Lost hope

"Whaddaya Havin?" the question sneers out of the bartender somehow failing to disturb the rakish grin which seems plastered to his person.

"I'll have a shot of lost hope," I reply straddling the stylish chrome and leather contraption, "and a pint of forgotten dreams while your there."

I watch him fill the glass, the bottle suckling greedily at the air. I sip my shot, chasing it with cool and soothing foam, hot then cool, hot then cool. I feel her before I see her. She invades my space without touching me gazing down my throat as I swallow down the folly of a younger man.

"I couldn't help but notice your choking sadness," she says, reaching out to touch my chest.

"Ever the enigma," I mutter to myself.

"Your wounds are obvious and legion and your grief reeks like rotting meat," she comes closer rubbing her back against me her voice fading to a whisper, "it's intoxicating."

I sip my drink the shot now departed and force out a refusal to acknowledge the siren ensnaring my body.

I become aroused and immediately she gasps as if startled and looks down mockingly, scolding my lack of taste. She turns her eyes up to find mine which I avert.

"You dont want me." I say recoiling.

"No, but you want me."

"N-no," I studder, "I don't want you. It's just that without you I feel exhausted and nauseous."

She reaches her arm to the back of my head and makes a fist, snaring my hair and pulls down hard, raising my chin.

"You are mine, and no desperate hopeless arrogance will remove me from your heart." Her eyes drop and she smiles turning away. "But run all you like. I will be here or there when you give up," and turning to the bartender, "I'll have a glass of his ruined soul," and after a pause, "on the rocks."

And while I don't recall the leaving, of how my hand found the door or how my shoes found the pavement, I remember her laughter as I chased my regrets along the darkened sidewalks.

Living in my Reality

A friend of mine was talking to me today and we were discussing drugs and alcohol, and our sometimes problematic uses of substances. I was discussing how I wanted to change my life in certain ways and that in order to do this I have to question the eleven years I have spent smoking grass in the morning. Even before that time I have since high school created a reality where I was juggling my academic career, the perceptions of my family and the reactions of my peers. In any case, my friend said to me that he stopped smoking at Christmas and hasn't started since. Like me he has used substances in a chronic and addictive way, while functioning at a high level in school or employment or social settings. He said, "I just started to need to live in my own reality. Trying to be the man and do all that and be high too ... its just arrogant. It's time to be humble." So thats my word today non-existent people, live in your own reality. My problem is using drugs to avoid my life but for you it might take on another form entirely. Anything that isn't helping you achieve your dreams that you do just to get by isn't a crutch, its a tether holding you back from moving forward in life.

Distracted

So for fully two weeks now I have been distracted. Mostly with this beautiful woman I have been chasing in my mind, but also with how to leave where I am living now (in the existential not the locative sense). Everything I write has been crap (not just the self-indulgent variety that you find in this landfill, but the stuff I care about too) I have failed to get anything done, and yesterday I missed a date to see my mother. She seems pretty steamed about it. She told me on my message that I had to start being an adult. I think that's a pretty common consensus. There are moments when I am aware that everything in my life has 0scillated between over achievement and complete lack of activity. Despite the mounting bills and the growing sense that somehow I have betrayed my potential or even the disappointment of my family and friends I still think that living single, underemployed and slothing around; smoking grass, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, drinking to excess, laughing until sunrise has been a pretty good place to live, and were it not for the burden that it seems to be placing on others, I would consider staying here longer.

Hangman

Last night I asked this girl for her phone number. I didn't really even say anything I just pushed a piece of paper and a pen across the bar toward her. I have been pursuing her with increasing lack of regard for subtlety. Anyhow she played hangman with me for her phone number, and even though I could not lose, I felt the strange anxiety of a crush when is still quite young and frail. When she smiles and looks away, perched precariously on the edge of blushing, my heart races.

As sort of a side note I have been listening to this phenomenal hip-hop album, Blu & Exile Below the Heavens. Incredible, dude is like 22 years old. Check it out.

The nature of beauty

I have this habit that I developed when I decided that I valued my own honor, of diminishing the availability of beautiful women. I invent them. I invent them as deeply in love with another, or too much of a friend to ever risk, or out of my league, or looking for something I cannot give. I do this to provide myself the opportunity to ignore beauty. To respect and realize its presence without the world stopping to stand in awe.

All blogging is self-indulgent crap

Okay (which should be included in spell check with or without my consideration). But seriously auspicious beginnings aside, I just spent the better part of twenty minutes weighing the pros and cons of self indulgent vs. self-indulgent vs. selfindulgent. (pronounced SELFindulJENT) The correctness vs. the style of the incorrectness, and I did this not merely because of the ignorance which made the examination necessary but because of my intoxication, which makes the creation of a blog even possible for me.