they keep mumbling to each other terms i don’t understand. acronyms that give me a headache when i press hard to decipher. AFC. IOI. Kino. Pecking. if they weren’t my friends, if i didn’t care that that kind of bullshit works, if they didn’t buy me the drink—some trick they use to get the skirts jealous—i would tell them shut the fuck up.
fuck it.
“shut the fuck up. you guys are making this really awkward,” i motion for the waitress to come by to make me feel well.
“god, what’s your problem, jerry? it works, bitches are dumb as fuck. why haven’t you read those PUA PDFs i’ve sent you?”
“because i love them so by design i can’t fuck them.”
“you can’t love them,” gabe laughs to hide the underlying emo shit he’s been extruding the past couple of nights. he’s the only one with a girlfriend right now. even if it’s one that insisted on a break this summer.
kara sits down with us in the booth instead of bothering to take our drink order. she nuzzles next to me. she likes my shirt, she told me. i don’t trust her, how fucked up is that? money’s at stake and those smug debt collectors have warned me about generosity in the past. her shoulder tenses up as i grab her close and whisper.
do you know what love is? i know what others tell me love is. charles bukowski told me. he thinks love is the morning mist before the sunrise, then it burns away. i don’t know, i’ve only had the unhealthiest kind of love all my life. you wouldn’t believe me if i told you.
she looks at me with the saddest eyes, grey like baby hounds, in the world and says, “who’s charles buckey?”
only a drunk. only a fucking, piece of shit, drunk who’s too impatient to appreciate tolstoy. only a fucking, piece of shit, no good, scoundrel mess of a drunk that got famous because people too dumb to know the difference between what’s good and what’s not got fooled into thinking something was there. only a fucking drunk. i know who bukowski is, i’ve read all his books, i’ve seen where he sat to drink his liquor, i’ve sat where he sat to drink liquor, i’ve lived his edgy ways, i lived in the streets of Los Angeles, i communed with the drifters, the collectors, the losers, and i saw nothing. he’s a liar. but all drunks are.
she looks ready to take my drink order. make me roll the dice to go all the way closer to being like my dead heroes. maker’s and coke. double. i bet she’s not even from los angeles.
“why are you so angry?” tim’s been asking me the same question since i first asked to borrow his fucking gluestick in grade school. he was the only other kid to say the word fuck in grade school, it makes our friendship harmonize.
“why’s your face so full of shit all the time? i don’t want to get in on your pick up shit. it’s depressing to know how well it works,” mostly on the average chicks.
he gets up and wanders over back to the bar to talk to the gaggle cackling, maybe over something actually funny. his phone, barely out of his pocket, lights up. it’s suppose to mean one of us has to text him in a few minutes. good luck, ladies, he doesn’t even need dutch courage.
“he’s been really into it lately,” gabe said as he chugs the rest of his tecate—the new hipster shit. “but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.”
what does that even mean? i give him a pass tonight for not agreeing to every drunk slur i emit. after all, it’s tough having dropped five years into a relationship and have it end with her cheating on you, taking her back, then her asking to go on a break. it’s tough having emotions. it’s tough to be the one, so young, that care too much. it’s tough having someone occupy a bunker in your mind and knowing there are not enough zerglings to be spawned this side of space that can take it down. it’s tough being a little bitch.
“what does that even mean?”
he laughs nervously, “i just mean, you know, that sometimes, you realize you need to focus more on you, less on the relationship, you know? i don’t know. i’m just trying to recalibrate okay. i’m glad he’s doing this, we’re getting pretty good at opening. i can finally do this now that i’m free.”
“are you nelly furtado now? have you broke up with her yet?”
“no, i thought we were going to meet tomorrow to get it done but turns out it’s next week. what should i say to her?”
kara comes back with my drink, lingers her hands, seconds too long for the sake of politeness or soliciting for tips, over my shoulder as she walks away. too bad i’m not a poser with mountain man beard and lumberjack flannel to her confessed liking, too bad for her. i chug the rocks glass.
“you listen to me, you listen well, remember every word i say. you tell her that she fucked up. she fucked up and she damn well knows. she fucked up the second she got bored and cheated on you. she fucked up even though it wasn’t that big of a deal to her but it hurt you really bad. she fucked up when she realized how much more you like her than she likes you and didn’t want to think or deal with that possibility or consequence. she fucked up for wanting to end a five year relationship where all you’ve done has been to support her, love her, and care for her under those pretenses.
she fucked up for asking you to take her back because it was just one of those overdramatic romantic comedy bullshit to manipulate you some more. she fucked up for being a selfish cunt. she fucked up. you tell her all that and you don’t give her another second to respond because she deserves not a second more of your life after you’ve said your piece. stop giving a fuck. because she stopped a long time ago.”
“gabriella” pulls out his phone to text tim by the bar on the hunt and then blinks at me, “you don’t sugar coat your truths, huh? no wonder you don’t have a girlfriend.”
i want to say drunks are liars. by fault, by design. but no one gives a fuck.
