| So people come up to me and ask me things. No, seriously they do. I'll be down -- let me give you an example here all right? Just shut up a second and stop moving so much... I'll be down in the bar, and this guy will come up to me.
He'll be all smiles, you know, the kind of grin that comes pasted on a cheap stuffed toy you win at the street fair. Just one big fucking human smile. It'll stretch, unnaturally, until the corners of his mouth are cracking with dryness, and you can feel his lips chap while he stands there. It sounds like paper smoldering; that dry itch of heat right before it bursts into fire. Worse still, he'll open that mouth of his at you.
"Hey buddy," he'll carefully slur at me, the amount of whiskey on his breath acting as a disinfectant for a few feet around, "how'd a guy like you end up here, anyway?"
Now, you need to understand, I get asked this at least ten times a day. I always shake my head and look away from the fucker as I loftily answer, "No where I'd rather be, man," and go back to my beer.
Lie after lie after lie.
This bar is my own personal hell. I'd go somewhere else if I could, but I can't. It's the condition of my sickness, you see. It's all that's left for me now. Fucking hell, you think I don't remember what it was like on the other side of things? Before the sickness grew and swallowed me whole?
I am not, as you might be thinking, an alcoholic, sitting here in my far too expensive suit and loose tie with shoes that lost their luster and shine years ago. That would be easy. That I could deal with.
I've known a lot of alcoholics in my life, and who hasn't if you stop and think about it and take off those blinders you wear all day. They're decent folk, under it all, in general. Then again, most people are. No, the big drink ain't my cross to bear. Hell, with my ulcer I can't even drink that much. Shit.
No. I used to be someone. Not a president or first baseman or anything on TV. I used to be someone who mattered. Who had loved ones to care for and care about me. I had a family, some kids, some parents-- the whole ball of wax. And I pissed it all away because I was convinced I knew all the big answers. I had 'em down so pat I didn't need anything else.
The cops, they said it was an accident.
The point is that ever since then? I've been here. In this bar. Looking at the world from the wrong side of a rain streaked window in the wrong side of town and the right side of a bar. I get out some, sure. I get out enough to sleep sometimes, and to transcribe this from my notebook.
But I never really leave, if you take my meaning. I think you take my meaning.
I'm still not a regular here, no matter how long it's been. They know me, sure, but I'm not one of them. I sit at the bar all night and drink my beer, writing things like this down as I go, stepping outside to smoke my way through a pack of Lucky unfiltered each night. I go home after that and stumble through making dinner and typing up these letters in a bottle. Then I send them on. Then I pretend to sleep.
If you can call endless fever dreams and screaming sleep.
I got truths to tell and more to find. I have messages to send to the world in the hopes that someone hears my screams, and it isn't just an echo. Welcome to my bottle.
Huh. Maybe I am an alcoholic after all, trying to find my own salvation at the bottom of a bottle that never truly empties itself for me.
Who the fuck knew?
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