choices

Just a snapshot taken at a club of her and me. It is an impromptu “just fucking around” photograph taken on a whim… or so it would seem.

My cousin calls it “the picture that launched a thousand ships.”

She’s married, happily unmarried, but married. He cheats. She’s cheated. He’s an abuser. She loves to toy with his mind. A very miserable relationship. And I have been told by her sister that she wants me so bad she can taste the desire in her mouth like pennies. Tonight was the first time I have ever met her or spoken to her. She is pretty. She is Bosnian but she has stark white skin, blonde hair, and cold eyes… she looks Russian. An ice-princess. Although we’ve never met apparently she knew who I was and has lusted after me for some time now. In her mind it would be so perfect, my cousin and his girl, who is her sister, and she and I. We’d be one large, dysfunctional, fucked-up family. In her mind she “deserves” better… she deserves a man like me, and she obviously doesn’t know the real me, or else she wouldn’t mistakenly think she needs me.

But she is stuck in a dead-end marriage with a stupid dumb-fuck whom doesn’t appreciate her.

We all hit the club as a group to have some drinks, laughs, and unwind. Her husband distrusts me and is slightly intimidated by my cousin and I. He sees me as a threat and perhaps he should. I would never fool around with a married woman as I was married once and I would not want to be on the receiving end of infidelity. It’s just not right. But I will however flirt. I will have a good time. I feel-out my boundaries and then walk that imaginary line. As I did tonight. A light brush on her arm. When no one was looking a lingering look in her eyes. An innocuous hug. A smile. Several smiles. My cousin asks me to pose in a picture with her. We grin and look at the camera. We look so happy. We are total strangers but we are so dangerously on the verge of sharing each others bed. The air crackles with electricity. We both know what could “be.” We “could” blow each others mind if the stars would only align right. Or if we should happen to be at the right place at the right time, just her and I. There are so many factors, so many scenarios, and we both know this and we also know it might behoove us to avoid these scenarios like the fucking plague.

I walk the line.

She tells her sister that she wants me. Several times throughout the night. She tells her she hates her husband, as tears well up in her glassy blue eyes, she says she wishes he’d fucking die. That she could see herself with me. That she should be there , at the club, with me, not with him. That this is a mistake.

Her and her husband leave early. The situation reached a boiling point and none of us even noticed. He swears he caught me flirting with her yet he quietly slips out without saying a word to me. He was too afraid to have a conversation with me. She runs back in the club, tears now flowing down her ivory cheeks, and tells her sister they are leaving.

The next day I find out she moved out and they are getting divorced. I know it is not my fault, I was simply a catalyst. There are deeper issues that have nothing to do with me.

When I hear this I get a slightly sick feeling in my stomach. Butterflies. I have always gotten this feeling in that moment of certainty when I KNOW I am about to sleep with somebody. The cold shiver in on my neck when I pull down her panties, when I have overcome those final resistances. When I am about to become one with another person. It is a prophetic feeling and it has always foretold events that will in fact come to pass. It is always right.

But is this the right choice?

bleak

The distance between loneliness and loved is so minute, so uncertain, and indefinable. It is a line we waiver between numerous times every single day. It is the immeasurable distance between sanity and madness. The slow-plodding eternity in-between cigarettes. The awkward silence on the telephone. The nauseous feeling of disgust after sex. The irritable sense of discomfort when the coke wears off. It is the suicidal nuances we run through our brains as we sit alone in our cars commuting to work on a cold snowy Monday. It is the heart sickness we feel after the buzz and empowerment wears off and uncontrollable dizziness and puking sets in. The sine curve wave we all ride, eyes locked on a white sandy beach, never arriving to our destination.

Loneliness is pain and we all find ways to numb this pain.

I wander. When the higher then high wears off and I crash back down to earth in a heap of feathers - I wander. I turn off the phone and refuse to take calls. I shut down my heart. I become fearful of the world in these moments so I seek refuge in my dive-bar panic room. I close my eyes and refuse to let anything in except the dull bass drone of the jukebox which belts out sad songs over and over. A perpetual motion machine it is one of the things that shall always remain static in my life, the jukebox, my son, and the bottle. I close my eyes and try to make out the neon tracings in the back of my head and I miss my kid. Slamming shot after shot of the hard shit I hope I can find my way home. I hope I may be able to find the path, crumbling and overgrown with brush, that leads to Elysium.

That leads to you.

It is said the world may end in the year 2012. The Mayan calendar stops in 2012. It is understood something catastrophic will happen be it a heavenly body colliding with the Earth or the swift progression of a horrible virus or perhaps all-out nuclear war. The world will undeniably end. I hope I may shake this loneliness and learn to live in this world again and make the most of the precious little time we have left… I certainly try. But there are those moments of weakness where I must escape and hide. Life is the time I am with him. The time in between I am fucking dead – a zombie.

In the end of days I pray I am with him so I may comfort him and be his strength.

And after that when we all turn to dust I will be quietly waiting for you.

dive pick-up

“ So why do you paint your nails black and wear mascara?” She’s testing me. Gauging me. Seeing how secure, or how insecure, I am.

I smile at her with big, brown, wet bedroom eyes, take a sip of my Corona and respond. “ Why do you do your hair that way? Hey why do you scrunch your nose when you smile? You look like a mouse…it’s cute though.”

She flinches and predictably laughs and pulls her hand up to her face to hide her nose. “ A mouse? That’s mean!”

I turn and point at her not-so-cute, overweight friend, whom is scowling at me like she wants to tear my balls off. “ Yeah I think YOU could take some lessons from your friend here, she has style. You need some work. Fuck, MY nails are better manicured then yours.”

I accomplish my goal and the friend’s face softens. Her eyes light up and her demeanor changes by approximately 180 degrees. She has been pulled into the conversation and her social value has been raised by a tiny amount, but it is enough.

“ Do you guys know each other from somewhere?” Her friend leans in and asks.

The cute one opens her mouth to answer and I quickly cut her off…. “ Yeah we know each other unfortunately….” I glare at my target… “ She’s my ex-girlfriend and she’s a bitch… And she still has like 6 of my cd’s and my Poison t-shirt.”

They both look at each other and break out in laughter

She plays along. “ Yeah and you’re not getting your cd’s back… but maybe I’ll give you your smelly t-shirt though.”

I smile and put my arm around her… “ I have an idea.. maybe…. maybe we should sleep together again, for old times sake. What do you think?” I wink. “ You realize I still have those naughty pics of you on my computer right?”

She pulls back, her face reddening and her smile widening. “ Ya right dick! I don’t think so.” But her hand lingers on mine.

Yeah, this girl is mine.

together we are beautiful

It’s strange but I think I’ve met you all over again. A very young you - a twenty-year old version of you to be exact. She is untouched and undefiled by time, drugs, heartbreak, pain. She has the same crooked smile as you and the same stubbornness. She lovingly gazes at me with large serene black eyes filled with curiosity. I look at her in the setting half-light as we lie alone in her room – I examine every inch of her, my Lolita… my Delores Haze - and all I see is you reclining with one arm raised looking back at me. She is the surviving embodiment of you. She is a living, breathing ghost.

I showed her picture to several friends of mine and they all agree it is you. Albeit a younger version of you… age twenty to be exact. My newest sweetheart. The likeness is striking – olive skin, black hair, big black eyes, an exotic nose. I told my friend J_____ that I saved a brush filled with your hair and I had you cloned like the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. So that would, in essence, make her a living fossil from my distant past… that I have barely met. And I’m sure that makes no sense. But in my warped world it makes perfect sense.

I’m not sure if this can work as I have erected walls and I refuse to let anyone in… but she’s certainly making a bid. And she’s helping me rid myself of the remaining demons that reside here in my head. I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning but last week she saw a picture of my small son and I and she fell instantly in love. However I know if I were to run into you you’d embrace my son as yours too. I know if you were to look at him you would see the child we were always meant to have. And I know your eyes would fill up with tears, and then inevitably so would mine.

But we didn’t make it did we R_____?

Maybe in the next life we may start all over again as I am starting all over again now.

Game

The dance floor Mecca spreads it’s wings and welcomes me back into it’s loving embrace. Bathed in waves of sound – drum and bass, melodic vocal trance, house, psychedelic trance – I love it all as I love old friends or better yet, old flames. There was a time I lived for this and this alone. The high, the camaraderie, the love, the roll.

Although it was not easy getting here. It was not easy finding my way back.

God it’s so familiar and yet… at the same time… so wrong. I described this feeling to a friend of mine as “visiting my parent’s house.” What once was home is no longer mine. I am so different now. Finally clean and no going back to those dark days long left behind . Armed to the teeth with looks, renewed vigor, but more-so armed with experience… and this experience is what gives me a greater edge then I could have ever had when I was young.

I see beautiful faces, none of them familiar, dart in and out of the shadows and I greet each one with a smile and disingenuous dancing eyes. I tell them what they want to hear. The pretty ones I playfully tease, the average ones I build up with heartfelt compliments. And I walk away from each interaction being “the life of the party” and with a new number in my phone or sometimes, when I get lucky, a new companion to share my bed with.

I am a predator again but with teeth sharper then before, honed to a razor edge. And I hunt now for sport not for food.

“ Why do you hate women?” My cousin Angel sets the shot glass down and bites into the lime.

I raise an amused eyebrow, “ Hate? I love women. Everything about them. Every single fucking nuance.”

“ So why do you fuck with them the way you do?”

“ That’s a bullshit statement and you know it. I tell each and every woman I meet they are not my type and that I am incapable of love. It’s up to them whether they decide to throw me into the briar patch.”

He gives me a puzzled look. " Well either way cabron, it's good to have you back. We all missed you."