| Welfare Hotel |
I.
So this is how it is most nights: I'm sitting alone, now, as I write this. I'm sitting alone in a fucking welfare hotel getting drunk. Shall I tell you about the five beers that preceeded the six-pack? Or should I just launch into telling you about the six-pack of Budweiser I have in front of me? It's like this: I don't find things all that amusing. It seems as if the most fun I can have involves shutting the door, turning on the music, and blinding all my feelings, all my inhibitions, all my fears, all my insecurities, with the dull, comforting buzz of alcohol. It's not like anyone cares, anyway. I mean, I may die of cirrhosis of the liver at age 30. Big fucking deal. It's not as if anyone will notice. It's like a joke. It is a joke. But it tastes good going down. Real good. It tastes like Milwaukee's Best. Mickey's Malt Liquor. Shaeffer. Burgermeister. Lucky Lager. Old English 800. King Cobra. Colt 45. Meister Brau. Carling's Black Label. Pabst Blue Ribbon. Schlitz, and Blatz combined. |
II.
Mexicans with needles. Needles in jars full of alcohol to kill the virus that's on the needles. Mexicans in the shower I share with them, bathroom mirror removed from wall, lines of dirty brown Mexican heroin being inhaled by the Mexicans. Burning Burning and that feeling in the back of their throats as if something, some flap of skin is being singed there. And then both of them in the shower, trying to have sex but unable to do so because of the nod. The young one, the boy but older than a boy, supposed to have sex with the older Mexican in return for the drug that's cut with the shit that singes the flap of skin in the back of his throat. It's not as if it can't be love, you know. It's true love. True love, and I think it's beautiful. So beautiful I immediately seek to disinfect the shower, disinfect the bathroom, disinfect the Mexicans, disinfect the flap of skin on the back of my throat. Whenever you feel the presence of love, break out the disinfectant. |
III.
The woman came at me with a knife. The woman's my wife. The woman's my bag. The woman is my bag of dirty laundry. Dirty laundry with a knife. I've been warned. I know about the people here, the kind of people in this place. This is a place for people who aren't at any other place. Cockroaches. People. Cockroaches. People. All differentiation blurs. There is no differentiation. Here the cockroaches are women coming at me with knives, women resembling bags of dirty laundry. She was drunk. Drunk at the time/Drunk all the time. Me too. Just something to do, something to do to pass the time while you're waiting to die or while you're waiting for your laundry to be picked up from the cleaners. It's not like it (or anything else) can make a substantive difference: you're here; you're drunk/sober; she comes at you with a knife/she doesn't come at you with a knife. I think my laundry's ready. |
IV.
I'm so sick of waking up. Waking up each morning on the floor. The removal of all furniture before I moved into this room was necessary in order to maximize the space. So I wake up on the floor each morning on the blanket that serves as my bed, and I say, "Hello, isn't it another lovely day" to the cigarette burns that make up most of the mottled orange carpeting that fills this space. Each morning means another adventure in Hangoverland. Each morning means another struggle to conjure up a reason good enough to impel me to go to work so that I can afford the splendor in which I'm living. A soul-killing job. A room in hell, bathroom down the hall, shared kitchen to the right, dirty dishes and cigarettes and cockroaches in the sink. I think about how much I'm looking forward to dying, to no longer struggling with the fact that the struggle and the pain and the feelings of utter hopelessness will ultimately mean nothing. They'll mean just as much as the cigarette burns on the carpeting. And what you're reading now was done only as a cheap entertainment: a way to pass the time, a form of counting sheep, until the big one hits. Until the Big One hits. |