“The only thing you like better than scotch is sympathy.”
“And?”
“And? And you are the most milquetoast creampuff of a sickly obsequious loser I’ve ever come across.”
“The world’s a mess. What can you do?”
“Nothing. That’s just it.”
“There’s no nuance left in my hot water. Just scalding and
icy. That’s all the choices I’ve got.”
“And?”
“And I’m sicker and tireder than most. And I don’t got the
wheels to keep lugging around this stuff.”
“Take five. Or fifteen. Whatever you need.”
“I could use a haircut.”
“Snitch.”
“Empty rooms to explain away your days in. Lots of pop with
no fizz. A scandal never made.”
“Sure. Sure it is.”
“Loot. That’s all we’ve got to do now.”
“That’s it. You’ve got it.”
“Read the labels on food packages. The ingredients are the
best poetry we’ve got: polysaccharides, torula yeast, thiamin mononitrate,
partially hydrogenated soybean oil, maltodextrin, monosodium glutamate, yellow
6-lake dye, extractives of annatto, xanthan gum, sodium hexametaphosphate. It
is the pure poetry of the pure products of America.”
“I am narrower in my shortcomings than in my low-brow likes.
It’s getting to the point of pierce or be sunk around here. It is all junk food
for thought.”
“More disarray in the boiler room of my skull than ever
before. Walkers for the tanked. Crutches for the tipsy. We’re all unmatchable.”
“Grown down like this, and then more stumbling, and then we
order takeout from the fishmongers. Just bushels of likes less likely to wimple
our way out of trouble.”
“Rippled? Or am I staunch in my favors?”
“Go against it. The coolest thing about aging is the
process.”
“But then, well, get this: I’m at the gas station filling up
with my lady, and you know what I says to her? I says to her, ‘Could you read
that mileage to me, beautiful?’ Then she comes on out of the Chrysler and she
kisses me flat on the lips. I’m thinking, ‘Wow. I just haven’t felt this good
since ’87.’”
“When you get it. Or when you need it?”
“The present shocks just as much as the future once did.
Nothing is happening, here, now. Nothing. Therefore, everything.”
“That doesn’t completely not make sense to the
concupiscent-lorn shards of who currently breaks at being me. I am determined
to be a wayfarer of waffling dismay.”
“That’d do a shill like you. By the way, what day is it?
What’s the year? Who’s holding public office around here? Huh?”
“I don’t make a practice out of giving advice to strangers,
but you really could use some counsel. And a shower or three.”
“Lose the sour-guy act. I’m not giving away party favors for
the out crowd.”
“We sometimes pay for the mistakes of others, right? Back
shot by a no-good floozy. And all’s for not, and not’s for us all. So, goof
off. Go ahead. It’s probably a more meaningful way to drudge your way through
this dreck. The pomp’s gone from the circumstance. The glove’s got no hand.
Cramped is the way. You know what? Sometimes I wish that someone were spying one; I think that it'd make me feel less lonely, somehow.”
“Perpetuating insolence with a twist of restraint. Don’t
call a nurse. I would like to be deceived about my blood pressure. And my
prospects for making it through another week of wakeup-work-eat-sleep logic.
Besides, all the black cats I knows aren’t just crossing my path anymore;
they’re hissing and attacking me.”
“You’ve got a
head like a boulder.”
“I’ve always been a Robert-Mitchum man, myself. I laze about
and ogle women applying makeup in the rearview at stoplights. I am corrupt with
innocence. These eyes whose scars are along…these eyes. Damn it. I’m so damn
lost.”
“And now we’d like to return you to our regularly scheduled
program.”
“By jingo, I’d never be that lucky.”
“But the Desiderata still comes in handy sometimes.”
“My noise. Your haste. It’s the mathematics of hooligans and
scofflaws, the jury-rigging of latent psychotics with a taste for corporate
takeovers and condo flipping. I want my beer colder than my women. Nothing ever
works, in or out. Nothing. I might as well hang on for a few more weekends. I
hear the beer bars will all be gone soon. People want crafted artisan cocktails
and pork-belly preserves with duck-liver aioli instead of beer nuts.”
“Let’s go yuppie hunting. One last time. We’ll go around
ripping pink mustaches off of cars and egging the elite as they app-barhop on their
smart phones.”
“It’s no use. We are just us. And them? They’re pretty much
the rest of everything. Can’t stem the tide of a tsunami. Can’t block a mass
stampede. We don’t have to cower. But really, what’s left to do?”
“Appease with an ostensive surrender. Placate with professed
indifference. And our will? Just to be left alone to our own devices. That’s
all. That’s it. Duffers are getting younger. We’re young duffers now. That’s
all that’ll be left after their goddamn bubble bursts. Then we’ll look back and
say, ‘What the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck? This place is in ruins, and for
what? A few measly, greasy bucks?’ Fuck. It’s so sad. We’ll be left here for
dead, attempting to tidy things up after this place’s been gutted. Desolation
might suit us. Who knows?”
“I greet you at the end of an insignificant career, which
yet must have had a long foreground in corrupt avarice and greed, for such a
start.”
“Rub your eyes a bit. Look around. There is everything and
everywhere. See?”
“Sure. Keep telling me that. Maybe the night's got no more magic left in it. But I’ve still got a few more
mornings left in me, I do believe, to make nothing out of.”
“That’s the stuff.”
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