push.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
“i just think you can find someone that suits you better.”
“you must have used that one before. it’s polished.”
—
feels like some real “it’s not you it’s me” bull shit. i threw a line to a pretty young girl because i thought it would be nice to see her more. she thought otherwise. oh well. it comes as no surprise to me that i’m not currently a hot commodity. i can hardly expect to be wanted when i’m as…erratic…as i am.
hearing cordial words from your ex for the first time in a year makes ya feel a little more grown. a little more mature. something about maybe now you finally have the capacity to let go of something. if only a shred, a remarkable improvement from your past. her well wishes made you feel it’s the right time to throw yourself at something else. but these self improvement and moving forward plans tend to have a permanent start date of “tomorrow.”
today, it’s johnny cash and sunday morning coming down at three pee em.
the bartender looked sick of me before i even took my seat. me and her had that in common. i’m sick of me too. or she might have actually been fine with me and i am just doing a lot of projecting.
my internal clock is telling me that at 3:30 pm i really ought to look better. i am willing to bet i look as good as i currently feel. no worse. no better. but that’s a low bar to trip over. i feel like a two dollar hooker.
(flashbacks)
“i feel like a million bucks, but my money don’t feel like i do.”
“is that money in aus or the american dollar?” — a bald brit named liam in a gold coast, australia hostel some sunny morning around january of 2014. and for some reason his seriousness about the query always has brought me a chuckle.
—
turns out it was the projecting thing. the bartender had no qualms with me. she gave me a free coffee which i appreciated not because of the extra three bucks on my tab but because it was rational. she wouldn’t have charged me for a coca cola if i put my whiskey in it. i simply wanted coffee for my whiskey. it’s a mixer. something about sunday afternoons after heavy saturday nights — i put the jameson into my coffee so as to maximize my time — that move causes a bit of a startled look from the cookie cutter north loop brunette to my left with the glass of wine, glass of water, (now i’m speculating) marketing degree, nice north loop loft, and seemingly endless search for the RIGHT GUY. i bid her well. the little i caught of her conversation upon returning from going outside to be on the phone made me think maybe it’s not going great… “he said he’s sorry…”
in my current state i am hoping for the best for the fella. i bet he is sorry and i bet he knew he was wrong and did it anyways. whatever it was. i been there. she’s cute. hopefully he keeps her somehow and some way.
one sees in these parts a number of high fades and buttons buttoned all the way to the tippy top and boat shoes. a number of cosmo readers in the crowd. and me, a ringer reader. an avid addict to thompson and bukowski and vonnegut and other lost souls. and me, no high fade or button ups. long deranged hair and flippy floppies and a black shirt. tattoos too. enough for now.
—
merely 24 hours ago i was riding the high wave of “can’t nobody tell me what to do” self-glorification bull shit but the inevitable crash landing back to reality results in a professor xavier level migraine that doesn’t actually involve physical pain but is constituted of lost opportunities and bitterness. and icky “drunk mike said WHAT?!?!”
you get to these mornings (afternoons) and then there’s a you inside of you SCREAMING AT YOU TO FUCKING PAY ATTENTION TO THE DETAILS FOR ONCE but the you outside of you is finding it very challenging to smell the roses. CALL YOUR MOM MORE. BE THANKFUL.
“thanks for the cigs and all the booze, but it’d be nice to have my medicine too.”
you get to a point where it feels as though there’s even no hope for nectar. no chance of sweetness. no sugar with the medicine. the day after slaps in the face have their own rules. which is a shame because you were really convinced really not that long ago. convinced that you were turning over a new leaf or some shit like that. turns out you’re the same fucking guy with the same fucking mornings (afternoons) you been bitching about for a decade. same aimlessness. same restlessness.
you have been working heaps and you get back into kickboxing this week which will be good and you will be working every day for the next couple weeks. which is good. it will help get you back to where you want to be. which is abroad with a backpack and no address. however, before all that work it feels like sometimes rock bottom comes first. for some reason you really gotta skid sometimes so that you get a good reminder of which way is up.
“can i get you anything else?”
“do you have any hard narcotics?”
the bartender likes my throw-myself-in-the-gutter self-depreciating humor.
“…had lost some of my old zeal that had led me, in the past, to do what I damn well felt like doing, with the certain knowledge that I could always flee the consequences. I was tired of fleeing, tired of having no cards. It occurred to me one evening, as I sat by myself in Al’s patio, that a man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long. I’d been doing it for ten years and I had a feeling that my reserve was running low.” — HST
it’s a bit trying on the nerves to always feel like your odds are out of left field and to feel lacking in outs, as it were. that’s probably the most appropriate assessment of all this. it’s a feeling of a life on tilt. a chosen one, and one that the self doesn’t have the right to bitch about. i could have chosen security a million times over and odds are i would have found a way to be bitter about that too. my parents would be happier with it, that’s for sure.
if you have enough heavin in yer vines that shit will bubble up from time to time on a saturday afternoon and manifest itself in binge drinking rum and vacuum noses. you’re convinced that life is for the living and that that is your calling — to be one of the living. so you keep pushing. pushing. pushing. like sisyphus at times. unconcerned about the weight rolling back on you. the inner voice screaming. the discontent young women sitting next to you. the bars. the coffee shops. the coffee. the beer. the filth. the roller coaster of emotions. the hope that you’ll attract someone that will make the ride a bit smoother. the friends you keep trying to keep keep keep keep keep but the life that makes it harder harder harder. the ex that genuinely wishes you were happier than you are — more content. the fact that you keep keep keep choosing to not be content. no end in sight to the rambling and a sense that it’s all necessary for some reason. the pushing.