I wake up early enough to leave a message saying I’m sick, then close my eyes and tell myself that sometimes it takes a moment of giving up to remember how not to give up.
I get a text from Chuck later, relaying a message from the boss that I better be goddamned sick,and I panic, because it’s obvious I’m not.
So I take a cold shower and sit naked and dripping in the back room that isn’t insulated with the window open to let in the winter’s cold, chain smoke and shiver in the cracked leather chair, knowing that catching a cold like this is just an old wives tale while praying that my immune system is so repressed that my body will collapse in on itself and bless me with some fucking sniffles.
But in the morning, I feel fine. Well, shitty, but just normal shitty, except mentally sicker than I was the day before, and I stop at the gas station and grab a handful of those mini pepper packets without buying anything and spend the day snorting them so I sneeze and go around parading my manufactured runny nose, telling everyone See? and to keep their distance because this cold’s a real doozy.
***
I’m alone and it’s dark in the shop and when my eyelids involuntarily droop I get a sudden image of a moment in my life, see a young, naïve version of myself who has no idea how badly he fucked me over today.
***
I’m hungover as shit because I’m not good at drinking anymore but I’ve never been good at being sober and it’s hours until noon and I don’t think I’m going to make it ‘til lunch let alone the end of the day, so I’m flipping through a mental rolodex for a plausible enough excuse to get the fuck out of work and back in bed while trying not to be too much of a dick to anyone, but I’ve already left early twice this week for bullshit reasons and I just told the college kid to fuck off when all he wanted was to know if I liked the fucking album he had on and he slunk away all sad but I don’t feel bad even though I know I will later because I do, actually, like the album, and for a second I think about asking him his opinion of the Silver Jews or Pavement or some other shit he’s just found out about that’s blowing his mind by way of an apology, but instead I schedule that thought for another time because I feel like I’m going to pass out or puke standing over the moving press and I know I’m fucked, completely fucked, since the best excuse I’ve come up with so far is the goddamned truth.
***
I’m having a cig on the loading dock and watching the rainstorm, big fat drops racing to shatter on the ground, pelting the steel sheet roof hard enough to rattle in through my headphones. No thunder, no lightning, no wind, just rain falling faster than the sewer drain below the dock can handle, a rippling pond growing.
Big Jay appears next to me, cigarette between his teeth.
“Ooof,” he says. “Really coming down, huh?”
I stick my hand into the downpour and drop my cig into the pond, watch it bounce in the chaos, and don’t say anything to Big Jay, just stand there next to him until he does the same, plops his white filter into the chaos with my brown one to be tossed around like ships in tattered seas clinging to final threads of thin hope.
“I love watching the rain,” I say and kinda shake my head in wonderment, and hope that Big Jay walks away and doesn’t ask me why, why do I love the rain so much, because I don’t know if I even like watching the rain, really, or if it’s that I’ll take any opportunity that feels slightly less than an excuse and more like a reason to stare off into nothing.
***
The press is running and I’m considering a slow suicide where I run up a ton of debt, smoke two packs a day and drink myself to sleep every night after housing a fast food feast, all while lying to everyone but myself.
I’ll say things like:
“I have a plan.”
“Things are going to work out.”
“I only smoke when I drink.”
“I had a salad for lunch.”
“I’m headed for the gym.”
“Of course I can afford it.”
But what I’d really be thinking, is “suckers.”
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