Relax. Thank God the valiums put you out before you could stay up till 4am jerking off to horrendous sexual tableaux out of Bosch. Be grateful. It’s just a hangover. This empty feeling, vulnerable feeling. Despair and fear. It is a sickness. It will pass. Get out of the house and do something. Put on your adult dress up pants and look at a spreadsheet and call phone numbers and discuss industrial real estate transactions. Permits for spray booths. Truck height loading docks. Power needs; recent improvements to the sprinkler system. A man needs twenty thousand square feet of refrigeration for his citrus packing operation. Let’s find it for him. He is doing well in this world. He packs so much god damn citrus that his existing Great Pyramid sized citrus cooling facility is inadequate. He is a success. When the world goes apocalyptic you can camp over there and live off tangerines. Nice guy. Immigrant too. The American Dream lives on.
Emily is moving in with some guy. She’ll be gone. Nikol got serious with some guy. She posts about him on facebook the way my aunt posts about abortion. The way a baby bird won’t shut the fuck up about wanting a worm. There is no one now. I will have to get on OKCupid and really try this time. You OKCupid girls are the worst of human schwag, you know. I hate having to talk to you. But you’re still better than what walks the streets.
Jesus man– if they’re schwag, what the fuck are you. You’re sitting here shivering over a 1000 word screed about your coke hangover and your eyes look like a fucking horror movie. Get up man. Go outside. The day awaits.
Tomorrow is Another Day
Yesterday was gonna be the day I stopped drinking. But I got stuck in traffic. Tanker truck caught on fire on the 60 freeway. It was carrying liquid hydrogen. Hindenburg. All lanes closed in both directions.
I don’t take the 60 freeway, but everyone who does jumped on my freeway of choice, the 10 East. It was my day to stop drinking. For the first hour I took it. Stuck with the plan. But I’d been driving all day. It got dark on the road. The radio just kept telling me about the horrible traffic conditions I was in, every channel. Defeatist messages. Folks, it’s gonna be bad out there for a while. As we’ve been reporting the 60 is closed. Of course you have your alternate routes, the 10 and the 210. But those are stacked up now too from downtown past Azusa. There’s a ripple effect going on here folks. The 605 and 710 are a sea of red. The 101 is stop and go through downtown past Hollywood. And the 5 is on fire, the commuters have begun torching their cars and eating passengers’ flesh. Trees blackened. No life left in the hills except one sinister looking cactus. Starved crows circling. If you’re an alcoholic, you’re gonna want to drink extra liquor tonight to power through the sensations you’re gonna be feeling for the next several hours. I am speaking directly to you, Delicious Tacos, the announcer said. You are an idiot for wanting to stop drinking. Why would you torture yourself further. Think of that first drink. The one that makes this all go away.
The 110 is backed up to Oregon and surface streets are a Bosch hell of shattered metal, folks. Bones meat blood and sinew in the streets. Insurance salesmen desperate to get home in time for the game, ripping babies out of car seats and holding them by the feet and slamming their little faces into light poles in a spray of blood and gristle to hear the mothers scream. Riot troops with flamethrowers just broiling people alive in their minivans, it’s a real mess out there folks. Why would you stop drinking. A crack in the earth has opened at the interchange of the 10 East and the northbound 605 and Satan has emerged 20 stories tall in flame to rape commuters with an ever-spiraling tentacle cock covered in poisonous barbs and there’s an accident in the carpool lane that CHP is busy trying to clear but it’s going to be at least an hour. CHP spokesperson Rick Martinez is telling commuters out there to stay put folks. Stay where you are if you can, you do not want to be on the road tonight. Truckers passing you will leer from high windows with the ghoulish face of your father. The dead beckon you to hell from twisted reflections in his hubcaps. Giant spiky lugnuts swirling, you feel the flesh ripped off your face, tongue torn out twitching on the asphalt, shredded throat croaking, wordless agony… it’s a real mess out there folks. Better buy as much liquor as you can as soon as you get home folks, you do not want to be sober out there. Traffic brought to you by Mattress Masters. You spend one third of your life on your mattress, why wouldn’t you choose the best. Mattress Masters: sweet dreams.
I masturbated in the car to make myself feel better. Struggled with my belt in a fast patch, grabbed the gym T shirt I’d left in the passenger seat. Draped it over my penis. Thought of a blowjob Gertrude gave me one hot afternoon on a coke hangover. Do you want me to suck your dick, she said. I miss you, lover. Remembered cumming without warning her. How could you, you ruin it. Grab her head and force her to take you deep and shoot down her throat while she tries to wiggle off. You had a good one, she said. Like 8 spurts. I lost it in a slow patch when a trucker was right next to me. He’s seen worse.
That was good for 15 minutes. But by the time I got to the 5 interchange I knew I was going to the liquor store. 50 more minutes to get there. I bought a pint of Christian Brothers for $6.99. Maybe I can pace myself, I thought. It was gone in 20 minutes on an empty stomach. Barely felt it but woke up with a hangover. The only thing that’s gonna take the hangover away is another $6.99 pint of Christian Brothers. If you got a better idea I’d love to hear it.
Seasonal Affective Disorder
It’s the light that gets me. Dark at 4:30. I just want to drink and sleep. You try to go outside but it’s cold and all the girls walking around have big sweaters on. No more yoga pants. Why go outside if you won’t see a fully defined pubic mound, the mathematically perfect curve of an ass crack jiggling. What’s the point.
Drink and sleep. Your hormones crash. Go to the gym and your strength has fallen off a cliff. Creaky joints. Every movement grates like bone on bone. I believe I tore my rotator cuff. This is another way of saying: my shoulder hurts. “Rotator cuff” is the only piece of shoulder anatomy I know the name of. Therefore I tore my rotator cuff. No heavy bench press, no heavy military. I now have the upper body of Barbie without the tits. It hurts when I hold the bar to dead lift. It hurts when I support the bar to squat. It hurts when I do a pullup.
Keep hammering on it anyway. Low weight high reps. Just to the point where it hurts but my arm doesn’t rip off my torso, spray onlookers with arterial blood. What are you gonna do, not lift weights? God made me to be a flabby pussy. I skip two weeks, suddenly I’m built like a white garbage bag full of jelly with willow branches sticking out. I am genetically half a man, it’s only with vigilant struggle that I approach the threshold of fuckability.