Paragraphs Between Ryan and What I Wish was a Bottle of Bourban
You and I aren't anything like what we see. We just have a common understanding of what it's like to want something more but the inability to capitalize. This leaves bankrupt vacant faces of doubt and anguish.
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There was a cliff near by where his feet had made their final little print in the sand. The dust was orange and the clay was white from left tire tracks or wolves lying around pawing at the ground to get warm at night. Weeds straddled the cliff 5 feet above the ridge but maybe another 8 feet down to the first cut in the steep wall. He walked to the edge with some purpose and looked down. He talked out loud like he normally did when left in a spot where he had time to think about what he loved the most; women.
"What? I mean come on what do you want from? I asked you once and then you fucked me. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know you are God and all and even if this is nonsense just all made to make myself feel better I should not be cursing at you - but I mean - fuck you. Fuck you in the ear. The leash that I've been lead by rattles too loud on the concrete for me to sneak up on any sheep. The eyes I've been blessed with have no peripheral ability. Well, anyway..."
He leaned back and cleared his throat into his mouth and spit as far and hard as he could over the chasm. He saw it no more than the horizon was high. The murder blood red skyline was laughing back with its beauty. That rainbow sherbet unthawed piece of sky, explained to be beautiful by everyone except those that wanted to see sky, laughed back at the gesture in it's own way.
In the corner of the room when he got back to the house there sat a rocking chair with a country plaid pillow on top of an afghan. He threw his denim tag along shirt over the railing of the bed situated in the middle of the room. He sat down and panned the mantle. He panned the birthday cards that weren't there and the family portraits and pictures of girls smiling that were turned the opposite way. He put his head into his hands and ran his fingers through his hair. He cracked his neck to the right and straightened his back while opening his eyes, shutting them, and then opening them wider and wider again. Leaning down he could smell the night before on his clothes and he could hear the canned laughter in his head while he thought about his own actions.
He reached across the table for a pack of cigarettes and the bottle of George Dickel Coutnry Sour Mash. He twisted the top off the bottle the same way you flip a quarter. It was with ease and some sort of childlike whimsical purpose. Grabbing the glass from the end of the table he had to stretch and felt his back muscles pull at his spine and he groaned. He blew in the glass and poured the whisley half way to the brim. He stuck his nose into the glass an inhaled. Cocking his head to the side he lit his cigarette with one eye closed to block out the sulpher. Shaking the match dead to the gorun and he swirled his drink once and looked vacantly at the mantle. He did a toast to the only picture not turned around. The photo of his father seemed to wink back at him as he took down the glass in one burning gulp of what felt like trust and snake piss blended together.
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Love is about as tender as a pumice stone when held in your hand. You throw the brittle porous stone at walls and hope it doesn't break. Pumice will withstand only so many attempts before you wither off enough little pieces that you run out to some cheap 3rd rate salon to find another stone. You bring that one home and say, "This is the one that I will cherish and keep and love. This one is mine." This one was yours until the first time you dropped it and a little piece chipped off the side. After that first piece you looked at it with imperfection and a desire to find a new one.
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God, I wish I could make her smile with the idea that she was safe and loved. She won't ever do that though. She'll smile at fleeting ideas of attraction and she'll question herself until she hates me. There is just no space in a little room for any more souvenirs. I don't keep ticket stubs anymore and I don't take pictures. I don't want t-shirts from the beach or anything with a date on it. I have no desire to be involved in anything memorable because I just can't fit anything else in the little room. I can't possibly make room for anything more than a key to slide back and forth from that which is locked in and that which is locked out.
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You can have all that you promised back. You can take it all back with you because I don't think I believe you any more. Your little trails of similar intimate responses to strangers are the same responses you give me. Your whimsical desire to be anything but what you are is the making of a life of pain. Your inability to satisfy even one of my desires or seriously consider any of my intentions excites me to be vulnerable and then violently jealous and spiteful. Allow yourself the ability to move freely and then see where it is you land.
~~
He started writing all these poems and great lines and I was like "You fucking bastard. Now I have to start writing as well." I read it and looked around and just kept thinking that he was a son of a bitch for being that good. Because all my words are like "Please kill me now" and there's the other one that's like "I dated this chick and she fucked me up. Now please kill me." and there is the other one that goes like this "I'm really sad because of this chick and now I'm drunk. Please kill me." I mean I don't even have the glasses to be artistically accepted as a retard. I wear Brooks Brothers polos for fuck's sake. I hate that you are more talented than me more than just about anything. It's so hard to respect what you fail to achieve and know you could.
