To Hell

I broke and sent you a message.

Sitting in the parking lot, waiting to play guitar and listening to songs I used to listen to. I was finishing the flask from the glove compartment and rehearsal was in your old building. I took breaths. I took swallows. I took my time. The evening was settling in and I was the sunset then. I was the fade and the dim and I was the end.

"Everyone I know lives in your old building. I hate it."

Send.

A song I used to sing came on and I turned most of the car off, just letting the stereo play. 

Phone buzzes. The long vibration when it's you. I listen to the song a little more. I can see the younger me. Singing. Smiling. Wandering. The younger me. Drunk in that building. Bleeding out of my face and smiling and the music is loud and you're patching me up and my mother calls. I tell her I cut my face open and you tell her I didn't and that I am exaggerating and that you are taking care of me. 

"I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

I finish the flask and throw it back in the glove compartment.

Fuck you and your sorry. I'm fine. Look at me. Fine. People keep saying I look the best I have in years. No one thinks this is a nosedive. No one thinks I'm drunk and choking in a parking lot at dusk. No one thinks about me at all because I am fine. Look at me. Goddamn fine.

 "Yeah. Just weird. Sorry."

Send.

The CD ends and starts over and I eject  it and look at my guitar. It has a long crack in it now and one of the tuning pegs is broken off because two months ago I kicked the fucking thing over and out of the room when I couldn't play the songs I wanted to write about you. I still can't, so now I write songs about me, and songs about melting snow and changing weather and nothing that means a goddamned thing, I guess. 

A long vibration and my eyes sting and soon it will be too dark for my sunglasses and soon it will be time to rehearse and soon it will be time to crawl back home and lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and listen to the wind careen through the back porch where I thought years ago that I would put a bistro table. I would put chairs there and eat breakfast and you would wake up and look out the back window and I'd be eating toast and drinking coffee and the sun would be in my hair and life and nothing would eat at me. Nothing would weigh on me. Nothing would ever be wrong. Soon it will be time to lie in the dark. Not sleeping, not dreaming.

"I know. Literally everything reminds me of you. So, yeah... I'm sorry."

Stop saying you are sorry. I don't want sorry. I don't want you to feel apologetic or to think of me at all. I don't want to have sent you a message. I don't want to go inside the fucking building. I don't want to leave the car. I don't want to breathe.

I don't respond. 

Put my sunglasses in the center console. Open the door. Take my guitar with the long crack and broken tuning peg. I need to do these things. I need to do things. Keep moving. Walking, singing, playing. Writing. Keep going.

I don't know what my fucking problem is. Tomorrow will be different. I won't even know you.

I won't even know you and I will eat toast on the back porch and drink coffee and play guitar and to hell with you. 

To hell with you.

I step inside the building. To hell.

Apparently

I told her to paint some of my nails and she did and a few days went by. I was biting them. The nail polish flaked and I tasted it and it was the same taste as when I was young and told girls to paint my nails. Familiar. I bit them until they were too short and my skin under them hurt and was raw. 

I had a show, my first in years, in two days and I hoped they would not be sore by then. Guitar is a real motherfucker with raw fingertips.

Two girls with the same name were sending me messages online. I was answering both, but was having trouble keeping up with who was who. One wasn't actually into me, and one might have been, but the shift in tone was disorienting and I kept trying to answer in one or two words and plain.

I was hungover and drinking to fix it. It usually worked. Not this morning. But I had a half a bottle of wine with me and I couldn't waste it.

Sat at my desk and staring at the clock. Nick Drake singing soft through my computer speakers.

A coffee cup of wine.

One leg thrown over the other.

My head in my hands.

"Did you see the M&M's?" Sacha asked.

"No."

"Peanut butter filled and peanut."

"Both?"

"Yep."

"Those are the two best kinds."

"I know. Looks like you're gonna fall off the wagon."

"It isn't even a question."

Sacha smiles and I drink from my coffee cup.

She deals with me all day and tries to give me advice and tells me the things I say to her I should say to my therapist but now I just pay my therapist to listen to lies. Being seen as good is more important to me than being better, apparently.

I drink from the coffee cup. In four hours I will be out of work.

I send a message to one of the girls and ask her if she wants to get lunch. She doesn't respond. I go without her.

I go home and I eat eggs and pour a fresh glass and another fresh glass and fill the coffee cup and after I go back to work. I don't sleep anymore. I don't dream anymore.

Apparently.

Falls (Pt. 19): Crash, You Bitch

45.

"I have coke." Bev said. She was standing in her bra and underwear. Her hair was sticking up everywhere and she had smeared a patch of blue into it and she was trash and she was as beautiful as I had ever known her to be.

"You're back to that?"

I was sitting on the living room floor, painting and listening to the radio. I didn't know the band, but I could sing along. I didn't change out of my sweat-shorts anymore.

"Your roots are showing," she said.

"I saw."

"So...?"

"Coke?"

"Yeah."

"No. Thanks though."

"More for me."

"I guess. Hey, will you do me a favor?"

"Depends on what it is."

"Fill my glass?" I handed it to her.

She took it. "What are you drinking?"

"Gin."

"Sure."

She went to the kitchen and I heard her pour the gin and then I heard her sit down. I heard the rail. I heard the choke. She came out and handed me the glass. "Here you go beautiful."

"Thanks."

"What are you painting?"

"I don't know. Face? Me? I'll probably paint over it and start over."

"Don't do that," she said.

"Do what? Paint over it?"

"Yeah, you shouldn't paint over things. Cross things out. Anything like that."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Well... I mean, the rejects are just as important as the final product. Why do you think you always see like, fuckin' Bob Dylan home demo tapes getting remastered and shit? Because, sometimes the process speaks more for the artist than the finished product, you know? Don't paint over it, just start something new."

"I don't want any one to ever see this."

"Oh fuck you," she said, and dropped onto the couch. "Yeah, everyone is rushing out to see your fucking paintings. Come on."

"They might."

"No, they won't. Listen, I love what you make, but, no one else gives a shit. Just start a new painting."

"I need a canvas. This is the last of it."

"Let's go get one."

"There aren't any art stores here."

"And?"

"What do you mean?" I drank half the gin.

"Let's take a drive. That fucking car just sits there. Shit, when was the last time we drove anywhere? Months ago?"

"Yeah, probably."

"So let's take a drive."

"I'm pretty drunk."

"I'm not."

"No, but you're fucking coked up."

"Attentive?"

"I guess. Okay."

"Okay." She smiled and when she stood I reached for her hand and she took mine and I pulled her to me and down to me and I kissed her. She sat in my lap and I laid back and ran my fingers their course and her mouth made sense to me and under my fingers her body was both familiar and exotic and I kissed her mouth, her face, her neck, her breast and it was a bit longer before we left.

46.

Black cutoff skinny jeans. Black hoody. Dark Wayfarers. Bev was in the driver seat and I sat next to her staring down at myself wondering why I dressed like such a fucking idiot. I wondered if I was mourning. We were flying down the interstate toward Springer and when I glanced at the speedometer it said 85-ish and I had my window down and a water bottle filled with the last of the gin and The Birthday Party crashed through the stereo as loud as Bev could tolerate it and the air would have been cold if I was just standing still but Bev kept saying she was hot and over heated and needed air. I had my hood over my head and in the side-view mirror could see myself I kept trying to look away.

"Flame on!" the stereo bellowed.

I stared at my legs. It was too cold for shorts. I was too old to dress like this. To be like this. I was shit faced in the middle of the day, careening down the highway with the coke-riddled corpse of the girl that may or may not have destroyed the only thing I had ever given a shit about and dressed like a fifteen year old suburban rebel shithead. I closed my eyes. Bev sang along to the music. I drank from the water bottle and thought crash.

Crash. 

My book will sell millions. 

I'll never have to feel anything.

Marie would never have to work again.

I'd be remembered.

Respected.

Crash. God, Bev.

Crash.

I wondered where Marie was and took a drink. I thought about the smell of her hair and took a drink. I remembered her hips and her skin and her taste and her taste and I took a drink. I took another drink and tried to push her out of my mind.

Bev had thrown on a sundress and a large hat and also had dark sunglasses on. The wind threw the dress up to her waste and I watched and looked at her thighs and her underwear and my dick was too gin-jured to do a goddamn thing but I thought I might try anyway.

Crash.

Please.

I didn't think it, but it was there. Floating behind my eyelids and under my skin.

Crash, you bitch.

Suicidals Anonymous

"Oh fuck off. Who doesn't?"

She inhaled deep and looked away for a second. "I don't know. You do?"

"Holy shit. Every day. Literally every minute. Right fucking now. Listen, if you aren't considering killing yourself, you aren't fucking living."

"What does that even mean?"

I threw back the last of the gin and pulled my stool closer to the bar and kept my eyes locked to her. "Okay, life, we all want smiles and fucking bliss and love and contentment. Yes. I'm not some negative shit."

"Okay."

"Okay, but at the same time, we aren't fucking getting it."

She gave me a cocked eyebrow.

"You aren't. Don't give me that fucking look. You aren't. If you were, you wouldn't be here. No. It's all mostly shit, and sometimes, maybe, if we are extraordinarily lucky, we might get love. We might get bliss. We might get a sunday morning that feels soft and beautiful and perfect. But probably not. And it isn't our fault, of course, but it's such a fucking disappointment. You think back to every half assed relationship you've ever had, maybe the last date you went on and you thought 'why didn't he call me again', but you still throw his name around in your fantasies, it's all fucking horrible. And then someday, Eva, someday, you look up and there is nothing. You're old now. You've got your own fucking baggage. You're guarded and hurt and jaded and maybe someone would have loved you prior, but, now, what have you got? Scars. Fucking scars. So now, someone has to love you and your goddamned scars Eva!"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, people don't want fucking scars, Eva. They want new models, they want fresh off the lot. They want no hassle, all reward. So where does that leave you and me? Fucking nowhere. Shit out of luck. Alone. And you know what? It's most of us. I look around these fucking places... Look around. Look at these sad sacks of shit. Look!"

She looks around the bar and the worry never leaves her face.

"This is who we are now," I say. "There is nothing for us. Nothing as beautiful as young love. Nothing as satisfactory, nothing as pure, nothing as good. We are forever silver medalists at best. And the majority of us, fuck. This is where we are. You're goddamned right I think about stuffing a fucking gun down my throat. Well, not down my throat, point up, but you know what I mean. And you know what?"

"What?"

"There isn't a single fucking person in this shithole who doesn't have the same thought every goddamn night. Who doesn't quietly ask themselves if they should throw themselves in front of a fucking car or leap off the South Spier Bridge. All of us. Fucking suicide club."

"Maybe."

"No. Not maybe. It's true. So don't fucking tell me you thought you were considering it. This is fucking go time. This is the big leagues. This is goddamned suicidals anonymous. Do it or shut the fuck up, but don't act like one bad date is the end of the world. Fuck off. The point is, you can't feel so shitty without having felt equally as good at some point, right? So if you aren't suicidal once in a while, you've never known a bliss or whatever. Christ. Buy me a drink."

She bit her lip. "I think you're usually a pretty good guy."

"Great."

"What do you want?"

"Gin."

Beautiful and Small

Try to think of beautiful and small things.

Sunshine.

A girl's smile.

Wordplay.

A kiss.

Open windows.

The right song at the right moment.

Riding down a hill on a bicycle with your arms spread and the world blurring away behind you.

The moment just before you realize you haven't felt that chasm inside your chest for a minute.

Watching the ones you love succeed.

Wind through the trees.

Laying in water and watching clouds.

A good meal after a long day.

Summer storms.

Orange light splayed across a parking lot as night settles in.

Prince Charming

"Jesus Christ. Tell me there's fucking booze in this house."

I was on Deb's couch. I was whisky drunk and I had just pissed her off. She was in the kitchen, slamming cabinet doors and bitching about the pile of dishes in her sink.

"Yeah, that's what you need," she said. "Fucking asshole." Another cabinet slammed and I didn't know who the asshole was, me or the cabinet.

She stomped out into the living room and threw a bottle at me. It hit me in the chest and by morning I'd have a large bruise. 

"Sarsparilla fucking whiskey. Drink up," she said. Back into the kitchen. "Maybe you'll finally pass out and I won't have to fucking listen to you."

I unscrewed the whiskey and took a large swallow. It, besides the normal whisky experience, was sweet and tasted a bit like root beer and I could see myself throwing up any time, and swallowed more. I laid back against the couch and couldn't remember driving to Deb's in the first place. My eyes were heavy and my head was a landfill. 

"Why are you pissed at me?" I said.

"What?" she asked from the kitchen. "I can't fucking hear you. You're a goddamned mumbler. Fuck. Just fall asleep already."

"I said," I cleared my throat. "Why are you pissed at me?!"

"Why... Why am I pissed at you?!" She swept into the living room like a hurricane. "Oh, maybe because... hmmm, I have to find out you're fucking my friends? BY MY FRIENDS. Oh, and you, mister prince goddamned charming, decide 'hey, now's a great time for more whisky!' and then proceed to fucking berate me in front of a bar full of my friends! Why?! Why am I fucking mad?"

I stood and took a long and hard swallow, screwed the top on and tossed the bottle onto the couch. "I didn't berate you," I said. 

"No? No, you didn't launch into a goddamn tirade of seventeen reasons why you aren't fucking tied down, and how you wouldn't be tied down to me anyway, and how ohhhhh, poor James your life is so fucked up that jesus christ we should all just let you do whatever the fuck you want?! Fuck you. Yeah. I'm not your fucking girlfriend. I'm not fucking dating you. I don't own you or have any goddamned claim to you, but you know, a little fucking honesty could go a long way you stupid selfish piece of shit."

"You told me we were done. You made it very goddamn clear."

"Fuck you. You knew what I meant."

"Knew what you meant?! How the fuck am I going to know what you meant? You said we were done! That should have been what you fucking meant! Don't goddamn run around and tell me one thing and expect me to understand your goddamn code! Say what you fucking mean!"

"You want me to say what I mean?!"

"Yes! For christ sake!"

"Fine. I'm done."

"Oh, this time?"

"Yeah. That's it. Lay down. Sober up. Leave in the morning. I'm done. Enjoy fucking your goddamned skanks."

"They're your friends," I said.

Her fist, rings and all, connected with my jaw and already drunk I fell onto the couch and I wiped blood from the outside of my face and tasted it inside.

"You fucking hit me?"

"Fuck you. Go to bed." She walked to her bedroom, slammed the door and the copper taste in my mouth was fine and not unfamiliar, though I imagined my jaw would be fairly sore later.

After sitting and letting the world slow a bit, I stood, took the whisky and left, shutting the door quiet behind me. I sat in my car, sipped from the whisky and fell asleep in the passenger seat. 

In the morning I went upstairs and she made eggs and I thought I'd try to write later.

I'm Going to Keep My Sunglasses On

"I'm going to keep my sunglasses on," I said.

"That's fine. However you're comfortable."

I sat in a chair in the corner of the room. She had a clipboard in her lap and I had a bottle and a half of wine in me. I had made this appointment a month back, at the recommendation of a friend. It was cold out and I had my apartment windows open all day and I shook small and involuntarily. I didn't know if she was noticing, but I would have.

She was flipping through the intake packet I had filled out before coming in. At the back of it was a section "Are you experiencing any of the following...". Nineteen items were listed and I checked off sixteen and thought maybe Sacha was right about making this appointment. 

"How are you? Right now?" she asked.

"Fine. You know. Good. Cold."

She half smiled and I did too and being in the room wore away at my resolve and I thought an hour might be too long.

"I'm just, you know, going over the packet here."

"Yeah."

"You want to start small?"

"Whatever. Either way."

"Okay. Well... Let's start with, you checked off that you are impulsive."

"Yeah."

"Often?"

"What does that mean? I guess."

"It means, do you sometimes do things randomly, without thinking about the consequences."

"I don't think that's what it means."

"No? Why's that."

"I mean, I make snap decisions all the time. Doesn't mean I don't understand the consequences. immediately. I don't need an hour to figure shit out."

"Right."

"Sorry. That was rude."

"No, it's fine. You're being honest. Let me reword it. Let's say you're at a party, someone offers you coke. Do you do it?"

"What does that have to do with anything? That's like asking if I want a sandwich. That's not impulsive, it's just a decision. Do I want a sandwich. Goddamn right. Do I want coke? Slide over."

She mashed her lips together in a crooked grimace. "You're right, I guess. Okay. Well, do you ever consider yourself recklessly impulsive?"

"Like, just leaping off of a porch without reason?"

"Yes."

"No. I reason everything."

"Okay. There we go." She smiled a bit. "I'm going to skip forward a bit."

"Sure."

"You checked suicidal."

"Yeah."

"How often?"

"How often what?"

"How often do you feel suicidal?"

"I'm not sure what that means either. Always? A constant whisper."

"Now?"

"Yep."

"An actual voice?"

"No. Just where my brain goes. Where it lives."

She scribbled shit down.

"I haven't yet though, so that can go on the back burner."

"Is that how you feel about it? It's unimportant that your mind dwells there?"

"I'm not dead. I must not be that persuasive."

She nodded. 

"You use drugs?" she asked.

"No. Not really."

"Alcohol?"

"Yeah."

"How often?"

"Constantly."

"Morning to night?"

"Most of the time. I run out."

"Has it always been like this?"

"No. I mean, it kind of picked up over the last few years, and then recently really, um, I don't know, took over."

"How recently?"

"January twenty-sixth."

She looked up at me. "What happened January twenty-sixth? The date sticks out to you."

"Wife left."

"How long were you married?"

"Eight years."

"Well, that happens. It's destructive behavior, but, it's normal."

"It's fucking stupid."

"Why do you say that?"

"I know how fucking normal it is. I know this is nothing. I know person A was unhappy and then they rectified it by moving along and me, person B, is more than capable of observing it all and doing the math and coming out the other side. It's fucking stupid that this shit still echoes. It doesn't make any fucking sense. I'm not mad at her. I'm not sad about it. I'm not mourning, I don't feel anything."

"You don't think that in itself might be a problem?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your wife of eight years left and you don't feel anything?"

"I don't feel anything about people getting robbed, or sinking ships, or peoples fucking parking tickets either."

"Eight years isn't a parking ticket."

"No shit. Would have been a lot less hassle."

She nodded, wrote more down. 

"If it's all right, can I ask why she left?"

"She was unhappy."

"Is that your normal answer?"

"Yeah."

"Is there a different answer?"

"Not today."

"Okay."

"I don't want you to think I'm here because of that," I said.

"No?"

"No."

"Okay, let's move down the list."

"Okay."

"Restlessness."

"I took that to mean not being able to sleep."

"Do you have trouble sleeping."

"Usually."

"How much sleep do you get?"

"Between an hour and four on a good night. A couple weeks ago I got fifteen. I think I was catching up."

"You usually get between an hour and four a night?"

"Yeah. I'm getting these fucking bags under my eyes."

"I can't see them."

"I know."

"What keeps you up?"

"Some nights it's stress. Normal life shit. Bills, deadlines, failures. Some nights I'm just not tired."

She nodded. It seemed to be her move. She looked up at me.

"So, why do you think you're here?"

"I was told I should probably come."

"You just took the suggestion?"

"I trust the person who made it."

She gave a questioning half smile. "You don't think it was necessary?"

"Well, my immediate answer is no. But, I'm here. I could be home right now. That must say something."

"It does."

"Let's keep rolling that list."

"Okay," she said. "Well..."

Tell Me Something

We had turned the movie off and were laying in the dark. The room was hot and I had most of my body out of the blankets. Luce was buried in them. I had thought I was tired when I killed the t.v., but there we were, listening to each other breath, her arm across my chest, my arm around her back and fingers running slow through her hair.

"Are you tired?" she asked.

"I thought I was."

"Me too." She sighed deep. 

"You all right?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Just asking."

Her hair didn't smell like shampoo, or perfume, or a sales pitch. It was her, and I thought that maybe I had never had that experience before and that maybe I had been robbed of it somehow and I was thankful for having it. I kissed the top of her head. 

"Tell me something," she said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. About you. Something I don't know."

I thought for a moment and ran my fingers down her side and enjoyed quietly her soft and smooth skin and she pulled tighter against me. "Anything," she said. "Then I will."

"My favorite constellation is Orion," I said.

"Oh?" She moved her fingers through the hair on my chest. "I don't know enough about constellations to have a favorite."

"Now you," I said.

"Tell you something?" 

"Yeah."

"Umm... I love rom coms."

"Luce... I mean..." I laughed a little.

"What?"

"As far as things women surprise you with go,"

She laughed and lightly punched my chest. "Shut up. Your turn."

I turned on my side, facing her and kissed her forehead and pulled her tight against me and ran my hand slow down her back and to the backs of her thighs and up again. "I can only think of weird negative things. I don't think there's much else to me."

"That's not true. Maybe that's just all you're seeing."

"Okay. Well... I was on an all star baseball team for two years when I was a kid."

"Shut up." She laughed. "You can't just make shit up."

"I'm not. I swear to god."

"What in high school?" 

"Mostly middle school. By high school I couldn't even drag my ass to gym."

"Jesus. James. Playing baseball." She laughed again. "You would have been adorable."

"Shut up." I smiled but she couldn't see. "Your turn."

I gripped at her hip and pressed my fingers into her, slid my hand up the side of her as she thought of something to say and moved her chin upward and I kissed her. She kissed like I kissed. In short bursts and with passion and quick and with purpose.  Her mouth was sweet and her tongue small and complimenting. Her breath neutral. Unassuming. I took every opportunity to kiss her. 

We parted.

"What was that for?" she asked quiet.

"I wanted to."

"I did too."

"Still your turn."

"Okay, okay." She gripped at my back. "I...  I have never played sports."

"You can't just take mine and spin it."

"I can't think of anything though."

"This is your game."

"I know." 

"I am kind of surprised though."

"About?"

"You look like you've got about two weeks of field hockey in you, and then you decided it was more fun to sleep on Saturdays."

She laughed. "Nope. Nothing." She kissed my shoulder. "I do like sleeping on Saturday though." She paused. "The other days also. Your turn."

"I don't know if I have much more. Nothing you want to hear."

"I want to know about you. I don't care."

"You might."

"Yeah, well, you might feel the same way about me." 

"Point taken. Okay. Well, let's jump into it then, I guess."

"Okay. I don't know what that means, but I'm excited."

I took a breath and kissed her forehead again. Her chest filled and emptied within my arms and I breathed her in.

I told her about the angry dogs and the rotting cow. I told her about the endless woods in the middle of Maine. I told her about being sent to the center. Twice. I told her about the stolen car when I was fourteen, things I couldn't understand when I was a child and that frighten me to this day and a million other things that could have been a crash course in Me 101. 

When I was finished I drank from a bottle of water near the bed and she rested herself on one elbow and by the dim light through the curtains I could almost see her face. I assumed it was calm, and eased, and accepting, and she bent close to me and kissed me. 

"You've got some dark shit in there."

"None of it matters."

She kissed me again and I rolled onto my back and she laid on my chest. "You're just... you're not who I thought you were."

"I'm sorry about that."

"No, I..."

"You're wonderful," I said.

"You."

There was nothing left to ask and in the dark, in the heat, in my bed, I fell asleep next to one of the very few people who knew a goddamned thing about me, and I wanted her to know more and I wanted to know more. Who gives a shit about rom coms?

TS; (almost) DI

I had started going to the gym and I went for a while and then decided I'd rather sit home and drink and write and wallow and be a fucking idiot.

Things were going well.

I spoke to Holly and sometimes Sacha and sometimes Samira and sometimes Amy and sometimes anyone who'd be willing to offer an ear and a pleasantry and a free drink.

Everything was fine.

I kept finding bruises and didn't remember knocking into anything and I shit blood or wine for two days, but it stopped so I didn't worry about it.

I kept thinking I was going back to the gym. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Never tomorrow. All tomorrows were filled with clay in my lungs and bruises on my skin and static in my head and I kept losing weight.

There were moments of light and there was occasionally a sense of hope, but always in one casual flash of maturity I could vanish them and there was no purpose for pretending or fairy tales or optimism. Optimism had become assuming that I would probably keep waking up and that notion sat stark and probable in me. I probably fucking would. It would be just my luck.

"Eat citrus," Sacha would say.

"Come visit me," Samira would say.

"You're a good dude," Holly would say.

And they all said "fuck her," as if that meant a goddamned thing.

There was no issue there anymore, so far as I could tell or admit. There was no anger. No sadness. Nothing. I was no longer hurt, only devoid and I began to wonder if I had built my life around this meaningless lynchpin, and once removed, my purpose with it. Or my idea of purpose.

"Fuck some people," Holly would say.

"Hang out with me," Samira would say.

"Eat citrus," Sacha would say.

And they all said "it'll get better," as if that meant a goddamned thing.

I sat at my desk. Stared at the wall, and couldn't give a damn about better.

Everything was fine.

Everything was fine.

Falls (Pt. 18): Trying

44.

After five days of hiding in the attic, sending begging messages to Marie's phone, a laundry list of embarrassing things, I renewed the lease. The house was mine until May. I couldn't stand the thought of going home. Of going to the apartment and finding it empty, or emptier.

I took bottles of whiskey and boxes of wine to the attic and I built walls of them around me and I typed and I typed all day and all night and it was nothing, but it came. My back ached and burned and my eyes were dry and itched and my chest was split in two and fits of weeping would creep over me and then it was back to it. Words. Words to Marie. Words to the world. Words to myself. It didn't matter.

A small stack of paper next to me. Unpublishable, barely readable. My best work.

I stood, with creaks and aches and held my hand against the wall and balanced myself and walked to the ladder and went downstairs.

In the living room Bev was lying on the couch in her underwear with a cigarette in her hand and listening to the radio.

"It's cold out," she said.

"Put some fucking clothes on, Bev."

I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of gin and threw it back and poured another and went to the living room.

"Move your legs."

She lifted her legs and I sat at the far end of the couch and she laid her legs across me. I took a sip of the gin and she took a drag off her cigarette.

"How're you doing?" she asked.

"Fine. Just writing."

"Yeah. I got that. You know what I mean."

I nodded and raised my eyebrow a bit.

"We can talk, you know."

"I know."

"Okay."

The radio buzzed out Otis Reading and I wanted nothing more than to throw it in the fucking street.

"When did you start smoking inside?" I asked.

"I don't know. Am I not supposed to?"

She wasn't, it was in the lease, and a week ago I would have bitched. I shrugged and chuckled to myself about how that must mean I was in a dark period.

"What?"

"Nothing."

She pulled her legs off me and sat up and came close to me. Her bra was too big for her and she smelled vaguely of sweat and old perfume.

"You're a good dude. She's an idiot."

I drank from the gin.

"I'm sorry I got so mad at you before. I know it was fucked up of me."

"It's fine. Doesn't matter now."

"I guess."

"Do you wanna make out?"

"Not really."

"You want me to go down on you?"

"I'm pretty sure my dick is dead, Bev. I mean, I appreciate it, but I want gin and I want to rot in this fucking place and that's all."

"I'm going to try any way."

"Fine."

She pulled my cut off sweat-shorts down and mouthed around for nothing and I stared at the radio and kept drinking from the gin and I had to give her credit. She was trying.

45.

The leaves were mostly turned and the town was dead. Too cold to swim. Too empty to wander. Bev and I were laying around the attic nude and smoking a bowl and looking out the small portal at the end of the room and I was reading her some of the things I had written.

"It's not easy to follow. Like, at all," she said.

"I know. I feel like I 'm getting something here, though. I mean, I can follow it. So, maybe I just need to focus it down?"

"Maybe. Maybe I'm just fucking stoned though, you know?"

I laughed. "Yeah."

"Kiss me."

"Okay." I layed next to her and ran my hand gentle against the side of her face and into her hair and kissed her and gripped at the back of her head, the base of her skull and she tasted like pot and the strawberries she had eaten earlier and I enjoyed her kiss and I wanted her kiss because it was a kiss and because it was a touch and because it was going to have to do. My chest ached as the tide and she reached to me and I wrapped an arm around her waste and pulled her on top of me and her hair fell onto my face and I gripped at her hips. It would have to do.

An Apple and a Screwdriver

"What happened to the funny shit?"

"What do you mean?"

"Everything you write lately is a fucking drag."

"Who says 'drag'?"

Kevin laughs. "I do, I guess."

We're sitting on the tailgate of his truck in the Home Depot parking lot eating breakfast. It's hot and humid and only a little past nine and I'll be sunburned by the end of the day and I'll drink a case of Ice barely before I get out of the shower later, collapse in the air conditioning and think of how much bed space I don't need anymore, but I damn well enjoy. For now I'm eating an apple and drinking one of two screwdrivers I packed and I think that maybe vodka on a hot day wasn't my best idea. 

"You're hair is fucking huge right now," he says between bites. 

"I know. I keep thinking I'll just shave it."

"I mean, normally, I'd be like 'don't'. Chicks dig long hair, but damn, that's not long, it's... sprawling."

I laugh and take one of the last bites of my apple, wash it down. 

"Seriously though, shave it." 

The sun has already burned the clouds from the sky and a thick haze hangs in the air and I'm not sure if it's the great villain of the 80's and 90's "pollution", or if it's just fucking hot and I was buzzed. Either way I had no interest in work. 

"Let's just blow it off," I say.

"What?"

"Work. Let's just make something up. Go to the bar. Get enchiladas somewhere."

"Are you trying to date me?"

"Maybe I am."

"Besides, who eats enchiladas at fucking nine in the morning?"

"Well, obviously they're for lunch, I just mean, let's do literally anything else." I laid back in the bed, took the last bite of the apple and threw it across the parking lot. I heard it land.

"Missed," Kevin said.

"Missed what?"

"Shopping cart. It was close though."

"Story of my life."

I hear Kevin put his trash in his paper bag. "You almost ready?" he asks.

"No."

"We'll call off tomorrow," he said, keeping with tradition. 

I sat up, finished the first screwdriver and wiped my mouth. "All right." we got off the tailgate, shut it. I threw the empty bottle in a trash can and climbed into the truck. On the bright side, I'd have wind in my face in a moment and I'd be daydreaming and through the day, between jobs, I would have the wind in my face and I'd be daydreaming and that would be okay.

They are Nothing and Nothing Waits for Them

It's late and I am standing outside near Holly's car and the snow is coming down and she's telling me it's okay. I hug her. No. She hugs me.

We part and I get in my car. Drunk and with a chest full of gravel and loss.



We spent the evening in the bar and I laughed and I smiled and I spoke to people I had never known.

We spent the late evening in an apartment nearby. The walls were poorly painted orange and the springs in the couch were broken and pot smoke and cigarette smoke filled the room. Everyone spoke loud and laughed and were all only faces. All my age and nothing and I sat in a chair and I watched them pass the bowl around and draw nothing on brown paper and they all spoke about "When I get out of this place. When I get another job. When I get a car."

I was only a bad month away from being them. Alone and empty and drunk and holding onto miniscule hope for some rescue, any fucking rescue.

Anything.

The apartment was across the hall from the one you lived in when I met you and I choked on that every time I saw the tall windows, or the familiar base boards or when I left and I looked at your old door and I could almost see and I could almost see inside, a decade before. You in the kitchen, me trying to impress you. Us with nothing ahead and as I was leaving the weight grew in me until I was certain my ribs would crack apart and I would tumble down the staircase and then I'd never worry about any of this again.

Holly asks what's wrong and I fill her in and she tells me it's okay. It isn't. I lost that decade and I lost everyone in it and now I'm so close to being one of the six people living in that ruined fucking apartment, dreaming about things I have already had and longing for things that are never coming.

"They're nothing," I say. "They're nothing and nothing waits for them, and I'm just like them."

She's telling me it's okay. I hug her. No, she hugs me.

We part and I get in my car. Drunk with a chestful of gravel and loss.

The car is barely turned over before I give in and I can't breathe and I can't see and I can't think of anything else. My eyes burn. I inhale broken and heavy.

They are nothing and nothing waits for them,



and I am just like them.