Big City Impulsivity

"Blah blah other movie looks like this blah actress, blah?" The sentence torpedoed toward me with the  explosive attachment of an interrogative tone - someone was talking to me. Asking me a question, in fact, which has the added annoyance of an expected answer. I looked up. In the correct direction, even. A tall David Foster Wallace-ette of a man was hunched over my barstool. Wanting to reciprocate the courage it took to swing down to my neck of the woods (judging by his height, it must have been a long trip), I peered into his iPhone screen to do whatever analysis of the ginger-haired actress about which he thought I might have crucial insight.

"I've never seen Lord of the Rings," I said, smiling, hoping to spike the conversation with some sort of swiftly terminal punctuation. I turned back to my beer. Apparently that film was not a prerequisite to this exchange, because he leaned closer and asked yet another question.

I wasn't trying to be dismissive or rude or distant. He seemed nice enough. Stubble peppered over his strong jaw and jovial aplomb oscillated from his warm eyes. But even the most neutral, conversational interest could be quickly mistaken for flirtation in these places. As he spoke, I imagined us making love. It was less a fantasy and more a... compulsion; automatic and reflexive. "I heard they're going to make a prequel..." Thrust I heard they're going to make a prequel..." Thrust. "I heard they're going to make a-"

"I mean, I see your point, but the real star was obviously the casting director," I posited, jerking myself out of the apparition. "Whoever read a script about aliens and thought that Amy Adams would fit into that world obviously had favors owed to them up the wazoo, am I right? Thank God it worked," I clinked his glass with my own.

I was right. He said so, grinned, and turned to go see the band that had just appeared on stage.

It's not that I wasn't having a good time; I was just getting drunk too quickly for how alone I was at the bar and I needed the experience to retain its label of "pregame" without being gluttonously dishonest with myself. On Monday, sniffling through the band's Spotify page, it became clear that I jumped ship too early. I do wish I stuck around for the main event instead of getting greedy and gambling on a dance floor which was as fruitless as it was inviting. Unrequited grinding makes me want to walk into the sea. Imagine if you bought tickets to Beyonce, and left after Fergie's opening act to go stick your fingers in the electrical sockets of some club. It wasn't that dramatic, but still.

I took a deep breath. I practiced surrounding myself with both plants and coworkers to remind myself that change is occurring, even if its not on my timeline. I practiced colliding full-force with Bud Light Limes and miniature cigars to reconcile myself with the embarrassment that was the last line's wholesome self-care. I practiced what my therapist calls visualization, but what I call imagining what it would be like to actually pay money for something like dry shampoo.

Sometimes I'm self-destructive just because... it's fucking funny. The plants are browning, anyhow.

My Happiest Moments With Her

I have

Surrounded myself with people who better themselves for sport,
Who treat themselves like German Shepherds,
Who have had one adult finger raised
To the children inside of them
For their entire lives.
She did not behave this way.

I met her, in all her glory,
The acrid smell of burnt rubber
In the air, to begin my annual autumnal relationship.
Cigarettes stole her natural smell.
Now acidic and buried.

Tragic that I'll never know what it once was.
Probably used to be sweet like baby powder.

My happiest moments with her were when she was asleep.
Before we slept,
I stood in the window, contemplating her silhouette in the dark driveway,
The impudent trail of smoke slithering out into the November air between us.
I looked past her, a structure looming behind her gray sedan.
I couldn't tell if it was a cemetery.
I believe it was.

An Envisioned Stranger

Excuse the rawness of this account.
When I don't understand something, I tell it
As a story to an envisioned stranger.
A sequential, linear narrative.

Munching on a steady diet of "happy couple" tropes and Disney marriages,
You grow up thinking fighting is a bad thing,
Avoid arguments with partners,
Float through the ocean of your relationship clinging to the driftwood of your similarities,
Not realizing that opposing global perspectives are a survival mechanism
And that disagreement is a resource.
Worrying "What if we refer to the living room by different names and confuse the kids?"

Cutting someone down is actually just a reversal of empathy:
If you know what hurts you, you know what hurts her.
And suddenly the nastiest fights are the ones that follow the deepest
And most intimate understanding of each other,
Strangely from a place of love.

Assumed agreement sans communication is a silent
Gripping, manipulative, depression
On a relationship.
Even in its inherent separation,
Disagreement breeds common ground and
Sunlight streams through an open window.

A Constant Bereavement

She makes me feel sticky on the inside,

That California Red Wood of a 2nd floor employee.

Equal parts reason and emotion, bone and muscle, concrete and windchime.

The thoughts floating through her salt-water cochlear fluid contain biodiversity of oceanic proportion,

Equal parts monster and hero, demon and champion, cancer and elixir.

The Law of Conservation states

That if her skull were to splinter, spilling all these wonders onto the grass,

Like egg yolk,

The very atmosphere would 

Taste sweeter, appear brighter

For a moment

As object fails and essence takes hold.

Simultaneously finding myself

Celebrating and then grieving

Each passing second,

Our time together is a constant bereavement.

In These Parts

She comes to you naked, tawny,
Full of democratic innocence,
Too full of unruined lands.
And you accept the gift because
There is no masturbation without representation.

Plant a flag in her pussy because you are her homeland now,
Her dictator and her liberator.
You feed her rice and wash her shores with green waves.
It's your outline she carves into globes and your history she teaches her children.

Egg Tooth

Each relationship I cultivate with another human life

Is a tooth, erupting from my gums,

Armored and available.

You were my egg tooth,

Used to break through the protective shell

In which I was encased.

My walls sank lower 

And lower 

In acquiescence 

And the tooth rose up stronger 

And stronger 

In anticipation.

I asked for warmth and
You handed me a light bulb;

Melted my guts like chapstick that had been 

Left in the car too long.

So is it a coincidence that 

Your body and the earth are filled 

With the same percentage of water?

Because you fell through me like 

A stone falls through the ocean: 

Quickly sinking into a soft ending.

Where I'm From

I'm from the right stock.
I'm from the wrong side of the tracks.
I'm from the old colonial that, named appropriately, invaded and pillaged me even after I left it.
I'm from public schools and public pools
Where little boys brag "I have a bigger head than you" before ducking into choppy, green water.

I'm from my mother; her heart is deep, absorbent purple,
Like new asphalt in the summer.

I'm from Hannaford's; I used to be from Stop n Shop, but when I left home,
I ripped out the power cord connecting myself to my childhood and started fresh.
Fresh, like the produce section.

I’m from the drunken nights that cannot be measured in vomit or so many texts, wryly tossed into the atmosphere of a Friday.
I’m from slowly regaining self control,
Shrouded in a misty cloud of dysphoria.
I’m from the mornings in which I throw the words
"Piece of shit" in my own face most.
I'm from the left lane, which is where I drive 95 mph with
The radio on full volume in an effort to blast her out of my brain.

I’m from a world that I left behind; one that
I was fucking good at.
I’m from the early mornings of buffering a laundry list of insecurities –
Anything but light reading.
I’m from a hero complex, I guess.

I’m from the appointment at a dentist who stuck the only needle
Full of enough novacane to rival the numb I’m feeling now.

Better Now

You can feel the Cheerios in your belly - you can feel each one individually, less like food now and more like 55 separate promises. You catch yourself addressing the hungry urge, which you assumed to be carnal, but it's more than that, really. Halted, pensive, you consider your cigarette for a moment before dismissing the notion. It too is burned up like a series of paintings stolen during the war. After sitting with the idea for a while, you can feel its spores all over you, like being covered in hair after petting a cat. 

That's why you hold your breath when we drive past the house where we grew up. So you don't inhale the spirits of those days. So you don't catch that too. Although these words stretch endlessly in the other direction, you know it's better now.

It's better now.

But you didn't write anything down; you didn't even get a picture on your iphone. You know by the time it's penned, it'll feel like a copy of a copy of a copy, xeroxed into a smother of stray black lines and fuzzy copier static. Sure, you drive too fast, but having a lead foot also means you stop short.

While You Ask Me What I Do For A Living

While you ask me what I do for a living,
I watch for the miniscule gearshift
In your eyes
That accompanies my reply.
It's always in attendance.

Excuse me,
I didn't ask for a ranked list of life choices,
Which you'd drop in my lap before accepting the approval of your friends,
Which you knew was coming
Under an umbrella of "duh's".

May I remind you that my job
Is what you wish you were doing
While you do your own.

Oh, and another thing,
To every self-loathing BuzzFuck Odyssey sell-out bitch,
Writing "Top Ten Most Useless Majors" articles:
Call me when your words are preferable to silence.