A Mirror Darkly

I think the best thing about it was that you thought you’d gotten away with it.

You just appeared pretty much out of nowhere (and trust me I’m not exaggerating here because everyone was shocked) and then tried to act so naturally like it wasn’t strange that you’d said goodbye forty-five minutes ago and yet somehow here you were again.

That’s probably the greatest part about the whole thing actually.

Your casual reappearance; a stumbling fool emerging from the shadows wearing a grin I just wanted to smack off. You were so smug with yourself, swanning around with your false sense of achievement. It was wonderful to watch because everything about you was a dead giveaway - the sway, the slump, the slur, the stench - and yet you tried so desperately to maintain some semblance of coordination. We watched as you spat out a beer-soaked monologue no one could make sense of. We all shook our heads at you and laughed under our breath and tittered to each other and you didn’t even notice. Either that or you were too far gone to give a shit.

It got better when you followed us to the next bar and trapped someone in a confusing and illogical string of words and sentences too jumbled to be even called a conversation. Especially seeing as the other party did nothing but look distressed and attempt to retreat. You kept talking and talking in his face. I literally heard you say the words “he rips her arm off and beats her with it” and I’m pretty sure that’s when I choked on my drink.

I couldn’t stop staring. It was like one of those horrific car crashes that is so spectacularly bad that you can’t look away. I think I was just so mesmerised by the whole thing after all the jokes we’d made. To have someone finally embody the ridiculous enigma we’d all created in our minds. This concept that existed purely for our amusement.

If I really think about it, I’m kind of jealous that you got to be the one to strip me of my title but to be fair, it’s so befitting it would be selfish of me not to relinquish it. I dunno, maybe I’m still shocked I got to experience it. A run in with an imaginary idea; the real surprise trashbag.

Why him?

Thursday night: I’m sad sometimes, but it doesn’t rev up and swallow me like it used to. It sort of sneaks up on me at inopportune moments and leaps out from under me. It goes slow.

Slow like your movements in the tavern booth. The smooth steady pulsing of your temple as you tell your sixth beer how it all began to fall apart. You don’t blink. My fingers follow the water droplets on the table as I hear you, and I hear me too.

You weren’t enough for me.

For a moment we’re friends again, like being almost lovers never happened. Like we’re two lonely people, coincidentally sad and drunk.

You’re bold and concise with your words, but I know you’re hurt. I do the same with mine because it hurts that he wasn’t enough for me. And when I tell you, you smile and slowly shake your head. you tell me I’m difficult and I know that you of all people know. I start to shake as you remind me.

We’re drinking like a sleepy summer’s just starting, words slurring and heat rising. You have the same stupid jokes. you put your mouth to my ear, fighting ambient sound. I do the same with mine because I know what it used to mean to you. You haven’t changed, and you pretend like I haven’t either, ordering me bottles of sol like it’s 2010 all over again.

Outside the streetlights and new autumn night remind me I’m alone, even though you’re walking beside me. You put your mouth to my ear, fighting ambient 1am silence.

"I’ll just never understand — why him?"

If You're Gone

If you’re gone the days will go by faster, since the minutes won’t be so tied up with waiting for you to come home. If you’re gone, the skyline that has become my fortress will shine like heaven, will clog the black hole you left in my confidence. It won’t be until I lock myself into my bed for sleep that the independence, the invincibility I feel at having rebuilt my life will vanish.

If you’re gone I’ll feel small and disposable, I’ll start walking with my head down and singing songs about clinging to lost love. My morning shower will take fifteen minutes longer, because I had to stand under the hot water to sing the words to one more song you would never have understood the meaning of. My morning coffee will be drunk with my fictitious companions who visit me in the form of old 90’s sitcoms. I will sit back and laugh at the way life’s many obstacles dissolve with ‘I’m sorry’ or a martini and a muffin.

If you’re gone you’ll free up space in the soul of my existence to turn you into something that you’re not. You will give birth to a new self, and I will be the one to own this new you. This new man you’ll create will smoke cigarettes that don’t make me think of cancer and death. His willful ignorance about the world around him will be charming instead of the catalyst to another fight. When he refuses to hold my hand, I’ll believe it’s because he was trying to protect me from something, maybe himself. And instead of asking him about it, I’ll thank him by not resisting his desire to make love one more time.

If you’re gone I’ll forget you. But you won’t leave.

Scribbling Holes

I slam my head against the pages
hoping that the words will bleed out.
Crying because the Muse doesn’t return
and I have these emotions swelling in my brain.
There’s no release, no way out.
No getting rid of this feeling.
Scribbling holes into notebook paper,
trying to sling together how I feel
but there is no relief for those who try.
My eyes burning with each second I stare
and I’ve already dried my tears.
The lines on paper pulsing like veins,
taunting me with every beat.
Oh word, oh word, just take me now.

blackout

He woke up in the bathroom stall. Baptized by the murky toilet water. He forgot how much time had passed. As the music stopped playing at the dive bar. He didn’t know if he had died or was just temporarily broken. No worries, no mind. There was no time. Didn’t make a difference. Since he had never accurately felt a scientific measurement. Or maybe he just was never good at math. The condom machine had been broken. But he knew he couldn’t fix it. Finally realized that maintenance would never come by. It was someone else’s mess. As the hangover began to set in. He left the toilet without flushing.

Space Opera Blues.

Been scraping through countless nights of insomnia attempting to pen this new novel. It's not about rentboys or drugs or homeless or life's petty shit. It is completely different for me. A rollicking science fiction piece set in the 33rd century, kind of a hash of Buck Rogers and chinese chop-sockey movies called Colt Corrigan and his Adventures Across the Galactic Lens. It is a secret passion of mine. I've always fancied the rollicking daring do of the old Flash Gordon serials and John Carter of Mars books. I hope it comes out okay. It definitely will be a lavishly detailed work. Normally, my plot for a novel runs a page and a half, if that. This one is eight pages of twist and turns, cliff hangers, and political intrigue.

The most difficult part is coming up with interesting names and stuff. I have been reading on the Mayan Empire and Vietnam conflict for ideas of back history for the galactic culture and boning up on Japanese and Victorian cultures for the three planet settings....I hope it doesn't suck.

Swirling Mocha

I didn’t sleep well last night. As I lay in bed, I kept replaying the events of the previous evening. This guy I had met at the cafe had seemed very innocent. I figured he came from a conservative family with a religious background. His dogged insistence that all men were incapable of controlling themselves spoke of more than religious conservatism. It made me wonder if he had been abused. Raped? I saw how the older men of the cafe looked at him. Was that it, that he’d been sexually traumatized?

But then there was a blowjob.

No. That isn’t quite right. It wasn’t a blowjob. It was an attack of my cock. He went at it with such ferocity, it honestly scared me at first. But as I lay in bed thinking about it, I couldn’t help myself from getting hard.

Mental Masturbation

It was morning, like any other, in that I was strewn across my floor, sleeping off my hangover. There came a point in these benders where anything other than the fetal position on a wood floor felt like the spinning teacups on speed. I stared across my room at my digital alarm clock. The numbers were always hard to decipher from this angle. It was either 11, 1 or 7, and even though only two of those answers were acceptable, all of them were entirely possible.

It was in this deja vu, of waking up in a panic for the millionth time, that it really hit me. Before the sore back, and shooting pain behind my left eye would sink in, I would think; this is the last time. This time is different.

I planned to drink a liter of water, hit the gym and forget this ever happened. But that always never happened. That was just a sweet reverie I would sing before settling onto the couch, taking a fistful of Motrin and queuing up Netflix. The only place I would go on this day was the corner store, for my daily dose of Gatorade. It had become the only thing I could ever guarantee a weekly occurrence of.

It wasn’t ever different. It had never been before and I slowly began to realize that it was never going to be. It was always the same.

Different was the only idea that excited me anymore because it was still an idea. It was far away. Like a dream nestled in a cloud, different was anything I wanted it to be without the suffering of sacrifice, and the sober bleakness of reality. Everything yet to be experienced was so easy to sum up with my small minded fantasies and fears. Everything was something special before I was bored of it. I thought long and hard about how long something special could really last for a guy like me. The whole reason I would find my special something is because I was out searching for it, unhappy with my boring nothings.

And so it was made simple in that moment.

Do the right thing, feel smug and be bored or douse myself in gasoline, light the town on fire and shame myself for weeks after the dust had settled.

Wanderlust

"Way to go", was the last thing I heard from him.

It was over, like the proverbial blink of the eye. No closure, nothing. The pain, it was excruciating for a bit, but you know what, it was bound to happen anyway. And I’ve always wanted to travel.

I was an Aries and he was some other shit. I forget which it was, maybe the crab or the bull, or whatever, but I know now, we weren’t compatible.
How come I didn’t know that at first, like right of the bat. what a shame, a real life shame? He was real pretty though. That part hurts the most, because, well, his personality wasn’t as pretty.

Words.

I found myself with my eyes still and calm, for the first time in years as the original jotting of notes sprang to life out of my mind, giving the innuendo I carried in my heart for so long a name, a sound, a breath.

I wanted to cry, and I tried by staring at myself in the bathroom mirror and looking for that self-loathing I’ve had for so long but I was too disgusted with myself to keep the lights on and soon I felt nothing but darkness and longed for my sheets. I discredit sleep far too much and wish I had more time to write in it because my thoughts seem the most honest and painful right before and right after I do.

The sunset came over the biscuit colored Tucson mountains and the radiant yellow gained a reddish hue and the sun so big and burning in the sky, but not bright, found its way home on the coattails of the back porch and the spire cactus in the backyard, the humidity finally weighing down to rest.

I caught myself before I fell to sleep and typed out a few words I don’t think I’ll ever let anyone else read. Maybe I’ll burn them on the edge of that sky in that big sun’s flames settling down to be tucked in by the night.

SCREAMING

The bottom line is that when I’m discontent with my life and I automatically jump to the worst thing possible; why bother anymore? I’m miserable, and I want to use. But I know where using takes me. Using takes me to dope sick mornings, mornings I wish I just wouldn’t have woken up for at all I’m so sick. Using makes me into a complete and total monster, no one will want to be around me, I go fucking insane. I use anyone and everything around me to get that “last one more”. If your an addict, you know what that means. It’s that one that’ll finally satisfy all of your needs and cravings. And if your an addict, you’ll also know that it doesn’t fucking exist. Using makes me lose all of my friends. Who wants to be seen with the guy who can’t stop shoving needles in his arm? The guy who’s covered in bruises and track marks and the occasional dried blood. The guy so disgustingly thin and completely empty looking - the life has literally been sucked out of my eyes.

I don’t want to use. I know that, so when I feel like this, you wanna know what my disease tells me? It tells me I’d be better off dead. Because that’s what this thing ultimately wants. It wants me to be another fucking statistic. Another one of the junkies that just couldn’t stop. It wants all of my money, it wants me miserable, and then it wants me to fucking die so it can move on to the next person and take their life too. Addiction doesn’t care. It doesn’t care who you are, what you look like, if you have a family, friends, a good job. None of that. All it cares about is making you miserable and killing you. It literally sucks the life right out of you.

I am a slave to to it. Once I have that first one, its game over. It consumes my thoughts. And even the days I seriously don’t want to use, I have to. There’s this little voice in the back of my head SCREAMING at me to get high. And there’s no ignoring that voice, no matter how hard I fucking try. And it never goes away.

And you want to know what the craziest part about all of this is? I could literally wake up tomorrow and not feel this way at all anymore.

strangers in hotels

He kissed fiercely, with his teeth. Engulfed my entire mouth. Chewed my tongue. Rough fingering. Decent fucking though. I was getting ready to leave and he pushed me facedown onto the bed and I protested a little and definitely could have said no, but I spread my legs and allowed him to continue. And now I’m at home, wearing red truck’s shirt, eating pizza in bed, watching It’s Always Sunny, and pretending that I don’t care that this is what I’m turning back into.

We Can Be Heroes Just for One Day

"Why? Why did you do it?!"

"Do what, quit?"

"How could you!?!"

"How? How do you think? I sat down instead of standing up, that’s how. That’s the definition, kid."

"But…"

"But what? You needed me? For what reason? The crisis was averted. The world’s still spinning. Your problem is that I wasn’t the one who kept it on its axis this time."

"But you’re…"

"Lemme guess, I’m your hero. I’ve been a lot of people’s hero kid."

"Then how could you…?"

"Because I’m human! Because it’s not my job to be your hero. It’s not anybody’s job. There are a lot of things we don’t get in this world, kid. And one of them is a person who’s perfect to look up to. I’m not most kids’ first hero. They start with folks like Smoke and Blaze, the edgy ones. Then the first footage they see of those idiots beating up people who have long since been knocked out shatters that. So they move on to Prism, or Paradox, or any of a hundred others. Then they’re let down again, and eventually almost all of them make it to me. So far, that’s worked out well for everyone. But clearly, your luck’s not quite so grand. But as your hero, the least I can do is save you from yourself. If you keep going this way, you’re gonna be one of those people. The ones who cycle through heroes, constantly finding new people to look up to. That’s a bullshit way to go through life. And the end result of that is you sitting somewhere, unhappy with your crap life, looking up to someone for inspiration that you’ll never act upon anyway. Let me tell you something  Let’s say you save the world five times. Then on the sixth time, you don’t do anything. If no one steps up to take your place, then you’ve failed. My goal is to try and be more than human. And that challenge is unwinnable. But there is a victory in inspiring someone else to give it a try. I’m old now. I’m tired. And my world’s not quite so big anymore. The faceless masses have been replaced by the faces and voices of the people I love. I’m done kid. It’s your turn to save the world.”

Dark is the Night, Cold is the Ground

Tuesday.

We made love lazily, spread out over the vastness of the bed. It took up space and time, a lot of space and time between the two of us. Later, I applied mango body butter to my stomach and thighs and he realized he disliked the natural smell of my skin. It did not matter.

We tasted the Japanese green tea I had bought on a whimsy, and tiny flecks of tea leaves swam inside the porcelain cup long after I had taken the final sip.

I said, “You always think something better will come along, and that you should keep going and hold out for it. For somebody new and improved. But that is not true.”

He said, “Nothing better comes along, if anything things get worse.” I licked my lips and nodded. He claimed the thicker pillow for himself and the sheets smelled like mango.

We both knew it did not matter at all.

Gained and Lost

It looks like an ordinary parking lot. The asphalt’s been bleached a lifeless gray color by the unkind sun; scraggly yellow weeds poke through ugly, winding scars in the tarmac; carts lie, abandoned and askew, throughout the abyss. It’s hard to discern one parking space from another, the paint jobs neglected for years. Cars long come and gone decorated the lot with iridescent pools and bottomless black stains; discarded grocery bags flutter by like suburban tumbleweeds. It is, most people think, an ordinary parking lot.

Except it’s not. It’s not an ordinary parking lot. It was there, under the cloak of night, that you held me close and said you loved me; it was there that you told me I made you happy, happier than one else ever had or would; it was there that you decided we should forget all our friends and their judgment run away together. It was there that I fell truly, madly, irrevocably in love with you, and you kissed me with such passion it was if the world were ending around us—and it was there that you left me, just as the hazy sun appeared, blowing kisses to me and driving home to your wife, who you conveniently decided—hours later—that you still loved more, despite the blandness, the distance, the misunderstandings.

No, it’s not an ordinary parking lot. This is a parking lot of loves gained and lost, of stories that ended before they could begin—and now, whenever I walk past that extraordinary parking lot, I think of you, of the short, sweet time we shared together there, and—with an insincere heart and a head permanently full of what-ifs—wish for you a happy life.

the Mug

The mug seemed to shatter before it ever made contact with his head. By the time it got there it was in shards, and those shards embedded themselves in his skull.

The satisfaction was what took me by surprise. I'd imagined shattering the mug over his head dozens of times, but the intense satisfaction I felt as each piece drove itself further into him was something I hadn’t been expecting.

He lost consciousness instantly. When I realized this, I was disappointed. I'd wanted more time to savor the fear on his face, the same fear he had taken the time to enjoy on mine.

But even amidst my disappointment, I was mesmerized by the blood coming from the wounds on his head. I was always surprised by how viscous blood was. It moved slower than the watery substance I'd envisioned. There was a trail leading from each of the shards, and as they made their way down his face they joined, then separated again. By the time all the strands had made their way to his chin, an elaborate pattern had formed.

I watched it come together and was fascinated. This wonderful mosaic was more worthwhile than anything he had ever done in life. I stood back, admiring my masterpiece, proud of what I’d done. I then lit a cigarette, walked into the other room and sat pondering out the window. Tucson is becoming a bore.

Insects Bug Me.

They loved dust.

In my mind’s eye, they would creep out every night to roll in it delightedly, legs skittering on the floor with glee.

A man could never understand the problem of a cockroach—a live cockroach—in a bedroom. A man doesn’t understand the hidden violence in a moving thing.

I’d read in a magazine that roaches love dust, so I swept every day, up and down the brand-new apartment. I hadn’t seen one yet. A Tucson miracle!

When I met him, he was wearing terrible jean cutoff shorts, white strings hanging all a kilter. It was easy to be light and loose on our date. The first kiss was nothing to write home about. We had different styles. I liked to kiss at 45 degrees. He liked to kiss straight up and down.

The second date, though, he anticipated—met me at 70 degrees. Perfect. We were on a dirty thoroughfare, sticky from Vietnamese food, his hands in my hair, mine grabbing at his t-shirt outlining just how many muscles were in that back, and how soon could I get my hands on all of them?

The sex followed quickly, and it was good. Damn good. By date seven—a blissed-out day hike—I thought we were on terra firma. Home in the city, he ran to his apartment to get clean clothes, promising to come by afterwards.

I was alone, dripping from my shower, humming to myself, ready to get laid. And there it was. Moving like an insane thing. Gleaming. Crazed.

I leapt to my bed, shouted, “Get the fuck out of my house!”

By the time he got to my apartment ten minutes later, the PTSD had bloomed magnificently: Saucers for eyes. Ragged breath. I handed him ammo: Windex; a bookbag, a boot, an umbrella. Told him to kill it. That we were sleeping at his place that night. I saw the alarm in his eyes.

He couldn’t understand. The creature on the body that shouldn’t be, with all its moving parts.
He never called again. I bought traps.

Starting is Simple

A peculiar blankness erupted in my head. I had plenty of things on my mind and they were doing a fine job of destroying me. But now at the prospect of being manifest outside of myself in spoken words all the troublesome bits rushed together and jammed in my throat. They became indistinguishable, lumped together into this vague statement:

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“If I had to guess I would say nothing,” he said. “You are doing nothing, at least, nothing meaningful.”

Snip by snip I dissected the blankness, and sip by sip the whiskey added its light-headed clarity.

“That’s right.” I realized for the second time today.

I thought about it hard and shot my whiskey. With the drink gone quick my face was free from the interruption of drink and adopted a very serious look.

“Don’t strain yourself, bud.” The man said. “What are you good at?”

“Good at?” I wondered, “Well, good at nothing. I’m okay at a lot of things.

“How does a guy get good at nothing and okay at a lot of things?”

I thought about it. I thought about all the things I wanted to be good at but never invested the time in. All the things I had tried out and moved on from when I lost interest. Drawing, making movies, traveling, writing.

Writing - that old thing. I remembered I used to feel I was good at writing. A game with words, you switched them around and pared them down and blew them up then pared them down again until they were simple and honest and true and expressed complex things in tiny ways. How they piled up on pages, details heaped on details. Straw words patiently placed on thatched pages. I thought about how easily my own bastard ego put the torch to my words one day when faced with the mortality of being average and how I never wrote since. It was the same with art. It was the same with a lot of things.

“He gives up.” I admitted.

“Damn right he gives up.” The man said. The man could be described at that moment with certain good words. Strong healthy words. Vim, moxie, gusto. He gulped his beer down with hearty enjoyment. Then other words seemed to seep into him and without any pep at all he turned his eye on me and said sternly. “Any dumb ass who gives up shouldn’t claim it like people should pity him.”

“I don’t want people to pity me.”

“You pity you.”

“Yes.”

“Hell, well there it is.” He said with beer foam still on his mustache. His large hand wiped it away; again it did its disappearing act into the whiskers.

“Yeah. There it is.”

“Where’re you from?”

“Me? I’m from everywhere.” I said, and at that moment it felt that way. “My job drags me all over the U S of A and the dust of me is left all over the damn country. No, really I’m from California.”

“You don’t like the travel?”

“I love the travel.”

“But it’s a problem.” I didn’t know why he was talking to me and not only that but listening too. So I talked. It felt like I needed to and I was working through it myself.

“It’s a distraction. You can’t think I’m fine with being no good at anything. I was on a bus today to the Indian Reservation and back, driving through the country. It’s peaceful. Not a lot happening aside from hundreds and thousands of rocks and horizons of cactus surrounding the flatness of dried up lakes. Small houses, clouds like I can’t believe. Damnit. It reminded me of something. Times change, things change. There was a feeling on those roads I haven’t felt since I was a kid. A feeling that used to exist in my hometown. A real weird sensation. Feeling that again was like starting over from a time before distractions when everything was fresh and the whole world was open to me. I still can’t figure it out.”

He stood up and dropped some cash on the table. A tip for the waitress. He was leaving and I found myself not wanting him to. The small connection I had made with the stranger disintegrated.

“Figure it out.” He said. “Figure out what you are passionate about then go for it. But first have another drink.”

Then he left.
The waitress brought me a fresh whiskey and collected the tip money left on the table. I tasted the whiskey and this time I noticed that it was good. It’s simple, I thought. Starting is simple.

Things are Going Pretty well For Us.

Things are going pretty well for us. We’re in this period right now in which we don’t speak to each other, and it seems to be working out. It’s mutual, of course. You see, I just get up in the morning, go to work, go to sleep at night, wake up the next morning, and so on. I assume that he does the same, but I wouldn’t know because we’re not talking. It has been a couple of months or so, but it’s not like I’m keeping track. All those emails, phone calls, Skype conversations - I don’t know about him, but it was all pretty tiring for me. What a relief, I tell myself. Now I can concentrate on my work. It’s not like we don’t still like each other - we do. Of course, we do.

He’s a lot better at this whole not speaking thing than I am. It’s kind of hard for me, actually. A month or so ago, I sent him an email with a recommendation for a movie with one of those smiley face emoticons. I thought I was being pretty breezy, but he didn’t respond. Typical. I didn’t expect him to reply, and I would have just ignored it anyway since that’s what we’re doing now. That’s if he had sent anything to me, which he hadn’t. See, he really is better at this than me.

Like I told you earlier, things really couldn’t be better for us.
You know, I’m hoping to meet up with him one day for coffee or something when I move back to Tijuana. I think we’d have a lot to talk about.

Nerd Style Vandalism

Waste.

I lie on top of the blankets. The glow of the fading summer sunlight creates oceans of shadows as it dances through and around the blue bottles on the window sill.

“Worthless,”

The word repeats itself over and over, scratching like an old record in my head. I allow myself to acknowledge the feeling, noticing the way it sulks in the center of my body, taking up too much of my insides. Then I release it down my arms and legs. It rests in the tips of my fingers and at the front of my ankles. I notice the way my heart throbs, sending life to the parts of me that haven’t given up, and finds a scrap of hope: If I can feel pain I must still be alive.

Rain.

There is something about the rain that makes me feel good inside.

When everything out there is cold and damp, in meteoric contrast to my warm-blooded, hot-headed self. I wear a jacket to keep me dry, or at least, on certain areas that would be uncomfortable if wet. There is no point in using an umbrella, all the things I brought this morning are sealed carefully inside my backpack. What’s the problem with hair getting watered down just about the same way a shower does? Nothing. I watch people search through their bags for protection, from something that in my opinion, should not be avoided but embraced. I would later have to get on a bus, and the driver would frown, seeing this new passenger look for a seat, wet as a sponge on a sink. But I don’t care what they think.

Once I am seated somewhere (beside a window, preferably), I would watch the tiny droplets descending to nowhere, in slow motion. Forming odd shapes, but always going down quietly to the flows, like them. People.
Perhaps, the most probable theory about my sentiments for the rain is how the waters link together the ground and the skies. Two infinite worlds divided by infinite space. Getting in touch only when it rains.

Shotgun Writing.

Wrote this while sitting idle on a city bus:

He rolled the coin between forefinger and thumb. Both sides tails. You ask most people ‘heads or tails’ and they’ll answer ‘heads,’ it’s less effort, slides off the tongue quicker. But he hadn’t been able to use it. He cut off another bite of warm roast lamb, tender but the knife still squeaked on the plate. If he could only think, he didn’t do this in such loud places. They could barely hear each other think. As far as he knew there were two options left, he could run, knock his chair back as he rose, cause a scene, hope he gets arrested. Or he could try one last game, he still remembered back when he would play chess with the homeless men in the park, back when games with multiple outcomes still held their novelty. He followed the man's tie up his chest, past the thick jowls and a single bead of sweat, until their eyes met. That short smile stabbed like a knife. Now was his chance.

“I want to bet you one last thing,”

Laughter, hoarse and spluttered. “You don’t have anything left to offer,”

“Yes, but you couldn’t live with yourself, having won like this. You win this wager and you’ll be able to sleep easy, knowing you beat me”

He pushed a chorizo into his mouth as an abusive husband would his arm. “What makes you think I have the pride?”

“The first bet is against yourself, if I lose, I concede, if I win, I get your watch, I will then bet you your watch against your wallet, if I lose it’s for good. I will then bet your watch and your wallet against your gun.”

Silence, like being tied up in rope. If he breaks it, he knows he’s dead. Then, “What’s the bet?”

“Heads or tails?” Laughter “From your wallet.” The man opposite him chuckled in a way better resembling spitting. He stood slightly and fished for his wallet. Produced it and pulled out a single coin which didn’t look like any coin he had ever seen before, it was enormous, made of a thin copper. The man opposite rolled it to show each side. Then threw it in one large flip. Now.
His eyes followed the coin in midair. As it began to fall the man opposite prepared his hand. He rose, took his plate of roast lamb and vegetables and threw it into the man face. Then he ran.

reading this again

exterminate all rational thought

William S. Burroughs put a hex on Truman Capote and documented the curse in this open letter.

"I have in line of duty read all your published work. The early work was in some respects promising — I refer particularly to the short stories. You were granted an area for psychic development. It seemed for a while as if you would make good use of this grant. You choose instead to sell out a talent that is not yours to sell. You have written a dull unreadable book which could have been written by any staff writer on the New Yorker .You have betrayed and sold out the talent that was granted you by this department. That talent is now officially withdrawn. Enjoy your dirty money. You will never have anything else. You will never write another sentence above the level of In Cold Blood. As a writer you are finished. Over and out."

It became a fulfilled prophecy as Truman Capote slipped into a drug and alcohol induced state of non being and never produced another major work.

I’d love to write a novel on this.

I Woke Up early The Day I Died

Lables on Gin

It was night and the air muggy. I was listening to jazz music by artists I can’t distinguish between in the room half-lit by a navy banker’s lamp when he came in with a forty ounce bottle of malt liquor named after a general who died in the first days of World War One and his back hit the wall hard.

Mycroft, Gin said, he was the hero. He couldn’t remember, he stammered. An hour ago. The fat one, not Sherlock. "People don’t write Mycroft into hero roles", I said. Laughing. Grabbed the bottle with eyes and fists, drinking like it were caloric as water, like Burroughs was a gentleman, what a Joke. Doesn’t matter, he was worth a fortune. "Rights", I said, I pinched my fingers, and he said "Right".

He said he had a dream about a man who spoke with a tongue of morphine, he was sticky when he leaned against anything - the air, open space, just stuck to it–took hold of the table, it came back when he stood straight, back with him. Tethering gravity like led hounds. He was gray and his legs twisted on anywhere like a wrench but not his dick. It was sharp like a knife, and whenever his pants reached ankle, there was only a static screen. Everything below was just a staticy screen, and he woke up, Virginia, and he was puking. I was watching a lot of Sherlock Holmes in the half-lit house. He was doing a lot of drugs. And it was night and the air muggy.

Tucker.

The cafe wouldn’t let Tucker in without shoes. I huffed at the manager and went inside by myself, but not before I made Tucker promise not to take off.

"I’m not going anywhere. Like you said, why would I pass up a free drink?" He said, crossing his skinny arms over his chest and coyly raising an eyebrow at me.

I nodded and smiled at him briefly before I went inside. The coffee was hot, and the pastries were half price, a deal made to lower waste at the end of the night. A muffin or two couldn’t hurt, so I went ahead and grabbed the ones which looked the freshest before paying for everything. As I smiled my way through the transaction I could feel the manager staring at me from off to the side His arms folded and his chin so far up I could have looked up his nose.

"Is there a problem, sir?" I asked, tearing off a bit of my muffin and popping it into my mouth.

"It won’t learn nothin’ if you just give it things."

If my mouth had been empty, my jaw would have dropped. Instead, it clenched tightly, biting through the crumbling muffin until my teeth cracked together. “Last time I checked, that guy out there is a person just as much as I am and there’s nothing wrong with having compassion. Have a nice night, prick," I fired back, my eyes narrowing in disdain. I turned on my heel and made my way out of the shop. My face felt hot and I could feel my grip on the drinks tightening to the point where the cardboard of the cups began to give. I managed to loosen my grip before I ruined our drinks, but my face was still burning as I met Tucker outside.

The streetlight above him flickered on just as I walked outside and the sudden burst of brightness made the dirt on his skin more apparent. The oil in his hair practically shone underneath the pale yellow beam and his clothes now showed lighter, more faded stains which I hadn’t notice in the orange light of the sunset. He looked filthy, but the way his green eyes widened at the muffins in my hand made my cheeks cool almost instantly.

"I grabbed something to eat, too," I chirped, holding the undamaged pastry out to him. Tucker took his drink and the muffin and after exchanging small smiles, we headed down the street once more. Streetlights continued to flicker on a few paces ahead of us, bathing our path in that same yellow light. Behind us, the sky darkened to an indigo color while we sipped gingerly at the coffee steaming from our cups and nibbled at the muffins slowly becoming crumbling messes in our hands.

Shops began to turn out their lights, switching their “Come in, we’re open!" signs to “Sorry, we’re closed" signs. Then the shops disappeared and were replaced by apartments and small houses. Some new with their painted outer walls and others looking as if they had been there since the city came to life, old brick building crumbling and splattering rusty red throughout the neighborhood. Tucker and I passed these buildings in comfortable silence, and only when he tapped my shoulder did I realize that I had stopped outside of my building.

Tucker’s eyes flickered between me and the building a few times. He sipped at his coffee and I could hear his bare feet shuffling against the rough concrete of the sidewalk. I blinked at him a few times and suddenly inhaled sharply. “Right! Um, would you like to come in?"

"Sure, provided you’re not gonna bitch about me getting dirt on the floor and tell me I can’t touch anything."

I buzzed our way into the building and ushered him inside with a smirk. “If I cared I wouldn’t have invited you in," I said as we ascended the stairs. “And besides, that’s what showers are for."

Tucker followed me up the stairs and waited while I fumbled with the lock on my door. When I managed to slip the key inside and wrench the rusty thing open, I turned to see him licking muffin crumbs off of his fingers and chuckled slightly. “Come on in."

As we stepped into the apartment, I almost said something to compensate for its small stature. Tucker’s body visibly relaxed as soon as he stepped inside though, so I kept my comments to myself.

I toed my shoes by the door and set my bookbag on the kitchen counter as Tucker slowly wandered around the living room, taking everything in with wary green eyes and drinking his coffee in larger gulps now that it had cooled a bit.

"You live here by yourself?" He asked after a minute or two. I ran my hand over my hair, grimacing at the product in it, and joined Tucker in the living room.

"Yeah, it’s just me here," I said, shutting the front door after Tucker had neglected to. When I turned around, he was heading to the kitchen with his coffee cup to his lips and an empty muffin wrapper crumpled in his hand. Both fell into the trash can with brief thuds and Tucker licked coffee from his lips slowly, savoring the last taste of his beverage.

"Stay!" My sudden outburst had Tucker arching an eyebrow at me and I felt a different kind of heat rush to my face this time. “I mean…what I mean was that you can stay here tonight. If, y’know, you want to."

Cocking his head to the side and folding his arms across his chest, Tucker kept that eyebrow arched and stared at me quizzically. “You’re not afraid I’m gonna steal something?" He asked, his tone incredulous.

"Well you haven’t really given me a reason to be afraid of something like that."

"…How can you be so trusting of someone you don’t even know?"

I ran a hand across my head and sighed. “I don’t know. Trust me I realize how stupid I am for doing things like this, but…I just wanna help people. I can’t help everyone, but I can do things like this. Right now, I can help you and whether you steal from me or not, at least you had a roof over your head and a shower tonight."

Tucker didn’t respond for a while, just kept staring at me with those piercing green eyes of his. He pursed his pale lips at me, then attempted to run a hand through his hair before the knots stopped him short. He chuckled to his self and then looked up at me with a smile on his face. “Allright Sunshine, I’ll stay. I could use that shower."

"Right this way."