Everything and Two

 'All of the world is about three drinks behind'  Humphrey Bogart- 1950

Bogey made that rather cryptic statement quite a while ago, and I must confess that until this weekend I didn't exactly under the full nature of what he meant by it. However, after this weekend I now know almost exactly what he was talking about, and I am not sure I am quite ready to be Humphrey Bogart. I did get to dress a little bit like him in the ceremony that I was happy to participate in on Saturday, but the suit does not make the man, no matter what those asshats selling suits tell you to the contrary.

It was during this alcohol fueled binge that I realize that I don't feel a thing for you here anymore. That is both a relief, and a tragedy. A relief because, as a wise man once told me, 'the opposite of love isn't hate, it is indifference.' Here I am looking for the space between the arms of another, finally able to feel indifferent towards you. A tragedy because moonlight finds me here alone in this nearly deserted bar, afraid to step out into the unknown. A relief because if I manage to scrape away the barnacles of sadness which you have coated the hull of my ship of soul with, then I will be through. Through expecting the phone, when it does ring, to be you.  A tragedy because when I think of something between everything and two, you were the 'two.'

However, in the long run you couldn't really be the 'two' because I didn't allow you to be. Moonlight brings me back to stay in the half lit, smoke filled bar, wondering exactly why I didn't. If you were here, and in many ways I both thank christ you're not, and wish like fuck you were, I don't know that I would be able to tell you the answer to that question. The question that you would surely ask, the one that I, in my social awkwardness am unable to provide you an answer that you will be able to comprehend. Truth of the matter is, I have no answer that I, in my foolishness, to provide.  I am not that smart, not clever enough to give, what to you is an answer to the simplest of questions, but to me is like lighting a benzine ring on fire and jumping through it.

Answers that come as easy as breathing to you, I find impossible to provide. Either due to being raised by a wolf (though I expect that is just an easy excuse), or a towering amount of cowardice (which I suspect is closer to the truth).  Though those three drinks that I was ahead of the world for those few somewhat glorious hours, gave me an just a bit of a glimpse of the answer that I need to have. I was three drinks of ahead of the whole world, and it allowed me to think of a lot of things that  I wouldn't normally ponder. It made me wonder about things that weren't there, and why they weren't there, and where they were, and where they should be. That is a very complicated sentence, and it was a very complicated thought to parcel out to myself.

The chemicals coursing through my system both sped me up, and slowed me down enough to make a lot of sense of my current situation, and sadly the conclusion I came to was that my current situation does not make a lot of sense. I am steadily becoming a person I don't want to be, and I am not exactly certain I can arrest that slide. I have to try, at least I think I have to because if I don't think I just become a rampaging failure. And that leads us back to the not feeling a thing for you here anymore. To avoid becoming a failure I have to make myself 'unfeel' all the things that you made me feel all this time. That is exactly as hard as it sounds, and to these aged ears it sounds pretty fucking hard. How does one stop feeling something?

Feelings are, sadly, not like a tap that you can just shut off when your glass is full, or your bath as been drawn. Feelings just happen they are no respecter of age, gender, race, or class, and they sure as fuck can have really lousy timing. But, as a being on two with feet with a heart that, while being slightly enlarged, is also broken, we have to move on with the remainder of the time allotted to us by the some higher being that we are not even sure exists. Mostly that time will be spent trying to sort out a lot of problems that haven't even happened yet. Part of that time will be spent rehashing disasters that have already occurred, and the rest of that time, the glorious bit, will be spent being exactly three drinks ahead of the rest of the world.