Category: Fiction

I would have thought by now. And this still happens. Young girls. Half-naked and three-quarters wasted. I can still see patterns. I can tell the turntable is on repeat. Okay, you may be too young for the turntable reference. The CD was on replay and if you’re too young for that reference I will immediately walk to to the bathroom and hit my liver in the face. But why are you are having me explain there was vinyl before mp3s? What made you listen to my bullshit? No platitudes. That means when you’re trying to be profound when you’re being condescending. Fuck. Life.

“Why are you here?”
“I want you.”
God, if I could be 25 forever. “No, you don’t want me. You want the idea of me. I like the idea of you. This has to stop.”

That happened. Most of it was in my head when she was next to me. Crimes are caused because of her beauty. I literally talk to myself like a crazy person. Why does she keep talking to me?

It’s best not to begin with Adam and Eve. Original sin is baffling. Besides, kids are scared of naked people holding apples. Start with the talking snake. Kids like animals. Children like what animals have to say. Let him hiss for a while. They’ll figure him out in the end. Describe sin as suffering and leave it at that. Steer clear of confessionals. Children associate them with toilets. They’ll be able to describe it soon enough. If they feel the need to apologize, tell them the moon is there to forgive. As for the priest, let him sleep. He’s less dangerous that way.

She lifts her dress up to her knees and walks barefoot to the pool. Those delicate feet. I’ve had them in my mouth. Clean from the shower I tasted the feel of her veins. You can lick anywhere you want. I hate that she said that to anyone else. But I understand. We all want that feeling of touch. That moment of excitement when you feel wanted. So it hurts but I’m not mad. I’m mad at me. But in a way, we’re all mad at ourselves. This one is not the same. It honestly felt there was a god when she came out of the stupid internet. Then she was real. Then she cried because I hurt her. Then she laughed because I’m funny. Then she said I wasn’t funny anymore.

She makes me want to listen to Hank Williams and understand lost highways. I don’t think she knows who Hank Williams is.

With my eyes closed, laying on two shirts spread out on the grass, I can feel the breeze blowing over my shirtless torso and tousling my hair. The warming sun colors my closed eyelids an orange-pink, the smell of cut grass abounds, the wind whistles. The sensations are so sensually pleasant, that it’s almost possible to ignore the chain-link fence, topped all around with countless outstretched, razorwire Slinky’s. For one hour a day the divide between here and there dissolves so that it’s difficult to discern the difference. These past few days I’ve felt better than I have in months, maybe years. A few difficult decisions, now decided, and the whole world has become a better place. And though I may eventually come to regret what these have wrought, their sum effect cannot possibly be as bad as things have been since that night of the epiphany, now almost three years past, that soon-to-be-famous moment of existential angst.