cheers
to late to slow to far

Raining.

So I was stuck there with her, lying on her bed, bored.

I want to go home, I kept thinking fervently.

I thought of my new pack of mild seven lights waiting for me on my table where I had tossed it. I imagined its shiny cellophane packaging winking at me. I foraged through my jeans pocket for my squashed pack and opened it. I remember hoping desperately that I had missed a stick. Which is why I still kept the pack. Right? Right? Wrong. I was disappointed. I crushed the pack and threw my jeans back on her chair. It hung there, limp like a fish. I smiled, remembering the same stupid simile I used in my play. I stared at her window, with the rain on it, fat twisting ropes rushing pell mell to their death on her window sill.

I want a drink.

She was saying something but I didn’t care. I just lay there, on my back, in my boxers, over her blanket and listened to snow patrol sing over and over again on her laptop. If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world? I don’t want to forget the world. I want to forget you and your obscenely ugly pink sheets and pink walls and stupid streaked hair that you seem to proud of. All that I am, all that I ever was, is here in your perfect eyes. They’re all I can see.

My ass.

She was still talking. I distinctly remember recalling a simile Stephen King once used. She’s not like a jukebox. You never needed to put in a quarter and she never came unplugged. I don’t even know her. Who’s she? A friend? A friend’s friend? I don’t give a shit. I don’t even like her. I thought of what I knew about her and came up a blank. I don’t know her. She kissed me once when she knew I was feeling melancholic and that was it. I didn’t know her then, I don’t know her now either. So what was that that we did? I hesitate to call that groin sneeze sex. I don’t know what it is.

I wanted to go home.

And I never wanted a drink so badly in my life.

I think I am an alcoholic. How many substances can I get addicted to? Cigarettes. Alcohol. Writing. The smell of hugo dark blue. The smell of a new book. The way hot water feels when it thumps my back in the shower. The feel of money in my fingers. Grass. Sand. The wind. Reading. Chocolate. Hearing someone laugh because if something I said or did. Feeling happy. I’m a serial substance abuser. Maybe I need help. I blocked out her voice and rolled over onto my stomach and played with her laptop, in all its resplendent nausea –inducing pinkness. I mumbled something about using her msn and just logged her off. I alt-f4 the shit out of snow patrol in sour triumph. She hit me across the shoulder and I ignored her. She turned away, in a huff. I don’t give a fuck. I went back to clicking around aimlessly. I checked my mail. I logged onto facebook. I logged onto Friendster. I stared at my profile page. As I did so, an absurdly cheesy question popped into my mind and I turned to her and kicked her in her calf. How do you know we’re made for each other? She turned back, eyes bright like lighters and smiling, thinking it was a reconciliatory attempt. I don’t know, she said, just have faith. And I looked away and continued amusing myself with her com. She looked at me, waiting for a reply, got disappointed, got up, and strode out of the room. I stared at the screen.

Have faith, she said. But I can’t, no matter how much I want to. That would spoil everything. The rain still beats down outside like it’s trying to flood Hawaii.

I never wanted a drink so much in my life.

i hate tiger.
and i hate the world.
leave me alone.

it's quite funny.
but when i'm drunk.
i never seem to think of you.
this time notwithstanding.

asato ma sad gamaya
tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
mrtyor mamrtam gamaya

take care, friend

it's that word.

the one you always place at the end
of everything, like
a reminder a boundary a
warning.
keep away, it says.
trespassers will be prosecuted.
and that makes something
change
within me, everytime, everytime
my heart does a hitch and shifts,
e to d flat.

everytime.

and no number of babes or darlings
or
dearests from her or her
or her
matters. they never did,
never will, to be honest.
i was just waiting. but not for
them.

you said that word again, the other day,
wrote it actually,
and i had to smile and try to convince myself
that it didn't prove anything,

everything.

just sat there as she looked at me,
eyebrows raised, i guess
something on my face
betrayed me.
no one else noticed.

she paused in dealing out the cards,
and kissed me then,
chocolate, beer, toothpaste and giggles
but i was far away instead,
wishing she were

you.

if i could just forget you, things would be so much easier.