I am not really this drunk.
Yes, I
really am.
I am.
So.
Fucked.
Up.
Crack me open.
Spill my
soul.
My
crumbling, sniveling, blistered soul.
It would
probably be beautiful. Maybe I’m the one who’s ruined. Maybe my skin is the
culprit, my soul trapped helplessly inside, gorgeous and innocent.
Let me out.
Let me oouuuuuuuuut!
It
screams and I listen. I smile.
Let me ouuuuuut.
I have hallucinations of
hallucinations.
My mind,
the alcohol sets it free. It allows it to escape. I scoop up this feeling in my
arms and run as far as I can go with it.
You are confused. Don’t be. Be
patient. You stare at me with disgust, lips tensed with disdain. Don’t. You
want to throw me away like a browning banana peel. Like yesterday’s garbage
that is still rotting in your kitchen and you don’t know why you haven’t taken
care of it yet. That is me. Is it? Am I garbage, decaying by your counter? No.
I am a human. I am crouched and rocking, arms around my knees by your trash
can, a spotty banana skin perched on top of my head. I am a box full of love
that can’t escape. I am taped-up. I am subhuman. No. I am superior. No. I am
me. I am everyone else. I am generic, but different. I swig. I gulp. Where
someone else would grimace at the bitter taste, I smile. I guzzle. I gobble. I absorb.
This is me.
Is
it?
My brain is
a cloud.
Is
it?
Dwaine
doubles over at something hilarious that I may or may not have said, one hand
slapping his ankles and the other holding a lukewarm, green-bottled beer. Was I
talking? His black-rimmed glasses are smashed against his knees, his mouth wide
open and drooling on his pants leg, teeth scraping sugary plaque against the
blue denim. Laugh, laugh, laugh. He sits back up, wipes his slimy mouth, and
grins super huge.
“That,” he
titters, “was funny.” I smack him on the back.
Shot?
“Shot!”
Dwaine shouts, and Pudge’s head bolts upright from its standard sluggish
position and I imagine it adorned with two furry dog ears, both tiredly pricked
up and excited for more tawny liquor.
Charlie’s hand was so warm in mine,
our arms a brass pendulum swinging back and forth between us and when I had dropped
her off back at the bus station, we kissed several times.
The first
time I ever drank hurls towards me in a nostalgic whirlwind, vomiting me from
my current position standing by Dwaine’s desk reminiscing with a sloshy bottle
of Captain Morgan in my hand, to Kelli Peterson’s droopy, dank basement back in
2002. I was thirteen, sitting on a well-adored orange sofa, chugging straight
from the plastic bottle my very first time. I didn’t know any better; I drank
so much I got sick. Dreadfully sick, curled around a toilet for the better piece
of two hours, my teeth clacking against the stubby, white ceramic neck, and I
loved it.
I blink and
am back, overflowing my glass.
I
hallucinate that I hallucinate.
Suddenly,
dimension disappears and my shoes are on the ceiling, glued to my feet, glued
to my legs, fastened to my hips. All of my blood drains into my head. My cheeks
flush. My ears hum. My eyes water. I take my shot upside-down and it pours all
over my face, going up my nose and making me yelp and cry. There is nothing
more painful than liquor riddling your sinuses. Dwaine and Pudge don’t notice.
Pudge sits in his chair and reaches his beefy arms out to pour himself a taste
and Dwaine turns to his left and talks to the empty air as if I were still
occupying it. He nods and replies to things I haven’t said, laughs at jokes I
haven’t made. I am here for one thousand years. Upside-down, hair in my face, I
see a white Guitar Hero axe float up from the ground on its own accord, strap
lifted and wrapped around an invisible torso, and stare, flabbergasted, as it
proceeds to set up the game and poorly perform a song on expert. Dwaine points
and laughs at the random guitar suspended by itself in the air. Pudge sits with
droopy eyes.
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