A guy fists triple whiskeys into his gut until his spleen tells him its time to burst, goes home and stares at the cracks in the ceiling, his brain / pushes itself into the microcosm of the parallel life. The one we could have lived if we had ventured free from this day to day, the one which could have torn us apart in its call to survival, or the other one we dreamed of as little children, where all the parts were clean and unfettered by experience and circumstance and fate ruled the day.
But none of those happened to him. He lay there and pretended the cracks were like the branches of a tree, the tree that held all he’s been and all he can’t live up to, so full and tight that it was about to buckle like his kidneys, down into the floor and through the street, into the sludge of other’s people drunk-dreaming the same nightly thing.
The sludge is the color of lost money, of booze and rot, of old feelings that never leave you, just slowly gang greening its porridge brew into a pot somewhere, on the outer shore, the witches near the railway. He’s got to make a list. A list of things that will save him, a list of prices he can live with paying…shut that yapping dog up- He gets up and tosses a shoe that doesn’t belong to him (it was hers, the only one, how does a person leave one shoe behind) down to the alleyway, but it hits nowhere near the dog and his furtively confident belchy bark. Bastard reminder of another time and place. Funny how the sound of a dog barking in the country is soothing; afar, could be a wolf running in the distance, reminding of the freedom still pacing in each of us. But the measly city dog just happy to shit where it eats and wanting to let the world know its fine to do so, well, that just doesn’t cut it. But the people, again, they’re not much different, are they.
The best part of this late night roll call of tremulous voices and calvinist shakes is that he Wants to be alone. Escaping all the possibilities that could hurt him. People just don’t get it, do they. Ego lights their way like a cheap secondhand lamp- not the kind that gets marked up for well dressed clean couples at the antique shop. The sort that never had style, nor a place, nor anything that wanted its light. He felt no empathy for these clean people with filthy, dimly-lit souls, shopping for happiness and self worth at the corner store. Cluttered full of expectations of what and who their hearts should breathe in. The need and want, desiring like the worst case of an already dead junkie, for a companion. The opposite of one usually delivered / its purpose served by another in the room. Two cheaply-lit lamps un-learning the beautiful tides that were offered them before they fucked it up on their own. A co-signer to bullshit more than a man and a wife, or woman and hen pecked husband. Marriage and its backseat companion love made into a shady loan offered by the meanest of men in stiff suits; only to find themselves dirty on the outside, hissing throughout, at the side of the road, with a “Will Work For ________ sign”. No one to share their cracks, or skin, or colours, or their room.
There is no one in his room. Hasn’t been for a very long time. Saying something to scare them off is usually the best way to achieve this perfect loneliness. But would he want it to be the other way – ticking ticking, rocking rock you can smash their head in if they say another word about their day, themselves, reading the city paper in front of you – No sense of the Urgency. Whole food chains eating themselves, universe in constant birth and bloody peril, the mental cases having their day --- can’t they know to put the paper down, toss it into the fire and devour each other from bottom chakra upwards? It’s too much for most people’s minds…still while they read away, people’s moralities are whipped from them hourly without the sexy veil of a lady in leather boots. It’s usually much much quieter than that. Sadder- the silent whip that removes all the warmth, aliveness and heart from people, dying a little down there every day (Babbitts unite).
But wasn’t he dying a little in here every night. Or not. It pained him to know they were so asleep in their freedom, and it pained him to know he was too, but for these thoughts which accompanied him on his nightly journey up the bare wall to the ceiling. The branches cracked, reaching out to him, Jesus on his tree calling out as a warning. Better up on the tree in the end, than in the dirt everyday, not even tasting the sickly muck of everyone’s sludge being shoved into his mouth.
How could he share this with anyone? Maybe their cracks are in the bottom of the bathroom trash, or hiding with the feelings he himself tossed into the bottom of the ocean just for the thrill of someone finding them. Still, there would be other nights, other rapturous dreams, other angry slipnslides of our failures to surf on, tomorrow and the night after. The cracks aren’t going anywhere, but will he- ever climb on in, or up or over, and see what lies behind them. He passed out before this made any sense; the yapping dog was let back in about 5 minutes later; the last beer he barely touched was still at his side.
