by Jason Bryan
Vomit mixed with cocaine and blood runs down my upper lip and into my mouth, freezing the curious tip of my tongue with a terrible chemical copper taste. Sore elbows and red knees carry me into the shower, having shaking hands on the shower knob is getting a little too old hat. Frozen skin burns and cold bones rattle, the steam rises and I fall over onto my side. The idea of having a responsibility to a woman, to a son, a daughter, is not even a seed in my being. I live purely to reach highs of physical pleasure and ego stroking, encouraged by my peers, cheerlead by a society that doesn’t want me to care. I believe in nothing and it shows.
The shower acts as my loving nurse until the hot water runs out, and then some. My skin wrinkled, shivering, I turn off now-cold water and collect myself. Tired legs struggle to stand for hands to grab a towel, drying myself with minimal effort before stumbling to crash back on the couch. The fuzzy blanket hardly warming, the leather smells of booze and cum. The dismay felt over that next day odour, is a more than subtle reminder of overcast skies and quiet hung over mornings. I hear rain begin to tap on the window ever so lightly. The couch hates me, every fiber of wood frame stabbing into my bones, the metal spring coils have turned to concrete. I shiver, pull the blanket to my chin, and close my eyes.
27 Rain God
For eight days it’s poured down rain. Eight days. I haven’t left my house in as long, and I had to order food for the last four to keep myself fed. My phone blows up in texts from artists needing to use their space, my explanation is that I’m sick and nothing they can do will help. One girl texts that she made me my favorite cheese bread, after that I turned off my phone. My skin wants to blister if it spends another moment under halogen light or in front of a monitor. It takes me an hour to get ready to leave, even the breeze outside is ripe with angst and the pedestrians out today aren’t much better. Faces on people under umbrellas keep their eyes down, people in cars petrifying in traffic. Poisonous cities smell of hot brakes, exhaust, feces and idle buses. Sneers across druggies’ faces still a week away from their welfare cheques. Two blocks to get a coffee and the rain melts my hair onto my face, in the future I’ll remember to never lend out my umbrella.
The coffee shop is lit in bright yellow, eager young women greet me with beaming smiles, full of joy. Ordered a drip coffee, I can’t tell the difference between an Americano and a drip coffee half the price. I thought I noticed her smile fade over a $2.25 order. The barista finishes making some broad in yoga pants and cowboy boots her soy chai latte. Extra foam.Her vegan organic cranberry salad neatly packaged in a clear plastic box that will outlast her. The next guy puts in a $60 order of brown wake up juice and baked sugar, the girl smiles extra hard. Bitch.
My coffee is slid across the counter top and the barista turns away without a word, no flowery announcement of “large drip,” nothing close to how soy chai latte rolled off her tongue. Aural silk is her voice, this pretty bird comes packaged with her own sunny day. She smiles and puts happy thoughts into her movements behind the counter, her energy matches her vivid exterior look. With brown hair holding streaks of red, hourglass figures look a little tamer under a turquoise v-neck. She used to chat me up when I ordered a mocha, even drew a vagina in foam last time. I grab the milk jug from the sugar and sticks counter, filling it near the top for a chocolaty brown colour. After snapping the lid on, I already want out of here. I try and remember that she is busy and I’m not exactly friendly. I catch my face in the stainless half and half bottle, sneer and rain smeared below my nose, cross eyebrows. Eight days of rain, Dylen, just the eight days of rain.
Outside the door, the dull, numbing drizzle is falling heavier, popping and snapping from larger drops off the awning, cars drive by and spray water over the curb. Can’t say why, but I turn the opposite way from home and begin to walk. Anticipating a long journey, I reach into my side pocket, grab my phone, and put it into my inside jacket pocket, the driest spot I can think of. A few sips of my coffee periodically and my mind drifts off. My entire body is soaked in a few blocks, a few more and my shoes squish and weigh a ton. Without any destination, my legs carry me to the seawall near Stanley Park, it’s deserted. My coffee’s done and I carry the cup to find a garbage bin. A low fog hangs over the water and the rain is even harder now. Sometimes getting lost is the only way you can let yourself be found again. Whipping my soaking hair back and forth, a smile cracks across my face and a fit of giggles begins to take hold of me. Soaked to the bone, laughing at this mad man walking in the rain.
The seawall is long and my feet are getting sore. The Lion’s Gate bridge looms out of the fog, green on grey, and I take a seat at a bench where I can look out over the water. Few birds in the air, a ship blows its horn as I think of post cards in my mind. Resting my arms outstretched, a tilting of neck, and surrendering to the rain. Here I am, do your fucking worst. I can’t sit inside hiding from this, the stain on my mood of eight days of solid grey showers. I give up and give in.
Puddles form in my eye sockets and rain ticks through my empty ribs. I feel my bones are wet, no flesh to keep them dry and warm. Ragged, torn clothing fall off me in shreds, drip after drip falls from my white bleached ribs. The rain no longer looks like it’s falling, but coming out of the bones themselves. The act of giving myself to the rain isn’t one of death, but of rebirth. If I died right now, would I be happy with the time I was given? My shirt sticks to my chest, the warm layer of water pushed up against me with the most subtle of heat. Pants feel like they’re bunched up and chafing at the crotch. Feet numb like stumps, what must be worn skin burns my heels. Time makes itself known as flesh returns to rain scrubbed bones, while wooden benches press chilly spines into crooked, wicked shapes. Skin, bone, and organ are useless without purpose coming from soul. The pain of my back drowns into a background of showering clouds and soft inlet waves. This crashing cloudburst is a strange remedy.
My fingers are whitewet and wrinkled, when pressed together they are irresistible to not rub them for that sandpaper tickle. What seems like days passes in minutes, my body and soul feel cleansed. I stand up slowly as my frozen body protests, geriatric movements sluggish at first, but the thought of a hot shower sends a rush of desire through me. Drenched legs snap forward with motivated thrust. Back around the seawall and I’m nearly in my home turf, bums looking at me with fear for my mental state. I smile. My hair is matted against my head, catching a reflection of myself in a mirror and I could be mistaken for someone who just climbed out of a swimming pool. My inside coat pocket is soaked, hope my phone isn’t fucked, but if it were, that’s OK too.
Slogging through Gastown, feeling like a million bucks and giving zero fucks.
My feet want to double stamp every puddle spotted by manic eyes, a professional dog walker ahead crosses the street to avoid me. Friendly Dachshunds and French bulldogs even look the other way. A bus driver honks at something and I give him a wave, a couple of jumping one-legged strides through a deep sidewalk lake produces a loud plop-plop-plop. Tech professionals in tight black turtle necks gawk from the inside of the coffee shop. I stop and see a trash bin, my hand helping the cup find its way from my coat pocket into the bin’s slot. I glance back into the shop and the counter girl looks at me in horror; an honest smile pulls up the corners of my mouth and I realize, I’ve never felt warmer.
28 Unlove Letter
Heartfelt messages through email never quite work. That disconnect of my message moving through the keys, becoming 0s and 1s, and sitting on a server somewhere for her to click the bold link titled “I miss you.” It could easily end up in her spam folder purgatory. I can count dozens of times I’ve been spammed with that message from supposed overseas brides. Just 0s and 1s carefully arranged to get my forlorn heart to pay.
I’ve written a simple email.
I remember last year when you called me around Christmas, we talked for hours. Then you sent photos of your cats and the spilt milk on the counter top, and photos of you at the mall with your nephews. I really liked that, it made me
smile for days and days. Even though we were thousands of miles apart, I had never felt closer to you.
I hope your Christmas went well, and that you’re looking forward to making 2013 your happiest year yet. Yeah, I know, you probably feel some anxiety when you think about me, or talking to me, and I feel the same way. The anxiety I feel is because you actually mean something to me, regardless of if you still hate me more than you’ve hated anyone else before.
Maybe you’ll remember this photo, it was the last time I saw you happy.
Leaning over my desk with my chin in my left palm, an autonomously chewed middle finger leaves a painful hang nail. I must have lost track of time completely. A pen and a book of lined paper sits before my keyboard, I had begun to write her a letter telling her how much I’ve missed her, how much she actually means to me. My normal recollection of favorite females is by the shape of their genitals, images of countless vaginas and the faces they’re attached to having been fucked into my memory. With this one, it was her smile. Her laugh, her little quirks, holding her hand, the way we talked together, and the way my soul caught fire when our lips met. Nostalgia fills my head and I swim in the endorphin rush.
I haven’t finished the letter yet, the final paragraph is supposed to be where I ask her if her life has been going the way she wants it. If I could just talk to her again, maybe she’d see that this time I’ve really learned. Maybe she’d see I really want something with purpose, to build a life together. My hand picks up the pen and comes to a rest on the paper. I can’t handwrite this right now, emotionally I’m drained. I could easily type or text it, but writing is different. My hand forms each and every word, my heart connects with my chest, my chest to my arm, arm to hand, hand to pen, pen to paper. If I really believed in myself, and my ability to make her happy, this should be easy, right?
Right?
I wish there was a manual that came with your life, something that explains when you should listen to that little inner voice inside you. Laying the pen down gently, my stomach twists and I take a deep breath. At night, the stars twinkle and shine light from history in the same way that love from your past can be seen. A faint glow of something far away; inaccessible but felt, impossible yet known, a framed memory lit up in gold light, hung in my mind’s innermost sanctum. The glow from the monitor makes everything look a dull light blue.
Earlier in the day, I was hanging out with a few wild artists. They are a couple of stars from the local fashion scene, never a boring moment while around crazy lesbians with style to everything they do. Jane Dough and her girlfriend won’t show me the matching tattoos they got, but her girlfriend showed me her jungle cat spots while Jane was in the can. When Jane came out she packed up her stuff and left angry while Jaguar girl chased after her.
Art supplies are scattered everywhere.
Dirty dishes pile up in a sink littered with coffee grinds and pipe ash. A broken bottle of Jack has retired on my black photography backdrop, I don’t remember what I was thinking when it got smashed. My track pants bottoms are too loose on me, and the draw string turtled back into its hole. I have to hold my pants up when walking or the ankles drag on the ground. Fucking artists, I feel pathetic.
The dimly lit studio has a small fridge tucked in a corner, clutter forces me to carefully tiptoe around a canvas drying on the floor to get to it. A tube of paint explodes under foot, I can barely make out that it’s blue, and has just created a giant fucking mess. I sigh. What could make this go away? I pour a little bit of a full glass of Jack on ice. My cellphone jingles. I walk back to my desk, pick up my phone, and noticed a thick blue paint trail across the floor of the entire studio. Fuck it, half a glass of Jack sent straight to the liver for some calm.
A normal person wouldn’t drink like this.
I got a text from Hanna, she said she’s stressed and wants to come over. For weeks now I’ve been blowing her off, she stayed with me for a ten day romance about a month back, even kissed me when I had morning breath. I felt a bit used when she left me to fuck some hipster that lived across the street from her, but how can I blame her? She’s just repeating what she’s grown accustomed to. Throw away friends, throw any relationships, throw away sex, throw away future. Can’t say I haven’t done the same. That other half glass of whiskey goes down smoothly as an ice cube wanders into my mouth only to get crushed. I text her back and let her know she can come by if she wants. She texts me back immediately to say she’s heading over.
I comb my hair and make myself presentable. A little more grey hair adds to the slight salt and pepper look, a few wrinkles line my face. Just a couple months ago I was getting it on with a solid 9, Hanna is pretty hot herself though. Maybe I feel this way because I feel like I’ve done this before, and I know I can’t stop.
Whiskey pilots its familiar course through my system, no icebergs tonight to be wary of. I smile and start to lighten up. A few clicks of a mouse and I’m relaxed by some ambient tunes, taking a moment to wash my dick in the sink. Back to the computer and I review some art tumblrs to keep track of what’s hot. Someone I’m following has posted a bunch of tattooed up suicide girls, looking more like aliens than women. High saturation photos are trying so hard to look edgy and sexy, most people probably like these. Their faces are all smiling. The flesh and colours of a group of tatted up girls pulling the panties off another girl. What whores, but could I blame them? Trading pussy for cash has never been easier, a generation of men self-defeating and jerking themselves into oblivion. I can’t even imagine the number of guys right now that are Alt-tabbed out of a video game, jerking to porn, returning to their digital escape.
I flip through a few more tumblrs. Art gets predictable when it’s popular, just like people. Tow the hivemind narrative and don’t question it. Be a cheerleader for the current trend. Sometimes I wish I could wipe my mind clear, forget about the Internet, and live in a small town where people didn’t check their phones at coffee. Where internet dating didn’t turn our courtship into sending dick shots to get women horny. Funny how times change, a man used to show up at a woman’s house with flowers and a smile, now that guy is a creeper. I send girls photos of my dick, and more often than not I get back sext messages with a spread open pussy and a question of when I’m available.
I’m the new gentleman.
29 Chump Taxi
The whiskey is giving me superpowers again. I look at my phone and a second later it’s ringing. She’s here. I buzz her up and next thing I know she’s walking in and taking her coat off, she’s always dressed so smart. Yellow rubber boots and a cute ponytail. White button up shirt and a pair of blue jeans.
“Hey,” she says to me, her smile beaming. She rests on my couch and spreads out, looking exhausted. She sighs and looks cold. I bring her a blanket and tuck her in, I soothe her with some small talk of my day and put on some ambient music. Two glasses of whiskey are promptly poured and I bring her one. A carefree caramel glass of let’s fuck. I sit at my desk near the couch and open up some of my latest photography. “Oh that’s nice!” she parrots occasionally. I’m looking through a folder for some more impressive shots and I feel her arms wrap around my upper body from behind. She’s so warm and smells so pretty. I take her hand and walk her from behind my desk chair, in front of it, and sit her on my lap. “Wait a second,” she gets up and grabs her coat, and digs through a pocket.
“Here,” she walks over sits back on my lap and lights a small joint, “I brought this for you.”
I smile. She’s not the type of girl you can hold on to, but not the type you don’t want around.
We smoke.
She sits up and leans over my desk, her hands on my keyboard and mouse looking for a song to put on. Her gorgeous round, beautiful ass is right in my face. Her blue jeans fit her perfectly. Some more upbeat tunes kick in after a double click, and she sits back down on my stiff lap. I’m so turned on and there is no way she can’t feel that. She starts talking about her fears, all her fretting would wear on me but it’s nothing
I haven’t heard before. I kiss the back of her neck and lightly stroke her thigh. I hug her and hold her close, it doesn’t feel forced but it doesn’t feel right. We aren’t even dating, just socializing our genitals.
She grinds herself a little on my lap, her playful grin shows me what she wants me to take. I put on Netflix and put on the stupidest movie I could find. Air Bud. We stand up from the chair and then lay on the couch, she’s such a fun little spoon. We cuddle under a blanket and she holds my arm across her chest. Sweaty palms like in grade 9, perky B cups and a permanent boner pressed into her lower back. Both of our bodies are getting used to the climate and soon my hand is in her shirt. Soft breasts and a nipple that would cut diamond, she pushes her ass into me and my hand explores south to play with her clit.
In almost no time her pants are off and I’m inside her. She is a little sore she says, I bet she’s been fucking a lot, and I’m wearing no condom. Whatever. She’s so good with kegel control, her tight opening squeezing down on the middle of my cock and it pulses in time as I cum. I just drained myself into her. Heavily breathing, we embrace, my penis still inside her. Sometimes we just like to fuck and not kiss during sex. Air Bud is playing to only my hydro bill’s benefit.
The dog is carrying a football down a field with the ball in its mouth, and suddenly out of nowhere, a huge football player tackles the dog hard. I laugh and my penis comes out of her, cum squirts out of her pussy and I feel it running down my thigh. I really hope that’s just mine and not some mixture of mine and someone else’s. We sit up and have a couple sips of whiskey, I lean over to put my drink down and I spill some on the sofa and her shirt.
“What the fuck Dylen!” I’ve never seen her mad, but she’s pissed for sure. “Fuck!” she looks away and is silent. Her half nude body looks beautiful in the light cast by retriever with football.