I swear to god I saw myself in the face of an old man tonight. He looked lonely like I did. Only difference was that it was like someone hit the fast forward button and forgot to let off. He was dressed so nicely. He wore what you’d think an older man would wear. Six shades of blue and plaid with a windbreaker to seal it all in. He struggled to find a place to sit and looked awkwardly ahead of him like he hadn’t ever been invited anywhere in his entire life. Like somehow he didn’t deserve to be there as much as everybody else. I felt his pain. I saw the same dumb look my my face every time I replayed memories of the way I spent my time. Which was bullshit. I didn’t spend it at all. I forgot to live every time I went out. And that was only when I got the courage to haul myself away from that apartment I felt entombed to. Which was growing increasingly difficult to do. I thought about going to sit with him but I wasn’t ready to face myself. He brought with him what I’m assuming is the local newspaper. Look at that. An actual newspaper. Haven’t seen one of those in awhile. He had it folded under his arm like he’d be delivering it later on this evening to his local neighborhood white picket fenced hole with the washer and drier. Think Pleasantville. Where everything is perfect and nothing is beautiful. I wonder what he felt when he read the pages. What entered the recesses of his mind as he turned from word to word. Part of me thought the paper wasn’t even from today. Maybe it was the paper from his wedding day. Or the day that she passed. Maybe it was from when he first developed cancer. Or his kid’s first day of school. It could’ve even been when they took their first steps. His guess is as good as mine as to what it all meant. Neither one of us had any idea what this sick game of fuck and run would do for the growing pits of loneliness in our chests. I felt bad lumping him in with me. We sat on opposite sides of the cylindrical seating sphere in this local dive I liked to frequent in the evenings when I was feeling especially candid and destructive. Something about the eerie calmness and banality of a mundane dinner in a southwestern town with the banter of hot air balloon enthusiasts lingering in the background brought me an edge to the dread my body couldn’t encase any longer. It felt good to step off. I never got off enough. My life was one long, permanent edge. Dull thoughts. Aches. Quiet. Grey. Feelings. I never could find any release for the poison. So it just sort of sat in my bullshit mind, while I kept myself paralyzed and numb with endless hours of online shopping and the illusion of self improvement. Searching for one good fuck. All while being too scared to fuck. I couldn’t even get my body to move the way I wanted it to. I’d fade into dust if you blew me. And I’d fall into the atmosphere if you did anything shy of looking at me. I was a waste. A void. A big, black space. And I certainly wasn’t getting smaller. I didn’t even own a vacuum because I sucked so much. Who needs one when the mere feat of breathing brought a tower of dead particles down onto all of my surfaces. And with every waking hour it just got worse. I was only getting worse. And I could feel it. If you saw me I bet you saw a corpse. Good thing it was October. No one would think twice. And no one gave two shits anyways as to if I lived or died. I could’ve killed myself in the middle of that fucking restaurant and I’d be nothing but a stranger to all of them. Another sad, fucking story that wouldn’t even make it to the papers for old men to read on their lonely nights out from their empty homes. Funny. I’m getting more comfortable with talking about killing my self. I think I’d finally be relieved when it’s over. Maybe I’d feel better. And things wouldn’t hurt in the same way anymore. It actually feels really fucking great to talk about. Because I don’t have to hold it in anymore. I don’t have to hide. I want to die. I just want to die. I want to die so badly that it keeps me up at night. I toss and turn trying to find new ways to fit all of this death into a tiny body that just can’t hold it anymore. That’s too fucking electric to be lifeless. Yet lifelessness is all that it wishes. For the end. For the freedom of knowing that I could’ve been somebody, but wasn’t. And that it’s ok to have failed. To have tried. But to have failed. I’m not broken. I’m not sick. I’m just not fit to be here. Not meant to live. I could never see myself growing old anyways. I could never be on the other side of this revolving neon jellyfish peering my peepers down on the table. Just cutting my food into nice, even pieces with the nice, blunted knives and placing them into my nice, even mouth. With my cavities and fillings and caps and crowns. To bite down and chew and chew and chew. Like the nagging jaws of life down on my springy, chewy heart. Trying to get me to understand that it’s ok. And that it’s over. That is has to be over. I could hear Under Pressure seeping up from the ground once touched by Bowie himself and up through the grey, speckled carpet to find its way through the speakers and directly into my ears. It felt so good. This was one of my favorite songs. I bet he had touched lightning when he made this happen just for me. It’s little moments like this that kept me here. For some unknown reason I didn’t know how long I had left. But it wasn’t short. I knew I had a long life of traversing this earth to make sense of these devils in my mind. The ones who ransacked my spinal cord like it was a stripper pole. Hooting and hollering on their way down my shoulder blades. Greasing their way through my intestines and taking siege of my sad and lonesome prick. Keeping me rock hard for the ages just ready to fuck myself at a moment’s notice. Just in case I ever forgot what it felt like to come in last place. They were there to remind me that I was nothing. And that I was so ugly that no one would ever fuck me. They wouldn’t touch me. They wouldn’t look at me. They wouldn’t even know I was there. I could walk right into someone and they’d swear it was the breeze. What is that? Why...