiding it."

"Oh," she said. "I'll be right back." She turned and left and went into the gallery.

"She's going to go see," William said.

"I know."

"You want a smoke, man?" 

"Please."

He pulled one out and handed it to me. "Need a light?"

"Yeah."

He patted his pockets. "Oh yeah. Holly lit mine." He looked over my shoulder. "Here she comes."

I turned. "You have a light?" I asked her.

"I thought you didn't smoke." 

"Tonight I do."

"Okay." she pulled a lighter from her purse and handed it to me. I lit my cigarette and I almost immediately regretted it. I tried to wash the taste out with the last of my beer.

"So, you want to know?" she asked.

"Not really."

"I know," she said. "I'd be happy."

I took another drag. 

"Is it over a hundred?"

She laughed. "No. Nothing in there is. Not even the huge Xena portrait."

"I saw that," William said. "I was going to bid on it."

"Were you going to bid on mine?" I asked. 

"Unfair."

"Sorry."

"It's near a hundred," Holly said.

"That's good enough for me. Don't tell me details."

"Okay."

William finished his cigarette and threw it to the ground. "I have to set up. See you inside?"

"Of course."

"All right. See you Holly." 

She waved and William walked inside. "I'd bid on it, but I don't have any money."

"Fair enough."

"It's better than I expected."

"Thanks Holly."

"High five?" she asked.

I gave her a high five and later paintings were selling for two hundred or more and my painting sold for less than a hundred and even though I pretended to not care, I did. I hadn't worked hard on my painting and I wasn't particularly proud of it, but I was as self-conscious and selfish as anyone else. I mumbled to myself all the way to the car.

Things are All Right.

I kept thinking about how nice it would be to have been wealthy in the 1960's. A film star or a singer, or some sort of royalty. I could lay on the deck of my yacht in the Mediterranean and the sun would graze over me and into me and the sky would be the bluest of all the blues and further than ever and all I would see. The sound of the water lapping up against the sides of the yacht and the birds in the distance and my friends on the yacht speaking quietly to each other and laughing and smiling and that moment in time in 1966, at the height of my freedom, would be the moment that could sustain me for the rest of my life, or lives if I believed that sort of thing. Before the war. Before the moon. Before Woodstock and AIDS and Reagan and three button suits and the internet. Only me and the sun and the water. And the Beach Boys on a small radio nearby.

The Beach Boys are on the jukebox behind me. Marie is cleaning glasses behind the bar and I'm staring into my Tiki Tango. It has a lot of rum in it and is a sunset of colors. It's fine. A little sweet for my tastes, but it is fine. It's raining pretty solid outside and even though it is the early afternoon it is dark. A man sits a few seats from me and keeps checking his phone. He's older. Maybe retired. I think about how I'll be older soon and possibly retired and how it isn't really far from now. The idea depresses me but I think that it isn't a great problem because I'll only regret wasting my life for a few decades and then I'll die and won't care. I try to be optimistic.

I throw back the Tiki Tango. It's more than a shot or even a double but I'm drinking for free and have nothing to do. I set the empty cup on the inside edge of the bar for Marie and go back to looking at the short story I was writing and hating. I knew there had to be a way to finish it. I just needed the right drink and the right song on the jukebox and it would come. Until then I figured I'd struggle and suffer and cross shit out and rewrite sentences I'd cross out and rewrite later. 

Another man came into the bar and sat down. He was also older. he seemed healthy for his age, but I thought that that was only if he was as old as I thought. If he was twenty or so he'd be in a terrible state. I thought that I was nearly thirty and wondered why I used twenty as an example of youth and felt a sting of sadness again and knew I was ridiculous. 

"Another?" Marie asked. She leaned over the bar at me and smiled. She wasn't making much money today but no one had been a prick to her and that was enough sometimes. 

"Maybe just a beer honey," I said. 

"You don't like them?"

"No, they're fine, they're good, but I just think maybe I shouldn't have so much rum this early."

"They're too sweet for you aren't they?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe."

"Men drink sweet drinks too."

"No they don't."

"Okay," she said. "What kind of beer?"

"Longboard."

"Oh, men drink Hawaiian beers?"

"Beer from the land of volcanoes and fucking hurricanes and belly dancers? Don't give me your shit."

"Oh, I'll give you my shit," she said. "I'll give you my shit and you'll like it." She leaned over the bar and pursed her lips at me and I kissed her. She took my beer out of the cooler, popped the cap off and handed it to me. "There' you go you big tough man you."

"Thanks baby."

"What can I get you?" she asked the man who had sat down.

I went back to my story. I was having trouble with a sentence that said everything I wanted it to but didn't seem to reflect the tone or urgency I was looking for. I assumed I would eventually not give a shit but decided to give it a few more minutes before I moved on. I read and tapped my pen against the notebook and sipped my beer and stared at it.

The two older men had begun to speak to each other and one laughed at the other. I looked at them and they were smiling. I smiled at this tiny and priceless moment of life and the two men spoke a while longer as friends and Marie would serve me beers and kiss me sometimes and I was doing okay with my story. I would grow old and tired and die and never be wealthy on the Mediterranean, but this life right then wasn't a thing to forget. Things were all right.

Now What?

I kept finding less to do. My index finger on my right hand was swollen and I did not know why. I thought I might have jammed it in a door or hit it with a hammer earlier and both were possible but I'd never know. I had been near both doors and hammers and I thought that I must not have been paying attention. I stood at the window of the bedroom and it was night and winter. I could see the orange streetlight glow and my reflection but only black otherwise. My reflection was ugly and I thought that meant I was. I was young and high and this wasn't my bedroom. It belonged to a girl I had met and been around lately. Her mattress was on the floor and the room was small and lit with one un-shaded lamp. The light was harsh so we never looked in that corner of the room. It was 1997 and her mother was somewhere else and her sister was somewhere else and she was in the bathroom. Her CD player, silver and small on the floor, was playing something I had never heard before loudly and I liked it. The loneliest sounding woman I had ever heard sang shrill over ghostly and orchestral drum beats and a guitar came in, distant and thin, and my reflection was ugly, so maybe I was ugly, but I stared into that black and she opened the bathroom door and came back into the bedroom and I heard her lay down on the bed.

"You want to do something?"

"Like what?" I asked.

"I don't know. Take off your clothes."

"Okay."

"You want me to take off mine?"

"Sure."

"Not yet."

"All right."

I pulled my shirt off and the hard yellow light of the lamp made my stomach seem to glow and I unbuckled my belt and kicked my shoes off and dropped my pants to the floor and pulled my socks off and looked at her.

"Let's get high," she said.

"I think I am high."

"You ever snort pills?"

"Like Tylenol?"

She laughed. "No, you fucking idiot. Like Ritalin, or you know, whatever's in orange bottles."

"No."

"Okay. Well, you are now." She got up and she was shorter than me. Her hair was long and brown and fell in front of her face and she tucked it behind one ear and left the room. 

I followed her.

She was in her mothers room, in the nightstand, sitting on the edge of the bed bent. Only the light from the hall lit the room. She was rifling through the drawers and I watched from the doorway as she would throw different things onto the floor and sometimes an orange bottle onto the bed.

"She keeps all her old prescriptions and re-fills them as long as she can. It's a fucking pharmacy in here. Come over here."

I stepped onto and walked across the bed to her and laid down on my back next to her and next to the small but growing pile of bottles. 

"God she keeps the stupidest fucking shit," she said, throwing a jewelry box out the bedroom door and down the hallway. "Here," she turned to me and picked one of the bottles and looked at the label. "Take this one. Procardia."

"What is it?"

She looked at the label. "Blood something. Here." She handed me a large book and a candlestick holder by the bed. "Just crush it and snort it."

I sat up and set the pill on the book and with the base of the candlestick holder, crushed it. It had a casing around it that I imagined was made of sugar but looked like plastic. Inside was a white powder. I tossed the remnants of the casing across the room and got ready to snort the powder.

"Wait," she said. "Like this." She used her finger to make small long piles and said "It's better if you use something small and flat, like a razor, or a credit card, but whatever. This way, it's like, nose sized." She laughed.

I began to snort and it stung and I could taste it and I sneezed and blew most of it all across the bed and my legs.

She laughed. "Oh, Jesus! You really are a fucking rookie! Let me show you." She took the book and candlestick holder and crushed a pill, made lines and plugging one nostril, bent over and the line was gone. She lifted her head and inhaled deep and brushed her hair behind her ear and looked at me. She smiled.

"You want me to take my clothes off too?" she asked.

"Sure."

"You have to do one though, and not blow it all over the fucking place."

"Okay," I said. I could still hear the haunting, simple, and wonderful band playing in the other room. I crushed a pill, stared it down, and plugged a nostril.

"Now, just sort of breathe it in, but, forcefully, I guess," she said. "Smooth, but, you know, like you mean it."

I didn't blow any anywhere but I could still taste it and it felt like it was all still in my nostril and I wanted to sneeze and choke but I breathed deep another few times and was fine then. 

"Fuck yeah man," she said. "Let's do more!"

"Take your clothes off."

She laughed. "Yeah. I'll get right on that," she said. "Jesus." She crushed another pill and then it was gone. "I don't feel shit with these," she said.

"Try something else."

"That's the fucking spirit." She pulled another bottle out of the pile. "Well, wouldn't you fuckin' know it," she said. "Ritalin. Must be my sisters. Well, poor mans coke, down the hatch!"

One, two gone, then it was my turn. The CD in the other room ended.

"Shit, I'll be right back. What do you want to listen to?"

"Something I've never heard," I said.

"All right," she laughed. "I have no fucking idea what that means." She jumped off the bed and I crushed two Ritalin because she had and I snorted both of them and the taste in the back of my throat was now worse and I coughed to not choke and then the light in the hall dimmed. New music was playing. Loud and fast. Heavy. 

"You like Life of Agony?" she asked. I looked up and she was in the doorway.

"Never heard of them."

"Only this record is good."

She crawled up onto the bed and up my legs and pulled the book and candlestick holder from my hands and threw them across the room and her shirt was off and her hair fell into my face and she kissed me. Her tongue against mine, her skin against mine.

"You wanna fuck?" she asked.

"Sure," I said. 

"Tough shit." She sat up and moved her hair back behind her ear. 

"Okay." I laid back on the bed. "Now what?" I stared up at her. She pressed her hands into my stomach.

"How should I know?" She laid her head on my stomach and that was wonderful and good enough.

You Ain't Nothin'

Marie was working at the hotel tiki bar again. Her first night was the first night of an Elvis festival and no one had expected the turnout. I sat at the bar and drank cheap beer as a line formed behind me out of the bar, down the hall way, and outside. People wanted food for the show and apparently, you could only order food in the bar. Everyone in the line bitched about the lack of staff and it should have been foreseen but it wasn't.

The line behind me bored away and I understood how forest animals feel when a new highway tears through their homes and silence. Elvis, Elvis, cheeseburgers, bitch bitch bitch. Everyone was rude under their breath and most bothersome was that no one was rude to anyone's face. No one knew I was the bartenders husband and they told me all they thought and I sipped at my beer and Marie worked hard to make up for the mismanagement. 

The hotel kitchen was out of chicken fingers. Everyone wanted chicken fingers. They were out of fries. Fries came with everything. The line backed up so much that people ordered their drinks and would need another by the time they ordered their food. It should have been foreseen but it wasn't.

A year earlier I had watched the hotel owner watch a man die and show complete indifference and tonight it was the same. In some corner of my mind I wondered and worried about him.

The Ventures played loud on the jukebox and that made the whole chaos better.

Food orders came up from the kitchen and in a frenzy Marie tried to keep up, taking orders and calling done orders out and sometimes no one came for them and I thought about just eating them but I wasn't hungry and I was getting fat.

Elvis impersonators were everywhere. In line. Mingling. In the hall. Behind me. Next to me. All of their women were sad and the same. Not depressed, but overweight and dead eyed and when I could hear them, speaking slowly. I thought it must take a certain type of woman to love an Elvis. I was glad I wasn't an Elvis and I couldn't understand what made someone want to be an Elvis. Who am I to judge the pursuit of happiness, I thought. Who am I anyway?

I kept drinking.

Brandon (part four)

I was escorted out of the building and Brandon was pronounced dead at 4:31 that afternoon. His sister had signed the paperwork and left after and I stood outside under a pavilion and stared up at the unit and Brandon died alone, save for a doctor and coroner.

Death is cavernous. No logic. No solace. No light. Sound echoes and disappears and is drained into the vacuum with all energy and beauty from you. Death is the void. Death is the abyss. The weight of lead and breathing impossible. The choke.

I smoked cigarette after cigarette and I kept trying to go back in to say goodbye but I wasn't allowed. Eventually, I left the hospital and walked into Albany. I stopped crying and feeling and only walked in the slush and mud and the damp and hollow streets. I was alone and the night was cold and cars raced and streetlamps glowed and Brandon was dead. I sat on the wet curb and tried to understand it. I couldn't and shortly before midnight my fingers had grown numb and I had no idea how far I had walked. I called my mother for a ride home.

I sat in a laundromat and waited. I watched the machines spin and the water tumble around and the soap bubble and the lights flicker and I sat in a hard plastic chair alone.

I saw the hours after and Brandon did not. He didn't know this rain or sleet. He didn't know this cold. He didn't know this loss or uncertainty or emptiness. Brandon's body left the Critical Unit and went somewhere else and my body left the Critical Unit and floated heavy on the wind, falling into that laundromat and then into years after.

Black Brandon stayed with me for months.

I smoked pot in the driveway of our apartment as I burned up any good faith between our landlord and myself and I saw him in the yard walking. I would wake in the night and go to the kitchen and I would see him in the kitchen or in the living room or outside and then he would not be there. I questioned my health. He was the first of my friends to die and after a few months had gone by and I was supposed to be over it, I was still seeing him. Hearing him. I don't mean that in any figurative way.

I felt him touch my shoulder before I left one day. I heard him say my name. Black Brandon and Brandon became the same and I saw them and then I did not see them. I began to go for runs as the weather warmed. I began to write a book that I never finished. I began to spend more time at work and I began to make an honest effort to let go. The phone rang once.

I had just come home from work one day in July and the phone was ringing. I went into the kitchen to answer it and then I noticed the phone was not ringing. Not my phone. I looked around me and still the ringing filled the room and the house and I realized it was coming from the back of the house, near the bedroom. I hadn't been in the bedroom in months. I had stayed on the living room floor and kept to the front of the house. It made the loneliness less real. Less impending. I didn't think that he had a phone back there, but I thought that maybe I never knew, because I always just answered this one. I walked back to the bedroom and the house was still. As if exhaling after a good cry. His door was closed and the ringing was inside the room. I turned the brass handle and it was cold on my palm and the floor creaked as I shifted my weight and when I opened the door a wave of stale air swept around me and he hadn't cleaned his room and no one had cared enough to come for his things. The ringing persisted. It was inside the closet. I opened the closet door and there were clothes hanging and boxes on the floor and there was a blue wall phone wrapped up in its cord just inside one of the boxes and the ringing was loud. I felt no fear and as I write this I don't know why. I unwrapped the phone and answered it.

"Hello?"

A living silence. As if someone only listened on the other end.

"Hello?"

It clicked and the line was dead and then it was just an old and unplugged phone. I sat on Brandon's bed and laid down and I didn't cry and I didn't feel as sad.

I don't know if what had happened had or if I only think it did. I know that the phone call brought me peace. I will tell you to this day, a decade later, that Brandon had called and he wanted me to let go and he had wanted peace for me. But, maybe that's just what I need to think. Eventually I saw hours, days, weeks, and years pass and Brandon did not. Eventually I was older than Brandon, and eventually I stopped visiting his grave. I know he isn't there. He's not some ghost, perched atop his grave marker, eating an apple and telling dirty jokes to ignorant passer-by's. He just isn't hanging around anymore. He's a memory and a wonderful memory and I think that's exactly what he'd want to be.

Are You Going to Write About This?

"You're going to write about this, aren't you?"

Michael is drunk. The night is almost over. We are sitting at a back table in a hip hop bar in Albany and Michael keeps bordering obscenity. He keeps referring to New Years Eve and it makes me wonder if he actually understood anything that happened or didn't happen or could have happened then, or if he's just drunk and loose. It could go either way and I don't care beyond my natural analytic state. We had just finished playing a show and we were both covered in a thick film of sweat and we both felt wonderful and we were the only white people there. We smelled. We were in flannel. We wore tattered clothes and shoes and nodded in unison to the bass and snares around us. Michael used to rap. He doesn't anymore. He was good at it and occasionally I try to persuade him to do it again. 

"Probably not. Maybe. Nothing's really happening."

"What do you mean? This is perfect. This is how I want to spend my life. I could never leave here and be totally happy."

"Until you can't afford the drinks."

"I got paid yesterday," he says. "Fucking rich."

"I'm drinking a six dollar Bud Light." 

He points at me. "Good point. You're going to write about this, aren't you?"

"About what? You don't even read my shit. What do you care?"

"I care. I've read your shit dude. Some of it's, whatever. Shut up."

"You just like to know you're a character."

"You're a piece of shit. You want a beer?"

"I have one," I say.

"You want another one? Fuck."

"Sure."

"I guess I'll buy you one then. Singer. Front man." He flips me off, slaps the table and gets up. He disappears in the crowd and noise and neon and I look at my phone. It's a little after midnight and I think I should start in the whiskey soon. We were supposed to meet people here. Friends of ours were playing a show across town and we had to miss their set and they had to miss ours and we all decided that we wouldn't book shows on each others nights from then on. They were late. 

A woman knocks into me as she shakes her formidable hips to whoever is on the P.A. at the moment. She smiles at me and waves her hand in apology and mumbles something. I smile and blow a kiss and she smiles and turns and disappears. Michael is leaning over the bar pointing at the liquor behind it and I don't think he's getting me a beer anymore. I have to piss. I look around behind me and the bathrooms are down a long and lit hallway. I get up and head to the men's room. I had six Steel Reserve sixteen ouncers under my belt as it was from the last hour and as I walked they all seemed to hang on me like fat or disregarded responsibility and I knocked into the wall once or twice before making it safely to the urinal. 

When I come back to the table Michael is sitting sideways in his chair and there are two small glasses on the table. Michael's is empty and mine isn't. I sit down and it is whiskey and I wonder if Michael knows me well enough by now. He turns to face me.

"You know," he says "You can be a piece of shit."

"I know."

"I love you dude." 

"I love you too." I swallow the whiskey in my glass and in ten minutes it will hit me. I can't stand this bar. I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to fuck anyone. I don't want to pay six dollars for goddamned Bud Lights. 

"No, I love you. I really love you and I kind of want a burrito. You want to get out of here?" Michael asks.

"Sure."

We stand and shove and slide and squeeze through the bodies and bass and blackness and when we get outside onto the sidewalk, Michael asks me "Are you going to write about this?"

I laugh. "If I do, I'm going to make you look like a drunk asshole."

The First Day of Spring.

When it was spring we filled water bottles with wine and rode our bikes to the park to sit by the water. The first day of the year that had hit seventy outside and the sky was without clouds and the air was crisp and new and suddenly all of winter was truly behind us and all that existed was you in front of me and the breeze in my face and the hope in my heart and the sound of my tires humming gently over the pavement and dirt and I loved the day and I loved you.

Life was beautiful.

Leftovers.

Marie was wearing two different socks. I hadn't noticed until then. It was late and the kitchen was dark except for the light from the fridge glowing around her as she stood nude considering the Chinese leftovers.

“What do you think?” she asked.

I was in the doorway. I wasn't particularly hungry. She leaned gently toward the fridge with her feet crossed.

“Should I pan fry it?”

“The Chinese?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I suppose,” I walked up behind her and put my hands on her hips and pulled her back to me. She pushed gently. “It'd probably be better than the microwave.”

She leaned back against me and stood and I ran my hand up her side and cupped her breast as she looked up and under now tired eyes, kissed me slow.

“You should make it for me,” she said.

“Okay. You have to stay in here and keep me company though.”

“Okay.” She leaned against the counter and I took the Chinese out and set it on the counter. I turned on the burner and found a pan and dropped only a little butter in it and then dumped the Chinese into it. It sizzled and popped occasionally.

“Eight years,” she said.

“Yep.”

“You ever get tired of me?”

“Sure. All the time, but what can I do?”

“Oh? Well, fine then. Don't think I don't get tired of you too, mister.”

“Is that right?” I turned to her wrapped my arms around her waist and she pulled me close behind my neck and kissed me again.

“Yes,” she said pulling away, “that's right. I'm just right full up of your shit.” She smiled at the corner of her mouth.

“And what shit would that be?” The smell of Chinese filled the kitchen and now I was hungry.

“What shit? What shit, you ask?” she said.

“Yep. You're so sick of it,” I kissed her again and ran my hand down her back with my fingers spread and digging gently into her. “What is it all then?”

Her brown eyes had a smoking excitement behind them and under tired lids.

“I hate your...” She touched a finger to my chest. “Face, and your...” She walked her fingers to my stomach. “personality, and...” She continued to the top of my thigh. “Your whole brain.” She ran her fingers gently up and down my thigh and I began to stroke with one finger the backs of hers.

“I,” I said, “hate your shitty attitude.” I kissed her neck.

“Oh yeah?”

“I hate your taste in books.” I kissed the top of her chest. “I hate the way you wear your socks mismatched.” I kissed her breast.

The Chinese was popping.

I pulled away and took a spatula from the drawer and flipped the food around some. Then I went back to Marie.

“Why are you still with me then if you hate me so much?” she asked.

“You have your qualities.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Oh. You need me to stroke your ego now?”

She dug her nails into my lower back.

“You know exactly what,” I said.

The Chinese burned.

Skin.

We pull into an old gravel pit. It is day and it is also night. Not evening, but both coexisting. Shifting constantly, seamlessly and unnoticed. There are two buildings. A house. It looks turn of the century. Also, in the back and down a small drive is a crumbling wooden shed. There are cars parked near it. Dust covered and some have windows opened but I don't think anyone has noticed in a long time.

We park our new red car in front of the house and get out. It is old, the house. The paint is peeling and I say: "It's been rented too many times," and this Marie agrees. She knocks.

"Come in," someone says inside and we go in. There is nowhere to go except up a poorly painted staircase. The lighting is bad. An old used towel sits crumpled on a step and garbage lightly litters other steps. The house is empty except for a few mattress', an old console television on the floor in one room and six girls in front of it. Their hair is dyed pink and they have tattoos and they glow and have death in their eyes and I like it.

"Okay, I am going outside now for a smoke," this Marie says.

"I'll go with you," one of the girls says and gets up to go outside for a smoke also.

"Pick some out," this Marie says.

"Okay," I say.

A petite girl with short blonde hair and blue eyes and a tight, short black sundress walks over to me. She smiles and puts my hand on her breast. It is soft and I can feel the dress over it and I can feel her nipple stiffen under the fabric. "First, me," she says.

She takes me to another room down the hallway and the paint is peeling very badly. We lie on another mattress and it has no sheets and it is on the floor without a frame. I am always more comfortable without frames. She uses my hand to run over her skin and she unbuckles my pants and goes down for a few minutes. When she finishes and I don't she says "my turn." She takes her dress off and she is wearing nothing underneath. She lays on her back and I run my hand up her leg and I see she has a growth of skin dangling near the top of her thigh. First small, then longer.

Steady, I think.

She moans as I move my hand further up her thigh and the growth is now a patch and it covers her thighs and it looks like hardened and melted skin. Like icicles of skin.

I am repulsed and I pull back.

"What's wrong?" she asks. "Don't you want me?"

I don't want to hurt her feelings."Yes, of course. I'm just... going slow."

She flips over onto her knees and shows me her ass and her pussy and the skin is worse. The skin hangs and she is covered in the hard long drips and streams and masses of skin and I think she must have been in a horrible acid attack at some point and I don't understand how I didn't notice before and I can only think of how rude it will be if I don't fuck her now.

Knives and Russians and Arguments.

I had a dream that I was in an abandoned school with a girl I loved and a large group of Russian twenty-somethings were trying to kill us in the hallways. The girls were beautiful and they took their clothes off and I would cut them and they would bleed and still they would try to attack us. We hid in vents and around corners and soon they would find us again. We'd run and soon I fucked a dark haired girl. She was short and her make-up was dark and the girl I loved fucked her and then we killed her and someone else tried to trap us in a corner and we fucked and killed them. They would scream at us. We had done something to them, but I don't speak Russian. We turned a corner and a dark and long haired man saw us and he pointed his knife at us and charged us and from behind us the doors of the hall burst open and a swarm of them burst in and they were blood thirsty and blood soaked and the girl I loved disappeared. I knew then that she had escaped and she was okay and she was safe forever. I darted into a classroom and a red haired girl who had curves and thick lips and hips and the sense of smoke and death and sex and lunacy came in slowly after me.  She was nude and by so many standards perfect and she told me in poor English to kiss her and cut her and touch her and fight her. 

I did and my blood rushed and beat hard inside me and I ran from the room into an empty gymnasium. There was no light and there was no sound and I could feel them just on the other side of the walls and just waiting and just... waiting...

I was with Michael now and then I wasn't and I was on the phone with him. 

"Find a fucking drum set!" I screamed and threw a wrench I had only been holding as long as it took me to write this sentence. I threw it and I knew it had cracked his head. His head was bleeding and he laughed at me. 

A small group was walking with me and it was spring in Halcyon now. I had grown up, mostly, in Halcyon and perfect spring is spring in Halcyon. A mutual friend of Michael and I was laughing as I swore at Michael over the phone. I berated him and screamed at him and I knew it all came from somewhere else, that it all meant something else but I told him he couldn't ever play my songs right. He couldn't ever remember what I said to him. He couldn't ever understand. I thought about the short dark haired Russian girl I had fucked and I wanted to fuck her again and then She was in front of me. She wore a beige dress with deep red flowers and black flats. Her make-up was dark and her hair was black and she leaned over a fence near the road and I came to her and ran my hand up her bare thigh and under her dress and pressed against her and we were back in the school in the dark and I knew only blood and lust and she turned and dug her nails into me. I kissed her and felt all there was to feel and she bit my neck and my chest and the girl I loved pulled her hair and kissed her and I kissed the girl I loved. 

"I hate you," the girl I loved said.

"I hate you," the Russian girl said.

"Shut the fuck up," I said. 

When I woke up I stared at the ceiling and the girl I loved breathed heavily beside me. I breathed heavily beside her. I hadn't been sleeping well. I pretended everything was fine.