the clichés stopped when i was drunk

I headed for The Open Flask, a little dive I frequent whenever I feel like overdosing on expired prescription medication.

The owner was a semi-acquaintance of mine named Zeke Balue, who’d served a couple duties in Nam and came home wondering who the hell he was.

As soon as he saw me, he smiled so big I could see his cleft pallet.

“How are ya, dude?” he said.

“Tired, tense, rather bitter, if you wanna know the truth,” I said.

 He knew just how to handle a self-pitying whack job like me.

 “Pimm’s Cup comin’ right up,” he said.

I sat my a*s down at a lonely table in the corner, lit a cigarette, and stared into an unlimited expanse.

I tried to live in the present as much as possible and implement all those Buddhist principles into my daily life, but I wasn’t always successful.

I really didn’t have a handle on my thoughts.

Especially thoughts about my past.

They cropped up when I least expected them.

That was the trouble with thoughts.

They really pissed me off sometimes.

By the time Zeke brought my Pimm’s Cup to me, I was daydreaming about angry sex with fragile women.

“Hope that’ll help ya out,” Zeke said.

“Zeke?”  I said.

“Yaa?”

“Do ya remember your childhood?”

Zeke looked at me, really puzzled for a second.  “Sure,” he said.

“Remember all those nightmares you had?”

“Sure.”

“Well, do you remember getting sudden head rushes whenever the air  pressure changed when the drinks were flowing, and the drugs were epoch-making, and your penis was raw from masturbating to MTV?”

This time, Zeke didn’t say “Sure.”

In fact, he didn’t say anything at all.

I think he was afraid to say anything.

Either that, or I’d touched a nerve so deep in him that my question had left him totally paralyzed.

“I was just curious,” I said, shrugging.

He half-smiled, but I could tell it was an effort for him.  “No problem,” he said. 

“Can I getcha anything else?”

I looked at my Pimm’s Cup.  “Did  you use lemonade or Ginger Ale this time?”

“Lemonade,” he said. “Just like you like it.”

“Good,”  I said.  “Lemonade reminds me of the sun…You  know, you’re a good man,  Zeke.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Anything else?”

I  held out my hand.

We shook on something, but I’ll be damned if I knew what it was.

Maybe it was lost innocence or lost youth or something else that was lost.

Who knows?

I’m not all that good at finding the subtext in things, anyway.

That’s probably why I  write the kind of crap I write, which is nothing special.

I make a living at it, although I live in a tenement house on the Lower East Side and subsist on Cream of Wheat, ramen noodles, jelly doughnuts, and Boone’s Farm apple wine.

Somebody once asked me if I considered myself a success.

That’s one of those questions I hate.

And I told them how much I hated it.

That’s probably why I don’t have many friends.

I’m too honest.

F**k ‘em.