Small Talk on the Clock

"How're you liking it so far?

"Liking what?"

"Oh, I meant the job. You know, you still like it?"

"I guess," I said. "I'm not quitting yet. That's pretty much as 'like' as any job is getting from me. I keep coming in."

He was making small talk and that was fine. There was nothing for me to do then and it passed the minutes. "Yeah, that's how I feel too when people ask me if I like it. It's a job, I say."

I was shoulder deep in the guts of a large machine that cut shapes out of paper, cleaning adhesive residue from rollers and blades and knocking my goddamned elbow repeatedly off a bar that wouldn't move. "Yep, pays the bills," I said.

"Sort of."

"Sort of."

Cap was younger than me. They all were, save for Kevin who had put me in for the job. It was disorienting, waking up one day and suddenly being one of the older guys. It didn't bother me. I don't give a shit who cuts my checks or gives me something to do for a day. It was only disorienting at first.

"This someone you know?" he asked.

"What?" My elbow banged off the bar again and I pulled my arm quick from the machine. "Fucking goddamn..." I said under my breath.

"Oh, the music. I know you're a musician, so I didn't know if you knew them."

"No." I looked at my phone as it struggled defiantly to be heard over the deafening hum of air compressors and cutters and printers and who knew what else. "No, no. A girl I knew once used to listen to them. Kind of got me stuck on them."

"Always a girl."

"It wasn't really like that." I thought about diving back into the machine. Fuck around. Look busy.

Cap had a ruler in his hand and was repeatedly measuring a print out he had made and I suspected he was doing the same thing, though he didn't come off like a guy who wasted time if there was actually work to be done.

"What're you doing for lunch?" he asked.

"Probably going home. Bacon and eggs."

"Home?"

"Yeah, I live down the street a ways."

"Lucky."

"You haven't seen it."

I hadn't had a drink in a couple of days and that wasn't abnormal anymore. I felt like I was coming back. Far from recovered, but I was breathing and working, and able to face a day, most days. I still watched the clock and no matter what I was ever counting down to it was torture and it was a habit I wished I could break.

I wasn't sure if I'd last at this place. This job. Historically it wasn't likely. I had a tendency to be laid off or fired from somewhere every couple of months or so. Shit, there were three different places that went under while I worked there. Sometimes you deserve to lose your job and sometimes you don't. But I always lost mine. A point of hostility with every woman I'd ever put in any effort with.

I wondered if it was because I saw them all as "jobs" and never "careers". I always assumed I would die young so I could only ever see to the end of the month. Never set up retirement packages. Never gave a shit about insurance. Just kept waking up, morning after morning. Waiting to die. Losing one job, finding another.

And now I was one of the older guys.

"What about you?" I asked.

"Haven't thought about it. Maybe Taco Bell."

"I could go for tacos."

"You get to sit on a couch though," Cap said. "Or lay on a bed. Nap."

"That just makes it harder to come back."

"I can see that. Get tacos then."

"Fuck that. I'm going to lay on my couch."

"Right. Well, I should probably stop measuring this thing and change it up a little. Someone's going to catch on."

"Change up to what?"

"I don't know. Sweeping?"

"Time to lean, time to clean."

"Right," he said. "See you man."

"See you."

I stared at my machine and waited for lunch and lunch tomorrow and the day after and wondered if I'd make it back.

There I Still Was

My neck and shoulder had ached since the car accident. The most recent. Elle and I had ended up in some trees just off the interstate at somewhere near seventy at one in the morning and we were both fine except her hand hurt and my car was destroyed and my neck and shoulder ached since. Everyone said we were lucky and I guess we were. Everyone kept saying, "You must be so glad to be alive, right?" and I said "yeah, totally different now," because it's easier than saying, "No man, I could have been done with this, but here I fucking am. Here we fucking are. This conversation. This day. A hundred just like it. Waiting for me. Real lucky."

Nobody wants to hear indifference toward what should have been a life changing moment. Indifference, or disappointment. In August I had found myself accidentally mid-trip on the interstate and quite literally had to scream at myself to not crash into what may have been the same trees because I was afraid that if I died and it was found that I was fucked up then people would assume I had made a mistake, or that for whatever reason, I wouldn't have wanted it. But there I was, a little after one in the morning, Sober. Sitting out of breath, bruises coming to the surface, seatbelt burns brightening, and fucking alive.  I called my mother because I am pretty sure I don't actually have anyone else. She answered and Elle was waking up next to me.

"I crashed the car."

My mother panicked on the phone.

"It's fine." I was jiggling the door handle but it wouldn't open.

"We have to get out of here," Elle said, still half asleep,  or whatever the term is for someone knocked out in a car crash.

Stupidly, I tried to put it in reverse, but the engine made no sound. "Nope," I said.

My mother asked where I was. I said I was near Springer, maybe. I had to go out and find a mile marker.

I tried to open the door again but it wouldn't open. "I can't get the fucking door open," I said to my mother.

She told me to calm down. I unbuckled and pulled at the door handle and kicked and pulled and kicked again and the door swung open and hit a tree and I shoved myself out.

My mother, on the phone, in my ear, kept telling me to stay calm. Kept asking me if I was okay. If Elle was okay. Yes, yes, yes, I kept replying. I walked up the embankment and slipped once or twice but when I got to the top we were at a mile marker and I told my mother which one and she said she was on her way. She said she loved me and she hung up. I looked at the car and Elle was pushing her door open also. Headlights came near and pulled to the side of the interstate and stopped.

The two doors I could see of the Jeep opened and on the side I couldn't see the other two doors also opened.

I couldn't see them at first, but once they stepped in front of the headlights I could. They were thin men, not unhealthy though. All thin features, and the faces of working men, real working men, not in an office. A farm maybe. They all had blonde hair and I thought, maybe concussed, that they were all the same person. They all looked the same. They were all the same. All four. 

Two went down the hill and one went to the back of the Jeep after looking the scene over and one handed me a cell phone. "Call the police."

"Okay," I said and used his phone. It wasn't locked and I didn't use my phone. 

The other one that had stayed with us topside came back with flares, and while I described to the police what happened he lit them and set them down then stood next to the one that handed me the phone. The other two came back up the hill and I could see Elle following them.

"You'll be all right. Help is coming," the one with the phone said. Another nodded and they all climbed back into the Jeep and drove off and in the light of the flares I held Elle and we waited for the police or my mother.

"What happened?" Elle asked.

"I don't know."

"I mean... Did you fall asleep?"

"No."

"Is it a dream?"

"I don't think so."

"I don't feel okay."

"We have to."

"I'm glad you're okay," she said.

I kissed her head. "I'm glad you're okay. I am so sorry."

The police came first. Then the tow truck. Then my mother.

There I was. Sober and a little after one in the morning, holding a girl I had loved and betrayed and watching one of the last pillars, crushed and bent, pulled from the woods and into the past. 

There I still was. 

In Summation

The whole year was waves and mistakes and trials. I felt like goddamned Bambi on the ice. First and immediately the loss. The guilt. Void and vacuum. Pieces of it fell off over time, but others, they lasted for months, and some remain still. I felt nothing. Fucked everyone and saw and felt nothing. Drank and drugged until my body died and when I didn't it shook and felt like it was dying and I wanted to be seen and noticed and loved and I wanted someone to say "stop" but they didn't and now looking back, it was unfair of me to hope they would. Unfair to them. I don't think anyone knew, really knew, what I was doing. They knew I was drinking. They knew I was getting fucked up. But I hid most everything. I couldn't sleep. I would go days and days and sometimes a week here and there without it but people would ask and I'd say "oh, I caught a few hours last night", but it wasn't true and really I was killing a box of wine and painting over photos of the past and burning them in the bathtub and listening to Philip Glass for hours and crying because I couldn't understand. I wanted to drink it all away. To fuck it all away. I wanted to start another band and I'd write songs and sing it away and then I'd feel better. I'd feel right. I'd feel like maybe some good was coming out of it all, but by the time about seven or eight months had gone and I was looking down into another no one's eyes again and still felt absolutely void, I knew it was all nothing.

There was no solution but time.

I didn't have time. 

I didn't want time. 

I wanted to drink and I wanted to paint and I wanted to fuck and I wanted to die. In that order.

I had lost a lot of weight. I had lost a lot of money. The car accident. The behavior. The rejections and reverberations. I mostly just had a few spoons of peanut butter every day and at the time I didn't see anything wrong. It was good and I wasn't hungry and I thought I wasn't sad. A friend had convinced me to see a therapist and they had convinced me to take medications and I saw a doctor about my insomnia and I broke down in her office and had cried for a half hour and when my friend asked how the appointment went I said "It was fine. Got dark, but you know, normal," and I had laughed because that's what people do, right? They laugh? The doctor prescribed me a bunch of shit and diagnosed me with a bunch of shit, most of which I already knew. I wiped my eyes and paid my copay and drove back to work and laughed and lied. 

There was no point in truth.

I didn't have a truth.

I didn't want a truth.

I wanted to drink and I wanted to fuck and I wanted to die. In that order.

I kept trying to quit drinking. I quit drinking at work, but I was killing two bottles of wine before I'd go in, another bottle on lunch, and another three or so after work. It's no wonder, really, where my fucking money went and I'm amazed I was able to sustain it. Drive to Saratoga and find someone to buy me drinks and take whatever they had laying around and fuck whoever I ran into and die in their bed and crawl away in the morning. Never ashamed, but always horribly fucking sober. Liquor stores usually open around ten, which is four hours of misery. I had made a point to fuck a lot of people that inspired jealousy through the years. I thought it would bring closure or revenge or satisfaction or victory, but none of those things happened. Well, maybe one did, but that was it, and only momentarily. Seeing lit eyes to mine, and I remember feeling alien and wondering how I was being seen and why. Three or four had said they had been "waiting" and I only thought "shut the fuck up. I need a drink." Stand over the sink and pound a tall glass of wine. Pour another, pound it too, pour another and a glass of water for her and go back to the bedroom and hand her the water and drink the wine. Lay down and stare at the ceiling. Arms around me. Nothing in me. Wait for peace. Wait for fucking anything.

There was no point in anything.

I didn't have anything.

I didn't want anything.

I wanted to drink and I wanted to die.

My alcoholism began sometime around 2012 and by January of 2015 it wasn't debateable. By February it became a gauntlet, and beyond that, kamikazee. In April a doctor had told me to stop drinking immediately. My liver was shitting out and if I kept it up I'd die. I left her office, went home and threw back a half box of wine. My friends took me out that night and I blew a hundred and fifty bucks on shitty stadium beer and thought "okay, one last night" and in the morning I thought, "no, this is fine."

Drink. Die. 

That was fine.

Art meant nothing. Girls meant nothing. Life was (and mostly is) a fucking joke and I thought sometimes that it just couldn't be real. That I must be dreaming and imagining it all. I would find myself, sometimes, shitfaced lying on some floor and convincing myself that none of it was real. I was dreaming and I knew my brain played horrible tricks on me and this was only one of them. I shaved my head. My beard. None of that was real and I existed without it. I shed my past and my future. Neither were real. Neither mattered. I existed without them and I thought if I could take one more breath I'd be okay and If I took another after I'd be lucky, and now, months later, I feel lucky.

I keep breathing and I keep waking up and I am starting to see. The future. The life. The chance. Opportunity. And remarkably, you.

I want to love. I want to paint. I want to fuck. I want to drink. In that order.

I want to live. 

Third and Last

There was a dollar and change in the bank and I was finishing the third and last beer in my fridge. I kept wondering how I could make five bucks in the time it takes to get to the store. Paypal had fucked me. Locked my account. I had been writing porn again and living off of it, barely, for the last few months, and having suddenly begun to shift a lot of funds through my paypal account, it was locked for suspicious activity and I was out of beer. I didn't even like beer, but it's harder to scrounge a twenty for wine than a five, so it had been beer. 

I kept wishing I was a girl so I could jerk off on a webcam and pull in a hundred bucks or whatever the fuck they make and be done with it. Shame was for the weak and I had little anyway.

The pawn shops around town had all closed. The record stores had all closed. There was never a comic store here. There was no where my dwindling gas tank could drag me to sell shit. 

"You could always get a job," someone had said the day before when I had brought it up.

"They going to pay me today?"

"Well, no, but..." 

"But nothing. Eventually it'll be sorted and I can go back to my system and everything will be fine."

"Your system isn't working."

It was fine. It worked mostly. I made enough to keep breathing. Keep eating. Keep going. If I worked harder, maybe if something picked up traction, I could do better. I was doing as well as I had on a payroll, and I took that as a win. Yeah, I had a hiccup and sometimes I've had hiccups working and maybe my paycheck had been lost, or it wasn't processed, or the state took most of it, or any number of things. So I had to suffer for a bit. That's fine. 

I thought, almost jokingly, that I could probably rob a bank. I had no moral issue with it. No one would get hurt and banks were insured to the fucking moon and back. Victimless. The worst outcome is that I'd pay my rent on time.

Well, I suppose that isn't true. The worst outcome is getting caught, but even then I'd get free room and board.

I wondered what the market for fat white guys jerking off on a webcam was. 

There wasn't much for food in the house. I hadn't planned on the locked account, so now I was scraping through what was left. Mostly just bologna sandwiches and for breakfast if I was really hungry I would make cheese omellettes. I would have preferred wine in any situation. There were two cans of spaghetti-o's in my cupboard that were expired by a year or so that I had just found and I thought I'd probably still eat them. I'd give it a few more days and we'd see.

Paypal said it would take seven to ten days, and if they meant calendar days it was up by a couple and if they meant work week days then I still had a day or two. I could go a day or two, so long as nothing came up.

My beer was gone and I had to piss and I thought about taking a walk but I didn't have three and a quarter for a pitcher at Bar / Food, so I decided I'd just sleep. Time travel closer to tomorrow and hopefully tomorrow would be the day. I could pay my car insurance and my phone bill and buy a box of wine and a pizza maybe. 

I saw little value in anything and I didn't think that was good or bad and I just wanted a fucking drink and to disappear and I thought there should be a program or grant for people like me. The New York State Drunk Nihilist Fund. Or I could just rob a fucking bank.

  

A Moment at Sea

I had a stomach full of chinese and it wasn't happy. Elle and I had watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre while we ate and now she was rolling a joint while we polished off a few glasses of wine and deciding what to do next. Maybe paint. Maybe write songs. Maybe wander town.

I had been in a strange place all day. Hopeful and lost also. A few confrontations in the mirror and a rock in my guts. Keep drinking, I had thought.

Elle's living room was lit by strings of christmas lights lining the molding and doorways. Two strands of blueish white and two strands of yellowish white. Both sold as "white". It wasn't unfamiliar and I found it comfortable. I thought about how much I preferred my bed without a frame and how much I hated living up to where people thought I should be and what people thought I should be.

My stomach was stretched and overfull and ached and I would have asked for a stomach rub but I thought it strange and somehow sacred. I am an idiot.

Elle went to the kitchen and put on an old mix CD she had found and smoked the joint. Pot made my anxiety skyrocket and over the last ten years or so had a way of crushing me under panic attacks and depression. More so, anyway. Elle knew and smoked in the other room. She didn't have to but I thought it was beautiful that she did. The mix CD was good and french pop music played and then Portishead after. I watched Elle mouth along to it and I thought that was beautiful too.

When she had rolled the joint she apologized for dropping pot into my wine and when I stopped to take a drink I didn't see any at first. I sipped and saw it stuck to the side of the glass. A small nub soaked now in wine and I took it out and set it on an end table.

I looked at Elle in the other room smoking and drawing with oil pastels and I could see it all. All.

I could also, and clear, see nothing. Soon and forever.

I know you thought you were a good person.

You weren't.

For Me

Wandering again. It was the end of September and night and an anchor sat on my chest. My nose had been running all day and my throat hurt and I thought my house smelled like rotted leaves but I didn't know if it did or if I was smelling infection. I was walking down a long street near my house and looking into peoples windows from the sidewalk as I passed. I had a fascination with watching people live lives when they thought no one was looking. They were calmer, sloppier, kinder (mostly). They took their coats and shoes off at the door and sat on their couches and with their husbands or wives or children and returned to their ritual. The one they'll look back on when one of them dies. 

Remember when we all used to watch television at night and Dad would fall asleep before the first commercial?

Remember when Charlie used to draw all of those trains and show us every one?

Remember the way Mom used to hum while she cooked?

Remember the good? Remember?

Remember?

The ritual. It wasn't for me, but I thought it was beautiful. I understood it and it isn't to say I didn't want it. It just wasn't for me. 

The air cut through my jacket and into my bones as I walked the uneven and broken sidewalk. I had walked it a thousand times, but I always tripped over the same lifted panel in front of the white house where I once was drunk and fell and knocked a garbage can over, spilling all manner of shit into the road. I assumed every subsequent misstep there was the sidewalk taking revenge. Maybe it was.

I wondered if I should have worn another coat, but it was too late to think too much about it. I was out here, a little colder than I would have liked to have been and a little further from home than I would have liked to have been. I walked in the dark. I didn't understand the word home now. Home was a place you could always return, wasn't it? Isn't that what childhood implied? And television? and family? You could always "go home"? I had lived in the same place for eight years, and less than fifteen people had ever been inside of it and it was my sanctuary. It was the only place I felt comfortable, but I was about to lose it. Maybe voluntarily, maybe not. It depended on how you saw the situation. I walked away from it and thought that maybe I wasn't supposed to have that. Prior to moving out of my mother's house when I was fifteen, I had lived in close to thirty "homes". Shelter from weather. A place to rest for a few months and I thought we were nomads. Settling for a moment, finding work, taking in the sights, moving on. And I thought maybe that bone never left me. I was still nomadic and I was forcing domestication upon myself. It just wasn't for me.

I could pay rent but I didn't want to. I felt disrespected entirely by my landlord, and my house was falling apart to the point that I was embarrassed to have people inside of it. Even people that had been there a thousand times. I would hold the rent until it was all fixed but I knew that meant I was holding the rent until I found somewhere better. I could fight it. Bring it to court. Win. That didn't make sense to me. I hated this house and its ghosts. I didn't want to win this pile of haunted rubble. So I thought I'd abandon it and move on. The house was adorable and fine and with a little work, perfect, but it just wasn't for me. I walked.

I didn't know where I was going.

It was better that way. The dark. The void. The uncertainty.

I don't ever want to know what's for me.

It's better that way.

Something in Nothing

I spent a week laying around Elle's apartment painting and drinking and watching her undress and reading a book of short stories I couldn't seem to finish. It was a small apartment in the top of a large house, tucked into the corner. There was an unnecessary drop ceiling and whomever had been maintaining it before Elle hadn't. I puttered around and would occasionally fix small things. Tack down coaxial. Glue the thermostat back together. Get the bathroom door back on it's track (although I had broken it off in the first place). Elle would say thank you and look up at me almost as though I had given a kidney to her father and I was sad to understand what that meant. I went about my business and we bought another case of cheap beer and another two bottles of wine. 

It was a movie I hadn't watched in almost a decade and it wasn't as good as I had remembered, but we were watching it and her head was on my chest and my fingers ran slow through her hair, over, over, over. She squirmed a bit during the bloodier sections and made small sounds of surprise or repulsion every once in awhile and we joked to each other about some of the poor writing, or facial expressions, or whatever came to mind. It was easy and it was fun and it was nice.

The bedroom was dark and cool and the bed was sanctuary where we pulled close and in the dark and over the sound of the small fan at the foot of the bed, whispered to each other things normally better left unsaid but there, under blankets and pressed close, better said. Hand on her skin, above her hip, below her ribs and gripping and I kissed her. Pulled slow away and in the dim light from the living room could see her eyes, dark and wide, wrapping her sight around me, reaching and digging for something. Truth, or hope, or light, I couldn't tell. Something more and I hoped it was there.

Morning and I dug through her sparse cabinets looking for a pan to cook omelettes in. There was one in the sink and I cleaned it and turned on the gas stove, dropped a chunk of butter in and prepped the eggs. As the eggs cooked and Elle slept in the other room I finished the rest of the dishes, poured a glass of wine and listened to the radio. Songs I didn't care for, but didn't hate so I let it play and poured another glass and dropped the two omelettes onto plates and brought them into the bedroom. Elle, still sleeping and without blankets was laying mostly straight in a tank top and I followed the contours and set the plates down on the nightstand and from her ankles to her calves, to her thighs, to her back, and neck kissed upward and on her neck she moaned and rolled a bit with eyes open and looked into me. "Good morning," I said. "I made eggs." She wrapped an arm around me, heavy with night, and kissed me. "Wonderful," she said. "You." Pulled her into me and laid down and closed my eyes, and she did too and the eggs went cold and I couldn't have felt better about it.

Sometimes the eggs go cold, and sometimes you say more than you should, and sometimes you have to fix the little things. But it can be easy, and fun, and nice.

Caroline, My Girl

I had a white Jeep then. She was nearly 20 when I owned her and her skeleton creaked and her hips ground into themselves and she spoke loud and angry to anyone within earshot. I named her Caroline and she was my girl.

It was fall and I had taken to driving and burning half a pay check to kill time and set my mind in place and think out stories and songs and just enjoy the road. Heavy coat on and blue and green air fresheners clipped to the vents. I had no idea what the scents were but that didn't matter. Me and my girl.

The sky was the slow and oppressive November grey and under we moved quick along the back state routes of Washington County. Land of farms and county fairs and not the vague civilization of home and not the familial embrace of Vermont, just a land in the middle. Purgatory. It made sense that this was where I'd drive to clear my head or fill my head. 

Scientific Maps were a band from Albany that had put out a lo-fi record that I had stumbled upon and listened to constantly, and was then. It filled the jeep, end to end and wiped the inside of my brain of the film of work and the mud of all that had happened in the spring, and clay of how to fix everything. Get it back to where it needed to be. I had to forgive. I had to move forward. "Hold on, whoever you are," they sang.

I was never a man for forgiveness. I knew it was a quality I should have had, but I didn't and most of that ride I stared absently at the long yellow and dashed yellow lines stretching and bending in front of me and weighing the past, the face, the stories, the future. 

What matters? I thought. What matters?

Sex? Does sex matter? One part of me asked.

No, another answered.

Love? Does love matter?

Sometimes.

Trust?

Do I need it to?

I think so.

Caroline took me further from home and closer to the border.

I could afford the apartment. The car. The bills. I could stand the room on the mattress and the silence in the air. I could even fantasize the adventures opened without walls or restrictions or loyalties and that brought with it a temptation to burn it all down. To pick up the phone. Declare. Buy a thirty rack, head home and kick my feet up. Justified and fresh. Free and alone.

Do you want to?

I don't know. Maybe.

In the vibrations through my bones I could feel parts of Caroline grinding, only a little then, but soon I knew they'd be harder and thicker and more expensive. I could afford the apartment and the bills and I thought the loneliness, but I doubted the repairs. 

Money has no place in love.

I know. 

I let the thought disappear.

I needed a drink and a few minutes later I pulled into a gas station and parked and let the song finish and turned off Caroline.

Sex doesn't matter.

Love matters to me.

Trust matters.

I knew then that it was on me. I knew then that I would buy a drink, maybe a bag of chips, and I'd get back in Caroline, and I'd drive home and I'd walk through the door and I'd declare. 

It's work, I'd say.

Work I always intended to do. Let's go to work!

And I did.

I did.

Perfume Taste

The tap water tasted sweet and after I noticed a perfume taste and my lips went numb for a second. Only a second. I thought it was strange but I was vaguely hungover and had just drank a pot of coffee in the last twenty minutes and maybe I had no idea what was actually happening. I drank another glass of water and my lips and throat tingled again and I thought that maybe I should call the town or talk to a neighbor and see if their water was poison also. I took the glass in the bathroom and tried the tap water there. It tasted like water, not perfume. It wasn't the town's issue, it was the house. 

Of course it was. Goddamn ruined ceiling. Goddamned electrical. Goddamned perfume water. The house was trying to kill me. 

I could call the landlord. I owed him money. Even if I didn't he would take two weeks to get here if he came at all. The ceiling had been ruined for years and I was holding rent until it was fixed, but even that didn't seem to motivate him. In February the water main froze and burst and instead of coming to look at it he spent four days arguing with the town that it was their problem and not his and I bought gallons of water and boiled them for bathwater and dishes and eventually the town caved and tore open my driveway and fixed the main. 

I had called the building inspector, even though the "no snitching" side of me screamed at me the entire time. He came. Looked at the exploded ceiling. Looked at the cracked foundation. Looked at the mold I had found and tried desperately to eradicate. He said he'd get a hold of the landlord and it would get taken care of. Months ago. The house was trying to kill me.

I would use the bathroom sink for drinking. Or the wine on the counter. That worked also. 

I briefly wondered if the landlord had done something to the pipes, the sink. If he was trying to poison me. If he was letting the house fall apart so I would move, but I wasn't, so now maybe he thought of a new way to get rid of me. Maybe, I thought.

I poured a glass of wine and put a record on. My lips had stopped tingling and the wine settled my stomach and the music settled my brain. Chopin. I could see his fingers dance, flit, live lives and never die and I sat on the couch and closed my eyes.

The house wasn't trying to kill me.

The landlord wasn't trying to kill me.

Chopin wasn't trying to heal me.

It was all in my head. I was the house. The ruined ceiling. The failing electrical. The cracked foundation. The perfume taste. I was the house.

No, asshole, I thought. You're just an idiot.

A Drive Home

I drove the interstate like I had a thousand times before. Shitfaced and introspective and hearing the music on the radio but not listening. Only peeling my eyelids open and sometimes literally and biting the insides of my cheeks to stay awake and punching the dashboard periodically because maybe that would help. Flashes of white bounced to the sides of my car and I knew all the landmarks. The billboards, the mile markers, the crooked trees, the rest stop. 

I remember being against drunk driving. I remember being against drinking. I remember understanding. 

I remember.

I had, over the summer, had another moment. Another screaming and unbearable urge to fly the fucking Corolla right off the bridge. Right into the water. Right into the black. 

I know everyone does. I know I am not alone. I know I am not unique, but the idea scared me and beyond that, I had only had one other of those moments. When we came back from that concert a few years back and I had smashed the car to shit and this time I hadn't. I hadn't because I knew I wouldn't walk away this time. I hadn't because this time I didn't see the point. I hadn't because this time I didn't have the balls. I kept thinking "don't let them think you were just high and fucked up". "Don't let them think you didn't mean it." "Don't let them reason."

Shitfaced and I knew I was listening to Mazzy Star. I pretended I didn't know why I kept listening to it. I didn't sing along but I let each note, each word, each reverbed snare bounce in my bones and my soft tissue and my hard soul and I thought "this is okay. This is okay."

I was nearing home. 

I should have kissed you.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That's what they say. 

Nothing ventured, nothing lost. 

I pulled off the interstate. My phone lit up and I ignored it.

Just trying to keep straight on the road.

I thought I saw you in traffic earlier in the day. I am sure I did. I hadn't heard from you, really heard from you, in weeks and thought that was strange and I thought maybe it was actually, finally, suffocatingly, the end.

I had given up sobriety. I had given up trying. I had given up writing and loving and understanding and hoping.

I pulled into the old driveway and turned the car off and wondered how many more times I would be able to. 

I went inside and answered the text and realized I was no one.

Pointed Sticks

I had been told to use both sides of my brain to relieve it. Clench fists and release. Walk. Tap drum beats with my fingers. Something about resetting the brain. I had no idea what truth there was to it but I was balled up on my couch breathless and with stinging eyes, moving my index fingers back and forth quickly and begging myself to breathe.

Breathe.

Everything is fine. You are fine. This is nothing. Just a trick played on yourself. Breathe. Breathe.

My chest rose and fell irrhythmically and quick and with my face smothered in the beaten and old cushion I focused on the black. The warmth. Safety.

Everything is fine. You are fine. This is nothing. This is nothing. This is nothing.

My teeth smashed tight against themselves and I groaned through them between the bursts of breaths. It was morning still and I hadn't had a panic attack in a couple of weeks but this was making up for it.

I had lost my health insurance and with it my meds and with it my calm and I tapped my goddamn fingers and before that I had tried to quell the whole beast by breathing slow and staring into a glass of water. It used to work, years ago. It didn't now and there I was, fetal in variety.

It's going to pass. It's nothing. Breathe, you asshole. Breathe. 

I had received a phone call. Nothing horrible. Nothing abnormal. Just a phone call with a person on the other end and they asked me questions and it was only a conversation. That had been it. The slip. The punch. I had never enjoyed phone calls. I had never enjoyed surprises. With texts you can think. You can plan. Phone calls put me in the spotlight. They surround me and point their sharp sticks into my ribs and they demand and I speak as the spears pierce into me and I hide as the bones split apart and I act as the lungs fail and when it ends, when i hang up, when I can finally exhale, I can't. The play is over. The stage gone. The audience never knows the actor and the actor is crumpled.

A television plays behind me. Actors.

I tapped my fingers and pulled my face from the cushion and I could finally pull in a large breathe and my eyes burned. I rolled onto my back. Another breath. Another.

This is nothing.

Another breath.

"Nothing," I say.

I sat up and my cheeks stung and my chest hurt and the sticks were gone and my bones slid back into place and my lungs expanded and contracted and repeated and I thought; Fuck. I'm going to have to rewatch the last twenty minutes and I shook my head.

Night in the Park Outside of the Library

Summer left and it was night. I was standing outside of the library in town and looking up at a tree. The shadows played hard and thick through it and I watched the wind bend and morph the shapes and words and faces and life within it. Beautiful, I thought.

I was wandering the town. I did from time to time and I always packed a water bottle of wine. I had it in my hand and I pulled from it as my phone went off. A girl wanted to know what I was up to tomorrow. I ignored the text, put my phone in my pocket and pulled again from the wine.

I was in what I assumed was the last month or so of my current life. The home I had known for six years. The car I had driven for eight. The world I wanted to shed, but couldn't and didn't have to. It was shedding itself. This shell, crust, skin, film, was slipping from me and I was sad to see it but only relief swept over me as I had less. When you have nothing you can lose nothing.

I paced the dark sidewalk. Orange street lamp light shone in circles every thirty feet or so and the air was cold and my hands felt as though they'd be numb before long. I walked and thought maybe the next day I'd hike a mountain and maybe I'd finish that fucking story I'd been putting off and maybe I'd hang out with the people I keep blowing off and maybe I would finish off that fucking bottle of sleep meds and the two bottles of Jim Beam in my kitchen, but I thought Why? Why do any of it?

Three people were sitting on a bench outside of the library and as I passed they were quiet and all three stared at me. I know what a deal looks like, I thought. You fucking amateurs. I kept walking. Another bench wasn't far and I sat at it and pulled my small black notebook from my bag and began writing about a moment at the beach when Mallory had asked me to take a picture and I kept fucking it up because maybe I was nervous, or maybe I was hollow, or maybe I wasn't there at all. I didn't expect it to be one of my better stories.

My phone buzzed again and the same girl asked if I was busy now. I ignored it also and laid lengthwise across the bench and turned into it as though I'd sleep. I wished I had brought a sweater. 

I nursed the wine and thought I had no bacon or eggs or coffee at the house and I thought I hadn't fucked anyone in a few days and thought I was trash for thinking like that and thought I was trash anyway. This last month of my life. This moment, night, drunk in the park outside the library. Trash. 

I used to be something, I thought. Someone.

Trevor and the Chinese Restaurant, and Me.

It was late afternoon and I was sitting in a booth of a long-closed chinese restaurant. Not a take-out place with torn linoleum and crates of soda and napkins everywhere. A decent one. Red walls. Gold trim. Recessed lights. A large empty fish tank and bamboo prints the size of murals on each wall. Throughout the empty dining room I could see the ghosts of a hundred thousand customers and staff and nights and I could hear the chatter, laughs, children, greetings, celebrations. I sipped at the beer Trevor had brought us and watched it all and when Trevor came out from the old kitchen it all disappeared and he sat down across from me.

"So what do you think?" he asked.

"It's a nice place."

"Yeah. I'm kind of in love with it. Price is good. Location's good. Fuck man." He drank from his beer and shook his head a little. "Fuck. This could be it."

"I'm happy for you, man."

"Yeah." He smiled and nodded. "Thank you. Me too. Christ, I'm trying not to be too excited, you know?"

"You should be. The dream."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, but if it fails, fuck, I'll be crushed."

"Unless you're diving headfirst, don't do it. Get excited. You'll need it."

"I know, I know. You're right. Headfirst or nothing at all."

I sipped at the beer and looked at the empty fish tank and wondered if it was for fish or lobster. "You tell Sam yet?"

"No, not yet. She's at her moms and I don't know, I wanted to surprise her, I think. Do the whole hands over her eyes thing."

"You think she'll be into it?"

Trevor looked around and smiled. "God, I fucking hope so. That money is gone. I bought it this morning."

I laughed. "I didn't know that. Bold."

"Yeah. I had the chance and I thought 'go for it.' Same thing I did with Sam."

"I hate you."

"I know buddy." He smiled.

The light of the evening began to burn out and we finished our beers and left the booth and dining room and as I walked out the door Trevor stopped and looked over another of his pieces of the dream and I wondered if I should overdraw for groceries or if I didn't mind freezer burnt green beans again.

Look on Down from the Bridge

Sit in the ruins. The wood walls. The dark. The curtains I never liked. The table. The thick air. I've amps and guitars and stacks of unread mail, littered. I've lost.

An effort to wash the dishes. To check the mail. To keep going to work. 

To wake back up.

I only see ghosts.

I only hear echoes.

I only feel for a world disappeared.

I did well for a while, I think. Kept believing I would turn around. Get myself together. Be better.

Surround myself with any distraction. Any attention. Anything.

Try new medications. Try therapy. Try sunlight. Try talking.

Lie in the dark and lie in the dark and become the dark. I can't look anyone in the eye anymore without pushing myself to the back. Disappearing. I am not real. I am not a person anymore. I am not who I was and I'm not coming back.

I see your efforts. I want so badly to be able to respond. To react. To be someone you deserve.

Any of you.

All of you.

I'm not though. I'm not and I don't think I can be and I am sorry. I used to be good, I think. Wasn't I?

Guitar in my lap. Beer in my hand. I keep my head rested on the arch of the old acoustic with the crack in it but I've since fixed the tuning pegs. The room is dark and too warm and I keep my foot tapping to Mazzy Star playing in the other room. It comes in waves.

It comes in waves. 

I like to tell myself I feel nothing now. I like to believe that but it isn't true. I feel nothing I want to feel. That's the truth. I carry absence and the weight and the world disappeared and I keep trying to cover the hole. I keep trying to put something under my ribs where my goddamned soul used to be but nothing sticks. Not music. Not wine. Not whatever they've got. Not women. Not writing. Not wellbutrin or lexapro or zoloft or paxil. I am the unfixable Asa Morris. I am the as seen on TV Asa Morris. I am what you see is what you get. Because darlin', it's all an act now. And goddamn I wish there was some fucking substance to me, something for you to know. To get to know. To understand. To love. I wish you could have seen me then. 

The Mazzy Star song starts over again. I have it on repeat and I have listened to it for days now. This is only a trough, I think. It comes in waves.

Poolside

If I had planned ahead I would have brought wine.

I sat in a deck chair. No, it was a camping chair. Nylon and poles by the side of the pool I had swam in the night before. The sun was going to go down soon but for now it was leaning hard against the treeline and slow cooking the concrete pool area. A small group of people sat around the pool. Three were playing solitaire and two had their feet in the pool and Mallory was painting and I sat in the sun and the chair and fucking baked away.

Bullshit. Sun. Wait.

I kept thinking this was the most reckless I had been since the winter. On rails and in motion and not thinking, seeing, caring. It had moments of smiling but I doubted each of them. It had moments of laughter but I doubted each of them and it had moments of beauty, but what the fuck do I know about beauty?

Bullshit. Beauty. Wait.

I knew these people. Some of them. Fighting anxiety. No different than any other day. Kept thinking it would be nice to just be home and alone and cold and drunk and empty. I thought it would be nice to slide into the pool but the idea of people looking at me, seeing me, wore at me. I would have been surprised if I decided to get out of the chair at all.

A plane flew overhead.

Must be nice to be in flight. To be weightless. To be headed anywhere else, with a drink and a pillow and a destination. Must be nice.

Sweat rolled down my forehead. Elsewhere.

I kept looking out at the pool and the inflatables in it. Pink and blue and yellow chairs and a dolphin and balls all gathered at one end of the pool where I imagined a pump or filter pulled.

The water blue. The sun orange. Colors that 'pop' for movie posters and I felt the same about both. Indifferent.

The dolphin had floated its way toward me. A painted eye stayed targeted on me and a ridiculous unease came through me and then it wasn't looking at me anymore and it floated back to the pull of the filter. The others all danced and swirled and I noticed a turtle and I wondered if the turtle would visit me but I didn't think it would.

The sun.

The pool.

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

It would be nice to have a drink, I thought.

The people now were mingling and talking and swaying around and with each other. All part of the show. Part of the day and I had excluded myself and now it was too late to rectify that.

Fuck it, I thought. Write.

It would be nice to have a drink, I thought.

It would be nice to have a drink, and what the fuck do I know about beauty?

I had a solid disdain for something about all of this. I couldn't put my finger on it. The conversation? The camaraderie? The history? Who knew? It didn't matter.

There is no dialogue in this story because listening to it was torture enough. I realize I am just as insufferable as any other part of this. I feel like a vacuum. Sucking life and emotion out of the air.

My chair the fucking pool filter.

I had to end this reckless shit or let it end me and I thought maybe that would be the better option. It required less of me.

The dolphin was back and I thought maybe he was saying I should get in the water. Get under the water. Womb. As the thought ended the dolphin left again. It was then or never.

Never.

That's how it always was.

Mallory laughed behind me.

I pretended I was in my own world and people walked by and I ignored them because I am garbage.

It would be nice to have a drink and what the fuck do I know about beauty?

Good Morning

Your hair was in my mouth and the sun had been slipping quietly into the bedroom for the last hour or so, but you were still asleep. I pulled the strand off my tongue, kissed your shoulder, pulled you against me. Small and frail. Unconscious and breathing soft against the pillow. The light through the window crept steadily to you and if I didn't wake you it would warm first your nose, then lips, cheeks and soon slide under your eyelids and you'd moan and escape toward me, but you'd already be awake.

I pulled the blanket off of me and careful not to crush your glasses on the floor got out of bed, picking my phone up off the nightstand before leaving you and the room to the silence.

The phone swore it was only a little after seven but I had my doubts. I had my clouds. The coffee was finished and I poured two cups. Not for you. You said you don't drink coffee and my memory is often horrible but I wanted to remember all of you and I sometimes found myself in my head, repeating things you had said or done or insinuated, but even then I often forgot. Two cups for me. Set one on the counter, took the other with me. Let them cool. 

Clouds begin to drift into tomorrow morning and I walked into the living room and spent too long putting a record on. I decide Philip Glass and by then the coffee has cooled. I wondered if you were awake, but if you weren't I wanted to let you sleep until I couldn't. Sat back on the couch, sipped at the coffee, listened to the piano dance. And sway. And repeat. Dance, sway, repeat. 

I could go back to sleep, I thought.

I could go back to bed.

I thought of your shoulder. Your neck. Your shape and smell and thought I could go back to bed.

I finished the first coffee, got up for the second, and wandered the house as I drank it, faster than the first, picking up the living room and the bathroom and the kitchen a little before you would wake. I decided I would put the dishes off again and I swore I'd do them after work. Finished the second cup and we had showered only a few hours before but insecurity and a need impress told me to shower again. I did and after stood in front of the mirror.

You had told me I had body dysmorphia. I thought that it was good that I did if I did. Thin and long hair hanging over my shoulders. Bags under my eyes. A beard born only of apathy, a gut of booze and sloth and french toast. I pushed the hair off to one side and I wrapped a towel around me and it was time for you to get up.

I opened the bedroom calm and slow. Not to crash in, as I do. 

The sun must have found you. You were facing me and your eyes only were opened as slits. The corners of your mouth pushed gently upward.

"Good morning, you," I said.

Falls (Part 20): Keeping Me Upright

47.

The water bottle was empty by the time we pulled into the parking lot. I was nauseous. Bev took corners like a fucking stunt driver and when the car had finally stopped and she killed the engine my stomach kept rolling around in me and I just needed a moment.

"You have a lighter?" she asked.

"Yeah. Why?" I stayed in my seat with my knees pulled up and my feet against the dash. I was staring at the side-view mirror trying to focus on my face and couldn't.

"I'm going to smoke a bowl. I need to come down a little. I'm... too much."

"It's in my pocket."

"What's wrong with you?"

"Fucking gin and corners." I fought back the nausea a little. "I need tacos."

"Oh. Shit. Yeah, we can do that. Let me smoke first." She reached into my pockets and dug out my lighter, kissed me on the cheek. "You'll be all right beautiful," she said and fished around in her purse, packed a bowl, leaned back, and over the next ten minutes smoked it.

By the time she was done my stomach was beginning to relax.

"Tacos now?" she asked.

"Let's get the canvas' while we're here. Then maybe after."

"All right." She climbed out of the car and I was slower to move. She opened my door, took my hand and I stood. My legs did their best but my shoulders were pulled to the ground on either side.

"Fuck," I said.

"Stay up. Come on, lean on me if you want."

I took her hand, not entirely to hold her hand but not entirely out of necessity either. She was keeping me upright.

Into the store.

Fluorescent lights ate into my skin and I kept my sunglasses on and pulled my hood over my head. Bev weaved through the aisles and the people and all of the shelves were blurs to me and faces stretched and blended and disappeared and I held tight to Bev's hand as she pulled me further and further into the store and further and further from the car where I could lay back and sleep. She stopped and I came close to her and rested my head on her shoulder.

"You all right, beautiful?" she asked.

"Fine. Yes."

"Okay." she kissed my hood and I closed my eyes behind my glasses and thought I could just nod out for a second and maybe I drank too much and maybe I should just sit down. Or lay down. It didn't sound like anyone was around and I could probably just lay on the floor for a second. Get my bearings. Let my stomach settle.

"Should we get big ones?"

"Big what?" I asked, quietly if at all.

"I think big ones would be nice. Big sprawling paintings and we could put them on the walls and cover that horrible fucking wallpaper. We could do it together. Cover ourselves in paint and just roll on them and see what happens."

"Uh huh."

"That's the plan then. Big canvas', go home, get naked. Paint. Yeah?"

"Uh huh."

"Perfect. Can you carry one?"

"MmIdknow. Yeah."

"Okay. Here." She stuffed something into my hand and I knew it was a canvas and it was heavy and wide and I opened my eyes and it was huge and she had one also. "Let's go."

She pulled me through the store and my canvas kept banging into things and I would stumble and she would pull me and keep me close. "Hang in there, Beautiful. We're almost out. Almost tacos."

"Almost tacos," I said.

At the register I leaned against the counter and Bev woke me up and she pulled me through the parking lot and I fell into the car.

48.

"Hey," Bev said. "James. You in there?"

I opened my eyes. It was raining a little and I was in the car still and we were in the parking lot of Mexican restaurant that was only a few notches above Taco Bell.

"There you are. Still want tacos?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Let's go then. Come on."

I felt puke was less imminent but as I tried to open the door and climb out my hand kept slipping and I thought that was what happened when you first wake up. I fell out of the car and into the parking lot and Bev came around and lifted me up.

"Walk idiot."

"Yeah, yeah. I just woke up."

We shuffled inside and there was no one in line. Music was loud and I knew the song but couldn't place it. The restaurant was dim and Bev ordered tacos for me and she got a large burrito of some sort with a lot of shit added and a lot of shit replaced and I thought that maybe it wasn't a burrito anymore.

At the register the girl asked "Would you like a beverage?"

"Beer," I said.

"Beer?" Bev asked.

"Yeah, Two beers."

"What kind?" the girl asked. "We have..."

"No. The cheapest. Three of them. I don't give a shit."

Bev squeezed my hand. "James."

"Sorry," I said. "Three cheap beers."

"And for you?" the girl asked Bev.

"Same."

"Okay. All together?"

"Yeah," I said.

She gave us the total and Bev swiped my card and we took our food and six beers to a table in a dimmer corner and I layed against the wall.

"Eat," Bev said. "You'll feel better."

I unscrewed the cap off the first beer. "I feel fine." I took a large swallow and sat up and began in on the tacos.

After the second, I could feel the beer waking me up. The gin had fucked me, but running out of gin had put me to sleep. I finished my tacos. I finished the beer. Bev was slower and I watched her eat and drink and we talked about the canvas and maybe recording some songs into the tape deck and she asked how the writing was going and when we left I didn't need help walking but I held her hand and she put her head on my shoulder then.

"Let's go home," she said.

"Okay."

Have You Met Anyone?

I made just enough to pay bills and destroy my insides. Responsible self-destruction. Shaved off my beard and shaved my head and stood shirtless in the mirror and thought, Well, there it is. Three bottles of Chianti swirling inside me. Two cups of kratom. The nausea was kicking in but you only had to fight it for a bit and before you knew it you felt okay again. Soft and alive. Your blood slowed and you thought lighter and the world made sense and you knew your beard was a mask and your hair was an act and you were not your face.

You are nothing and nothing matters.

The kratom affected people differently. It destroyed some, but it mellowed me. It made some feel weak, but I felt capable. It gave some nightmares, but I slept heavy and easily. It fixed a lot of me. Things that a menu of meds over the last few months hadn't come close to touching. Things meditation, exercise and diet changes did nothing for.

Shaved face shaved head shaved soul.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub. The Velvet Underground played in the living room. I was spending the evening working on songs for tapes I had been putting out. I usually banged them out, one after the other in an hour or so, but I figured I had time to kill and I could spread it out over two or three hours. Maybe do twice as many songs. I didn't know. The kratom pretty much guaranteed they'd all be slower and gentler than normal.

I had spoken to Marie a bit here and there over the last few days. I didn't know how I felt about it. Neutral. Numb. We attempted to relate to each other. Yes, our anniversary was a rough day to navigate. Yes, we both get sad sometimes. Yes, there is no need for hostility. It rolled off of me. After speaking I walked the length of the places we used to spend time and I asked myself if I could be her friend. If I could still include her in my life, and a part of me screamed out 'yes!' and a part of me screamed out 'no you fucking idiot!' I loved her, of course. But, I knew more than i wanted to.

I ran my hand over my head. I wished things were simpler. I wished I was a product of drift. Of divergence. I wasn't. I was a pit. A husk. An act. Wine as blood. Keep my arms moving so I look alive. Clean. Play songs. Write. Look everyone, I'm alive.

I turned the shower on. Wash the hair off of me.

Water over my skin.

'It was never because I didn't love you," she had said.

I don't understand anything else.

The kratom kept me neutral. The chianti kept me calm.

"Have you met anyone?" she had asked.

I met a lot of people.

"You mean, am I seeing anyone?"

"Yes."

"No."

It was late may. The air was hot and I kept the water cool. Fuck my hair. Fuck the two years it took growing out again. Fuck the last two years and fuck the last ten years and fuck the next ten.

I am neutral. This is fine.

I turned off the shower, toweled off and wished I hadn't shaved my head and wished other things and none of them would come true.

I went to the living room and wrote songs.

Lunch

There is a small crack running across the bridge of my nose. I imagine it is where the cartilage meets the bone. You can't see it, but you can feel it. I was rubbing my finger across it. Sitting in my office and stressing over a phone call I had taken.

The crack across my nose.

Bring everything to a single point of focus. The phone doesn't matter. The words don't matter.

The crack across my nose.

A single point of focus.

"Hey. Martin. You in there?"

I turned around and Sacha was sitting across from me with a raised eyebrow.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh, no, it's cool. I haven't been saying your name for like ten years."

"Shit. Sorry. Kind of... I don't know. Left."

"I noticed. You all right over there buddy?"

"Yeah, okie dokie."

"All right. When are you going to lunch?"

"One-ish I think."

"All right. I am going to have to leave after you get back then."

"For the day?"

"No. Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Maybe. I mean, who knows. Maybe I'll just never come back. Just ride off into the sunset. You can have my clients and my chair."

"Thanks." I put my feet on my desk and leaned back in my chair and kept thinking about the goddamned phone call and exhaled and wished I exhaled the voice and the words right out of me but they sat immovable, unchangeable. Bricks on my chest. Crack across my nose. Voice in my ears.

A single point of focus.

One came and I took lunch. Drove home. Sunglasses on. Window down. Seeing, feeling nothing. The car squeaks as it pulls into the driveway. Soon it will be broken and I won't be able to fix it and I wonder if I am going to see October, and I think I don't care. The stray cat I feed sometimes is on my porch and I say hello to him and he squeaks out a reply and he comes inside with me. I pour a dish of food for him and a glass of wine for me and I sit on the kitchen floor and watch him eat. Or her. I'm not sure.

I don't know if I'll see October. I don't care.

I don't care.

Tuesday (Part 3)

Pulled back into the parking lot near the Mexican restaraunt and killed the car and the broken roar of whatever CD had been playing. Got out.

"Willowbees then?" William asked.

"Might as well."

"Allright."

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I drank the last of the wine from my pouch and threw it through the open window of the car and checked my phone. A message from Taylor. I couldn't make out the letters until I stood still and stared at it.

"Lock your doors," it said.

Another came. "Now."

"What?" I said.

"What?" William said.

"What?" I typed. "Why?" Noticed my phone was dying.

A minute or so went by and she didn't reply.

We went into Willowbees. "Do you have an Android charger?" I asked the bartender.

"I do!"

She dug around behind the bar and pulled out a charger. I found an outlet on a wall and a table next to it and William and I sat at the table while my phone charged. I sent another message to Taylor.

"UHHHH WHY?"

Immediate response; "There he thisncjwss n P"

Another; "More"

I assumed booze was involved.

Another; "I'm just saying that the crazies that know you Exist MIGHT follow you to our house..."

Read it all back a few times. "That's fuckin' weird," I said and put my phone down and let it charge. We ordered rum.

"You want food?" I asked.

"Like what man. Look at me. Goddamn," William said. "Fat."

"Fuck off dude. Me too. Do you want to get goddamned food?"

"I want Bombers," he said.

"You want to go all the way to fucking Albany. To get Bombers?"

"Yeah."

I thought it over. I had gas. I had a twenty in my pocket. I never could turn down a good pulled-pork sandwich. "Okay."

"We should call Frances," he said.

"Okay."

"I don't have a phone."

"Use mine."

I handed it to him and he thumbed it around. "I don't know how to use this fucking thing," he said and laughed.

I unlocked it and brought up the dialer and gave it back to him. He dialed and called.

"No answer," he said.

"Keep calling."

"I will. It's your number pissing her off."

"Great."

"I'm going to leave her a voicemail."

"Okay."

"As if I'm you though."

"What?"

"Yeah, my impression of you."

"Oh fucking good. I can't wait."

He waited a moment and William's James began.

"Heyyyy Frances. This is Jaaaaames, you knooow? You're in my band now and I really think you are just the best person and I love you soooo much you know? Wow. Just soo much." It went on for another minute or so and then he hung up.

"Goddamn it," I said.

He laughed.

Another round of rum so my phone could charge longer.

"So... Bombers or no?" I asked.

"Eh. No. Frances will be pissed if she doesn't get to come too."

"As if she isn't well and pissed from all the calls from my number."

He laughed. "Yeah. Let's get out of here."

"To where?"

"The shittiest bar we can find open on a Tuesday."

"Perfect."

Back to the car. Drove from spot to spot but all of the bars were closed, until we reached what we both assumed was the last chance. It was open. Pete's Pub. A disease hole, famous for it's karaoke nights, class-act patrons, and the chance that you'd get syphilis if you breathed inside too long. In we went.

Two stools at the end of the bar. Ours. Two pitchers of the cheapest beer. Ordered.

"Jukebox," he said. "What do you want to hear?"

"Misfits. 'Where Eagles Dare.'"

"Got it. I'm going to play you some things too, if they have it."

"Okay."

We burned through the pitchers and William made me take notes on bands he was playing through the jukebox but really I only wanted to hear Misfits.

Louder. Blinder.

I had dropped William off. In the car. Driving home.

The passing thought. I called Marie.

It rang and rang and rang and then she answered.

"Uh... hello?" she asked.

"Hey. I know it's late, but, do you want to hang out?"

"No."

"Okay. That's fucking fine then."

I couldn't figure out how to end the call. Threw my phone in the back seat of the car.

Woke up at five. Bedroom lamp on. Clothes on. Turned it off. Took them off. Wondered where my goddamned phone went.

Tuesday (Part 2)

I stood in the driveway for a minute and thought I didn't want to walk at all, I just didn't want to be in the house. I got in the car and drove downtown.

The world was warm and dark and a buzz of life flit through it. Cinco de Mayo, but on a Tuesday.

Parked the car and around the corner I found a small group of people I know sitting in chairs outside of a Mexican restaurant I went to once. Some were friends, some were people I know. I went in and ordered a margarita. No salt.

Fuck salt.

I took the mason jar margarita out to the table with the people and sat between William and Ethan. There was a large traffic sign glowing away nearby and it flashed between a warning for a delay in traffic and the dates.

"Can you just change those from there, or do you need a laptop?" William asked.

"They usually have a keypad right inside them. Hold, on," I said, and dug out my phone. "I have instructions on how to change them."

William laughed. "Excellent. What should it say?"

"I have no idea. Everyone always goes with zombies. Not zombies."

"Oh fuck no. It should say 'Bitches, Bitches, Bitches.'"

"Nine to eight."

Jane, a friend across the table laughed. "Bitches bitches bitches, nine a.m. to eight p.m.?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yep."

My phone buzzed.

Taylor sent a message. "Oh, you should walk then. Sounds nice."

"I did. Currently outside a restaurant having margaritas and thinking about changing a traffic sign."

"Oh dear."

"I know."

"It is Cinco de Mayo, have fun."

I closed it out and began searching through my phone for the directions on how to change the sign. I found them after a few minutes and walked over to large base and pulled at the door of it. It wasn't locked and opened. The control unit was inside and as I was going to reach for it I noticed a cop walking around the corner. I acted like I had just been walking by it and went back to the table and I nodded at the cop as I passed him.

"It isn't changed," Jane said.

"The cop."

"Oh right. Well, he's gone now. How do you do it?"

I gave her my phone and she stood up and walked over to it and William and Ethan and I watched as she crouched down and reached into it. A minute or so passed and she stood. "I can't figure it out. These directions..."

I stood, grabbed my margarita, and went over to the sign and William came also. We all crouched around it and fumbled with the control unit. The directions seemed close, but inaccurate. Nothing happened and after a minute it was boring and we stood.

People were leaving the table and walking toward us. A party was mentioned. A party that may or may not be happening at an address no one was totally sure of.

Seven piled into Jane's care.

William and I walked to my car I finished the drink and dropped the jar into a garbage can.

In the car I pulled from my pouch of wine and passed it to William. I turned the key and Operation Ivy came crashing out of the speakers.

"It's Op Ivy," I said.

"Oh, I know."

Drove across town to the street Jane was pretty sure the house was on. The street was quiet. Dark. Also, there was no house with the number we were looking for. Operation Ivy still loud out of my open windows we drove up and down the street staring at porches and in windows hoping to catch some clue.

Jane's car showed up on our fifth pass and we parked near her.

"I don't really want to be here," William said.

"Me either. You want to book early?"

"Yeah."

"We should have a code word for when one of us is ready."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Goatwhore?"

"Perfect."

We walked behind the group Jane brought. They went down a driveway, behind a house and there were people smoking near a door with the number we had been looking for. We never would have found it on our own.

Jane's group went inside and we followed, and up a staircase and into a kitchen that looked like it was the first apartment of a group of college kids.

A guy reached his hand out to me. "Hey, man. Welcome. James, right?"

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

"Saw you play a while ago. Good shit. Glad you're here. I'm Nicholas."

"Good to meet you man. This your place?"

"Yeah. Booze is in the kitchen, and Randall, wherever the fuck he is has pot. So, you know..."

"Thanks."

"Of course man. Hey, I'll find you later, I've got music shit to ask you."

All right," I said.

He walked away and I walked to the kitchen, where William already was, pouring a glass of gin.

"Me too," I said.

He nodded his nod and grabbed a glass from the dish rack behind him and poured me one. There were stools on one side of the island in the kitchen and they faced outward so I could see the front door when we sat.

I sent Taylor a text. "I kind of wish you were hanging out."

"Kind of?" she said.

I drank my gin, poured another and drank it. William kept up.

The front door opened and a girl whom I had been keeping my distance from walked in and immediately made eye contact.

"Shit," William said.

"You know the story?"

"Not really, just what I have heard."

"Oh, that's fucking horrifying. What does that mean?"

"Don't worry man. It isn't on you. Goatwhore?"

"Goatwhore."

We threw back the drinks we had and left.

Pot smoke filled the porch and I knew some of the faces around it.

"You want some dudes?" someone asked and gestured the joint at us.

"None for me, thanks. Booze only."

"All right, you man?" the kid asked William.

"No, thank you though."

We walked down the stairs and I was nearing the end of my pouch of wine.

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

"Wander?"

"Let's go to a bar."

"Deal."

Stumbled into the road and found the car. Got in and William changed the CD and the music was deafening and we drove back into town.

Tuesday (Part 1)

I was supposed to hang out with Amy after work but she was sick.

Thought I had rehearsal, but I didn't.

Sent Bette a message to see if she wanted to kill time with me, but she hadn't got back to me.

My evening was clear and it was making me nervous. I rode the elevator away from my office and kept thinking about the box of Chianti on my counter at home and I found my car in the parking garage and drove away from the building and thought about the box of Chianti on my counter.

Drove with the windows down and it was nearly eighty out for the third day in a row and the breeze across my face and the music on the stereo and the life in the city, none of it was the Chianti.

Home.

Empty the things in my pockets into a small pile on the table. Pour a tall glass. Lean against the counter and then everything was okay, or getting closer to it.

Thought about calling Taylor, but didn't. I wasn't sure what to do with that. I was pretty sure I fucked that up somehow and I didn't want to think about it.

Poured another and I headed into the living room and put a record on. I like playing 45's on 33. I used to have a Nirvana 45 that slowed would grind and melt into the absolute sound of doom and adulthood and responsibility and so I had created a habit of it.

Sat on my couch for a minute and Amy sent a message.

"I have a muffin for you. Banana. But I don't know how you'll get it."

Back and forth for a minute and then I decided that since she was sick and I was really into the idea of a banana muffin, I'd drive over and pick it up from her.

It came with a chocolate biscotti also. I hung out for a minute and discussed a numbering system that I had created of people I knew and the strange reason I had to. She laughed.

"Jesus, James," she said.

"I know."

"Don't fuck her."

"Which?"

"Three."

"I'm not going to. I don't know. There's this other thing I'm trying to sort."

"Other thing?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, that's right. The guest."

"Yeah."

"How'd that go?"

"The more I think about it, the more I have no idea. Probably not as well as I thought. "

"Sorry dude."

"C'est la vie." I took a sip from the small plastic flask i had in my pocket and said goodbye and left.

Sunglasses on. Hair a mess. Dirty chucks.. Black t-shirt with a skull made from pictures of cats and cutoff black skinny jean shorts. I walked the half block back to my car and I was looking forward to getting home and eating the muffin. It had been a long time since someone had made something for me and I thought Amy was a good friend to have. I climbed into my car and drove away.

Home.

Poured another and turned the television on. Caught up on a show Sacha had been hounding me about.

Taylor sent me a message.

"Oy vey," she said.

"What are you grumbling about?"

"I just bought box wine and it's all your fault."

"I'm a man who knows what he's doing. Glad it's rubbing off on you."

Back and forth for a bit. The evening was turning to night. I was restless and agitated.

"Thinking about wandering," I said.

"Wandering?"

"Yeah. A walk around town maybe."

She didn't respond. I changed my shirt, filled my pockets, filled a pouch with wine, left my sunglasses on the table. Left the house.

I stood in the driveway for a minute and thought I didn't want to walk at all, I just didn't want to be in the house. I got in the car and drove downtown.

Collapsed Bridge

Shut the fuck up. 

I was sitting at my desk. It was Tuesday and Taylor had left in the morning and I was feeling worn. Trying to write. I never had time at my apartment anymore. It was difficult to write at work but it wasn't impossible. I couldn't drink. I couldn't put headphones on. I had to be constantly ready to deal with... well, work. A woman in a cube diagonal from me was going on and on about having a margarita at lunch to celebrate Cinco De Mayo. I didn't doubt she liked margaritas, only that she'd follow through.

Why even talk about it? I thought, staring at my keyboard while she went on and on and on and she chortled shrill and seemingly endless. Just have the goddamned drink. No one cares. 

A couple weeks back I had been staying in the magical land of Last Resort. I hadn't been sleeping, I hadn't been sober. I hadn't been dreaming, hoping, or anywhere. I was spending more time sitting on my bed wondering where to nail the belt with all of my goddamned low ceilings than anything else. It had become a focus.

I went to work. I talked with Sacha and I laughed and I talked with Amy and I laughed and I had started a band and I laughed and I looked everyone in the eye and I only thought my eyes were black and my skin was blue and I was an alien among them. A ghost. A voice they'd eventually forget and a time they'd eventually regret and a person they'd never actually met.

I wasn't an idiot. I understood what was happening. I knew there was a day of sunshine ahead of me. Somewhere. I knew that I'd feel something else eventually. I knew I'd someday think this moment is worth any other. But, what you know and what you feel.

A friend recommended me to a therapist. A therapist recommended me to a doctor. A doctor recommended me to medication. One for my brain, a second for my sleep. I knew I needed them.

Two days in and I was well rested. I was cleaning up my yard. I was a little jittery, and I was a little clouded, but I thought, maybe I'll go sober.

I did.

And everything stopped.

No songs came from my throat. No writing from my fingertips. No paintings from my hands. I thought get wine and I didn't.

People noticed and they ran through all of same meaningless shit words you'd expect.

"Proud."

"Strong."

"Happy."

"Brave."

I deserved none of them. Don't be proud of me because I can't handle my own fucking head, and I'm as strong as a collapsed bridge. Don't be happy for me. I couldn't think. I couldn't create. I either survived or lived, but not both. And "brave"? Ridiculous. I knew my cowardice. I embodied it. Bravery is facing your horror, and I was running away. Or at the least, crawling.

On the fifth sober day, and the eighth medicated, my band had a show. A house party for Shannon's birthday. I sang the songs and while I was I felt nothing for the words. They were only sounds and I thought that must mean they weren't my words anymore and that these weren't my songs anymore and this wasn't my music or band or friends and as my mouth and hands moved and the lights bounced and Paul and Frances rolled through their parts with finesse and ease and smiling I smiled back and kept up the act and felt nothing.

The set ended.

I pulled off the large fleece Batman onesie I had worn through it and drenched in sweat I packed up my gear and thought; have a beer. It's fine. Relax. Have a beer. So I did. Then another, then more and so on.

The next morning I bought a box of wine and two days later I bought another and I kept telling people I was still sober and then when I killed the second box the next day I bought a third and decided I wasn't going to live in a goddamned cloud anymore and that I'd know my own thoughts and recognize my own voice and if I drowned I'd drown and it'd be on my own terms. I stopped taking the meds and it was another five days before I thought about where to nail the belt again and I knew then that the horrible little bastards had worn off.

Taylor was coming over that night for a few days and I was looking forward to seeing her, but thought maybe the timing of all of this was possibly the worst I could have arranged. I was going to be a swirling mess, unfocused, not yet clear, not yet me.

Maybe that's for the best. 

Maybe it was. I don't know.