I cannot recall the best advice I got from my father but the best advice I got from a man that’s not my father is to make friends with loneliness
If you and loneliness are enemies you’ll be lonely
but once you and loneliness are friends you’ll be solitary
The difference between loneliness and solitude is the difference between the naive kid who thinks one’s happiness depends upon others and the wise sage who knows that one’s happiness depends only on one’s self and one’s self alone.
He had a big belly but he wasn't a fat man he wished he was a fat man
his daughter was four and she told him that he looked like a turtle born on the wrong side of its shell
and mother laughed. He didn't.
Surely he would have if the swelling wasn't a terminal disease a type of cancer of the stomach and guts whose name he struggled very hard to forget but the regular visits to the doctor kept reminding him
his wife kept laughing she said that laughing is the key the best healing Laughter and love lots and lots of love Love
but the other night when he tucked the little girl in bed and kissed her forehead and said "I love you." she poked her tongue at him and said "I don't! You ugly and weird. I love mommy and puppy Bran. Good night." And she put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes.
It was I who went to the shelter and brought puppy Bran home, he though as he closed the door, tears blurring his vision He didn't go into the bedroom where his wife was probably asleep
he went into the bathroom vomited washed his face rinsed his mouth went into the kitchen and grabbed the leash went outside and took puppy Bran for a walk
the moon lighted their path and the shadow of his big, swollen belly covered all of puppy Bran
the dreams of drunks are the strangest and often most beautiful
It’s what he came to think this morning after he woke up with the empty glass under the blanket
Surely it was that glass and the liquor in his guts that made him dream of a frozen woman, clear as glass
She smiled at him with diamond teeth and stooped like only a professional stripper could next to his limp body
She rolled him onto his belly and his limpid, numb eyes watched her grow an icicle from between her legs but they closed by the time she carved a hole into his liver and began to fuck him until the ice melted
That was a nice dream, he concluded
And tonight he’d go to sleep with two glasses and a bottle under the blanket
the ashtray was looking more and more like a sick hedgehog
and her yellowed fingers added one more quill to it
she sat back in her chair
work wasn't in the best of stages lately and her office looked like a junkie's trailer. You could scrape the nicotine off the walls. In fact, she would get nicotine under her nails if she just scratched her skin anywhere
But otherwise she was a beauty and that was a problem. Beautiful women have the worst luck in marriages
The husband left and the two girls went with him They were sick and tired of her habit to consume more cigarette smoke than oxygen
And drinking was also a problem though not nearly as big
The worst drinking has ever done to her was to make her lose the driving license which she never bothered to take back
The real problem was, as always, a lack of money. If the damn phone didn't ring soon she would have to kill someone for a pack of cigarettes
Assuming she could still kill someone with her body rotting from the inside. She was fine with breast cancer but now lung cancer joined too and it was by far nastier
Still that was all right It doesn't take a healthy body to pull a trigger
And speaking of triggers She opened a drawer in her desk took out the gun studied it
Not loaded
She browsed through the drawer
Only one bullet left. One single bullet. These things cost money too
Damn it
But it's like they said back in the mercenary camp The last bullet is always preserved to be used on the self
She loaded the bullet into the gun
A life lived well is one lived without regrets and without ever asking for mercy or feeling sorry for yourself
At 39 she had that. There was nothing else to be taken away from it
She put the gun to her temple
Smiled
"Except for a final smoke."
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He went nine years without doing
it. Five of those
were spent in prison so it
was just normal
but the other four he spent
desperately trying and failing
He did look fine before
he got into hardcore drugs
and crime
Well, there was this
cute drug dealer
down the block
from whom he kept buying
only to get to see
her and try to strike up a
conversation
He didn't care that
she was pregnant
He called up almost daily to
meet up and
buy but he wasn't too
good at
conversation. Had no game,
as others would put it
And on the other side
she wasn't so
good at putting the products
together
She constantly laced the weed with
some other shit
and one such shit was so
bad that
when he smoked it
he got all horny and creative
and desperate
He grabbed a black
permanent marker and
drew a cunt across his
left forearm
It wasn't good enough so he
cut it open with
a razor and began to
lick at it and finger it
around the bone
and eventually fuck it until
he came
He came about four, five
times until
he passed out