/lit/ - Literature

I made a FOOL of myself on the first date. I knew I shouldn’t have had that cup of coffee, with how it affects me. Psychedelic even if it was landing on a full stomach, but I was empty and one pint of hard cider in. Sweating, jabbering nonsense a mile a minute, looking at my smartwatch to see if I was having a heart attack. We still took a two-station ride downtown together while I said something stupid about not liking theater because Kubrick and Lynch are so great, who needs theater after that. What an ASS, Jesus FUCK.

She hugged me goodbye, but I didn’t look back.

I went to the Ponds (formerly Goat Marsh) because my old time army pal had a day off work, and wanted to buy new glasses at this trendy place that just opened around the area somewhere. I hate the Ponds, wouldn’t piss on the people who live there if they were on fire. I made a point of taking my windbreaker when I left home in the afternoon, but the wind was still too cold. Short summer, I can already feel the autumn on its breath, the smell of rotten leaves. Hobos and FMoIs loitering around, bad boomer power ballads are playing from unseen speakers.

When rounded the corner from behind the station exit, I knew it would be bad. Lobster red, bloated, eyes looking through me. He had a flask of brandy in his Asterisk bag, and I guess a quarter of a gram of coke? Maybe more? I dunno. He offered me some, and thank God for my Herculean restraint, since I was all too aware of how fucked was I from that coffee still. We ducked into some empty pizza place, and he went into the bathroom to do to all by himself.

By the time we got to the optics shoppe, he was getting the FEAR, real bad. Couldn’t properly explain himself so ducked out outside pretending to answer a phone call. The hungry shop assistants swarmed me. Just looking (at your flat-ish chest and wide steppe face, cheekbones like honey-coated chisels), haha. I’m out and on the way to the bar I find out he palmed off his 1,2. y.o. son off on grandma, and had a 3-day coke bender at some badly organized music festival in the weeds. I say nothing. I don’t think we are cut out for this life. We have two Aperols in the bar. Tastes like cotton-candy flavored vomit. He has a B-52 shot and completely unravels, meekly asking our Zoomer art-hoe waitress (great service, she even found a charger for my phone) for a room temperature water. I polish it off with a glass of Chardonnay that tastes like dish soap.

I hug him hard at the station, giving him the Five Points of Fellowship. I make sure he feels it, because he seems to be on the verge of tears. I listen to Akira Yamaoka’s Forest on the way back on a loop.

The Millennial Dream