Sitting by the phone, I wait. No rings—no signs of life or friends; not even a long distance representative to butcher my name. New York City’s been lonely these past three months: befriending Colt 45 malt liquor and working my ass-groove into the couch has left me bitter and longing for my roots. The loneliness of an empty bed—my arms hold a hollow sheet and my feet search for another’s. The gesture is ignored. The bed haunts me; its unkempt composure has become my inescapable companion, and the television bombards me with a further blast of isolation:

Talk show companionship,
stage name meteorologists,
and the Buy! Buy! Buy!
of corporate sponsorship

slows my rolling train of thoughts. I find myself in the half-life: neither awake nor asleep, alive or dead. Semi-conscious I fall into a pseudo-slumber only to be interrupted by the reverberations of a news anchor sounding off thirty seconds of crack babies, or was it Pokémon?

My mind melds into the warm buzzing glow and becomes immersed in the electric blue-galoo. A cold numb races from brain to feet: I can’t feel. Internal energies repress the physical. The blue begins to bleed. It seeps and spreads throughout everything and then shatters— n o t h i n g n e s s . Disintegrating into space, the blue overwhelms me and clarifies into Tahitian waves cropped by black sands. The water is everything.

Toes clench fists into the sand and my hands glide around her waist meeting at the small of the back. “Sinfulness will burn you, Love,” she says. I hold her against me.

“It’s all I have,” I whisper

She jabs her fists into my chest and pushes me away, breaking the embrace: she turns her back. “Do you love me?” she asks

I turn away.

Every day this apartment gets smaller as the bottle monument surges to the ceiling. Three months in this shithole and it’s only getting shittier. I haven’t seen the sky since I’ve been here. Walking over to the window, I see what I always see: a sea of concrete. So I do what I always do: I drink.

My parents still don’t know I dropped out of skòol. They’d never suspect though, because with only one class left it seems a pretty preposterous thing to do. I have my reasons. One being that the entire institution is bullshit: a bloated, bureaucratic beast collapsed under its own weight; and two because I’m seen as a social security number with attached dollar sign. My school is in cahoots with big business to mould interchangeable little cogs. “Must keep working,” a superior suggests robotically. I wasn’t as machine-monotone with my guidance counselor:

“Why on earth are you dropping out now?” she pleaded.

“Because fuck you, that’s why.”

And then I quit my job.

It wasn’t really that bad, I worked at a candy stand in the student center. Surrounded by processed chocolates, unique only in labeling, leaves one to wonder, “Who am I?” and “Where am I going?” If I had only added what, why, and how, I could’ve been well on my way to becoming a mediocre journalist. People were always smiling and friendly, but that probably had more to do with the sweets—sugar makes your gums swell and forces you to smile.

I’d imagine it’s comparable to delivering flowers. Who would be disappointed finding out that someone had sent them flowers? I am a tulip.

Lately, I’ve been seeing visions. They flood in and bathe me in the afterglow. My last one was of a man suspended over the ocean, waves collapsing around him. He wore a suit—green and gold and floral patterned—framing his frail body. A single, splintered ray of light ripped through his heart and allowed me to see language break down. Words collapsed on themselves—vwls bcm xtnct—and communication was supplanted by truth. Oceanic movements and tectonic shifts eroded our civilized foundations and left the beaches without the hint of a footprint. No talking, all action.

I make my way over to the refrigerator again and nab a glistening, cold Colt from the bottom shelf. The sugar in it makes me smile. The snapping sound of the cap is this salivating dog’s bell.

When I was—still
just a replaceable
nut in upper (m)academia,
I chose to drink my malt liquor from
a bag-blanketed bottle.
It just made sense.
But lately,
I’ve decided
to add some class
to the ritual:
I use a glass.

The couch calls to me—either me or my ass—and I sit back into the plush, blue, faux-velvet. It falls around me, draping me under its arms. I change channels—no whammies, no whammies, STOP—and land on station static.

The white noise floods in toward me. It surrounds me—ebbing and flowing—passing through me and around the room. Inside, I hear mangled voices drowning each other out. One rises and then collapses back down into the mass. One by one each individual voice gets silenced until three stand out unique. They reach out for me.

“Ain’t got no job, ain’t got nothin’ to do but git fucked up,” observes Jacob from behind a medusean network of dreads. He joins our circle. This is what we do: drink and talk smack. Tonight, we’re at the park. Not much of a park really—a small field of grass and one bench—but it’s the best we can do. This gathering serves a special purpose though; it’s my last night in town. First thing tomorrow I start life over in the Big Crapple.

Adam is the last to show up. He carries a case of beer on his 130 pound skeleton and looks like a walking coat hanger; he's a charmer. “Work sucked today,” he grumbles. “These little gangster kids are always bitchin’ when I don’t sell them pagers, and then they throw shit at me from the food court. Today, the bastards nailed me with an egg roll from China Wok.”

“So it goes: mall-style,” I add.

Simultaneously, everyone takes a pull off their beer, and then like dominoes, we light up cigarettes in succession.

“I’m sick of those new anti-drug commercials,” says Jacob emphatically. “Like it’s such bullshit. I heard yesterday that our high school is thinkin’ ‘bout randomly drug-testin’ students. Fuckin’ hell man, if I was in school I’d take so many drugs that it would like blow up their fuckin’ machine.”

“Man, you’ve got a mouth like a sailor,” I say

“I’ve got a mouth like my mom,” he deadpans.

I turn my back on my friends.

I cannot remember what day of the week it is anymore. Sunday blurs into Monday and day burns into night—all linear conceptions vanish. All that remains is an etherized wasteland echoing—drink, drink, drink.

Frost-nipped fingertips cling to the bottle. The sno-cone cold liquid rushes down my throat and freezes my gut. I exhale icicles that grow and procreate. One becomes two becomes four becomes eight. The room vanishes under a glacial wall. My toes freeze. I can feel the numb inch up my leg—the skin chapping, cracking, and bleeding. My eyes seal shut. Glass tears freeze into place.

Drifts of snow swirl around the yard—dead from December’s wrath. Brown trees flank and give way to ripping winds. My last Christmas at home is a dinner drowned under uneasy silence.

Mom rises above the table, shielded by her crimson dress. Her heels click against the wooden floor as she rushes between the kitchen and the table. She’s working hard and disappears every once in a while to the back. Things have never been this uncomfortable.

“Mom, you’ve been crying. What did Dad do this time?”

“Nothin’, your father didn’t do nothin’.” She hides her face behind a glass of red wine.

“The bastard didn’t call, did he?” My tone is half-mocking, half-sympathetic. “You’re lucky he didn’t call, you’re even luckier he didn’t show up. Why can’t you finally let it go? Let him go. Let your memories of the way he was—go. He hasn’t been a husband, let alone a father, for ten years. Let that bastard go.” I look directly at her; she is hard to recognize.

“He’s all I’ve ever had,” she moans.

I leave my family behind.

All the roaches in this place disgust me. Floods of them race out from beneath the dishes. I drown them in oven cleaner—it works the best and leaves a nice sheen. I used to smash them one by one with a hammer. The thought of their black and brown bodies exploding under the force made me sick, but I would still look underneath to see life extinguished and left as a smear. Now, I just can’t be bothered. It’s not like I cook much anymore, let alone eat. They’ll dart across the floor, right by my feet, but I won’t budge. I just yell—Run Gregor! Run Lola! Recently, I have learned to tell their sexes apart.

Everything I see bleeds to white and sound disappears like I’m underwater.

I feel completely hollow—my stomach aches and collapses on itself—there’s nothing inside, physically or spiritually. Everything human I have failed at. “I’ll go on!” “I’ll go on!” Beckett screams from inside my head. But I can’t. I feel too much.

Numb me.

Numb me.

Numb me.

I tell myself it will be better—it will be better—but my head doesn’t change: it reminds me every second of every minute of every hour of every day of what I’ve done wrong. My justifications echo back empty.

Down and down,
I sink into the sound.

The first time I had a drink was when I was 15. There were four of us hiking our way through the forest preserve. Beautiful day—you could hear the robins crying. I had just glopped my foot in mud when my buddy handed me a pretty green bottle—it was warm. The smell burned my nose. I drank as much as I could, retching a bit on the bottom foam, and then threw the bottle into a creek. It made a loud—Blurp!—on impact, and once submerged, rippled circles spun outward. I didn’t think much of it except that it tasted like shit.

And how I got from there to here is unclear.

Email: brooklyn303@attbi.com