A Tired and Angry Hangover.

Olfactory perceptions of overcooked meat and stale grain products cling to the room like fragrant cellophane. Awake, with no recollection of falling asleep, eyes filled with sand, belly filled with fire, tongue feels like it needs a shave. Its early spring, a nip in the air warns that winter is not that far gone, the heat is out.

Purple shadows creep the wall, advancing before a burning chrysography of unanticipated sunlight as the mind greets the day through grease smeared lenses. Optic bundle still not fully operational, some minor pickling of the frontal lobe, pre-frontal cortex, cerebellum, temporal lobe, and possibly even the upper stem of the medulla above the C-1 vertebrae and skull base. All senses state that full systems shutdown is imminent, metabolism is slowed, pulse sporadically dicrotic, blood pressure elevated, pupils fixed with horizontal nystagmus, slurred speech, loss of equilibrium, short term memory loss, inability to comprehend or follow simple instructions, accompanied by exaggerated perceptions of exterior stimuli.

Those senses that remain functional continue the search for survivors in the wreckage; however hypersensitive ears already made acutely alert to any unfamiliar sound, find no signs of life in this barren and unpredictable landscape.

Recommendation: Immediate temporary shutdown of all unnecessary systems to effect repairs.

Additional temporary protocol changes: Avoidance of all sources of light, sound and odor until further notice. Complete abstinence from all things fermented and/or distilled for a period of no less than three days. Prayer for quick and painless neutralization of symptoms through any possible means, conjoined with complete reprobation of all foodstuffs for a period of at least twenty four hours.

Lamentations of a Hopeless Sucker

Two-thirty in the morning and she sits on the tailgate of my pickup, in the dark of the parking lot, rocking back and forth, smoking endless cigarettes and sobbing. She looks sort of crumpled, disheveled, uneven. Her hair is knotted, her tights are torn in a half dozen places. She's drunk and she hasn't bathed in several days; I can smell it from where I'm standing, over six feet away. I don't know what time she left the latest frantic message on my machine,

"Pick up the phone, I need to see you, its urgent, it's an emergency (sobbing), please pick up, I'm at Sullivan's, Oh Christ, I fucked up again, Oh fuck (deep sobbing, possibly vomiting) please hurry, oh god, oh Christ (more sobbing) what the fuck am I doing?"

{Click}...

I don't know how many phone calls like this I have received from her over the years, I have lost track. Back when we were together I always felt responsible, felt like I was duty bound to help in whatever way I could, but there have been too many calls over the years, too much betrayal, too many one nighters, too much drama, and I'm just too damn tired to care like I should.

Now she's relaying the story of her latest misadventure, eye makeup rolling in dark streams down her cheeks, fingers trembling, fumbling out a cigarette, lighting it from the one she just finished, and flicking the still lit butt into the darkness.

She's talking, obviously distraught, yet I can't help wondering just how much of it is bullshit, how much is an act, and how much is real. Is she using again? It would certainly explain a few things. Is she using me again? She's pale, doesn't look well, has what could be a poorly concealed bruise under her left eye, but its hard to tell in the shadows, with the thick eye makeup running down her cheeks.

She's wrapping up now; I have to admit that it didn't sound as rehearsed as usual. Her latest guy caught her screwing around and tossed her out. She ran to the guy she was screwing around with, who it turns out was cheating on his wife with her. He of course wanted nothing to do with her, she of course had nowhere else to go, and has spent the last several days living in her car. She doesn't tell me about the shiner, and I don't ask.

Part of me wants to go to her, hold her, comfort her. But my good sense and reason warn me against getting close. I know that she can still manipulate me, she always could. I know it, and she knows it.

I remember the bright eyed little girl. The diamond in the rough, who could sing and play, who understood particle physics at twelve, who could have gone to any college, succeeded at any career, done anything.

That's the problem with a small town, even when people drift away they never really drift away, you get to see them self destruct, to watch them get ground down by the world around them, watch them dissolve.

She's twenty eight now, and looks like she could be forty five. Skin pale, creased and waxy, eyes vague and filled with pain, slightly distended abdomen yet you can clearly see her ribs, pockmarks, abscessed sinuses and pain. All signs that she has used and been used for many many years.

"Can I stay with you? Just for a couple of days, until I can get my head together?"

I know what will happen if I say yes, know how it will go, know how it will end; and after an hour or so of tear filled conversation, I offer to rent her a motel room. She agrees, tries to lay a guilt trip on me for trying to distance myself from here, for being too good for her. I buy her some food, gas up her car, and she follows me to a motel in the next town. I get her checked in for the next two days, make sure she eats something, and knows when the check out time is. Before I leave she asks if I want to stay for the night, I decline. The last words I hear as I walk out the door are "you fucking asshole..."

Part of me wishes it could be like that first time all those years ago, before the world got out of control, before we found that we had to change. Camping at the local reservoir, hiding her from her stepfather, her fifteen, me just turning sixteen. Holding her gently in the dark of the tent, mindful of the lumps and knots and bruises on her face and back and arms and legs, listening as she told me now she got them, who had given them to her, wishing I could do something to make it right.

Just holding her in the dark.

Stimulants and depressants.

Its a familiar cycle,
day starts not being able to get out of bed,
ends not being able to get to sleep,
is swallowed at its zenith by a million inconsequential details,
dissected digested and stripped of every useful aspect,
life slowly reduced to numbers,
dots and dashes,
ones and zeros,
tallying human existence,
slaves to the almighty bottom line.

Caffeine for breakfast,
cholesterol for lunch,
Cuervo for dinner,
economized self destruction.