Misery loves company

“You will never know and could never understand,” M___ slurs. His unsteady hand barely grasping his glass of what I surmise by its foul odor and shit brown color to be a Broiler Maker. “Never know what?” I haphazardly ask, “Pain?”

Wrong. I’ve played the fool more times than I’d care to recall. I’ve fallen flat on my face as the throng marched by, never once slowing their gait or batting an eye. I know pain all too well; she’s an old friend I love to hate. You see the difference between you and I is I’m not an inconsiderate whore and a braggart. I’m not a whining, fucking drunk who stinks up the club with my 2-ton ego and diva dramatics. I’m worse. My problems run deeper than you could even imagine. For instance, the temperature in here, intensified by the crowd, is easily 100 degrees. Yet I’m still wearing sleeves. Notice those little shakes every now and then? Of course you don’t. You’re drunker than a skunk and twelve Indians. Enough about me, I don’t care to spell it out. But once again it’s my burden to carry you out. It’s up to me to actually give a shit, you selfish fuck. You’re lucky. You’re lucky I’m loyal and honor history and even luckier I’m such a masochistic pussy.

“Things are going to get better I can feel it” Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, so the phrase goes. You sing that sad song every time, the lament of the drunk. Who am I to talk? I’m singing too, a different song of course, a different tune, yet I sing. I delight in your nightly predictability and reliability M____. It places things into perspective, thanks. Are you inconsistently consistent or consistently inconsistent? You notice how deep I sound when I reverse the words? Anyhow, time moves by us at such an incredible rate, a million frames per second I’d bet; yet here we are, a sawdust dive bar Abbott and Costello, expertly stepping through our beloved routine we’ve performed since we were kids. Here we sit, you and I, spiraling downward, searching for a cure in a bottle, oblivious to the world. So continue to lecture me on pain and love and spite, as though I’m four and don’t really know. While you’re at it, Don Juan, tell me why the women speak of Michelangelo.