Like waking up next to anyone after a night like that,

it was rightfully as cold and as hard as any reception I would have expected, and as cold and as hard as any reception I would have deserved. The only good thing in a morning like this is that I have nothing to stay down for, not here, not like this. It's not a matter of having reason to get up, but it's not for me to make myself a resident in an un-wanting bed. I move to push myself up, and the blood rushes to my head and all the colors drain and go inverted, forcing me to close my eyes and brace against a wall to regain my equilibrium.

I hold myself as stiff as a corpse and wait until God stops spinning the scenery in front of me, like a matador waving a muleta. Life is already streaming down my flanks, and I won’t give him the shrill and instant pleasure of driving the sword between my shoulders yet, now is my turn to make him look like a fool in front of the crowds with a beast that won’t bite and won’t bow. The plight we face: we can’t win in a fight, and we can’t be ourselves while being subservient, so we gaze in angst and infinite frustration, knowing that the blade will come down eventually, the deck was stacked against us before we knew we were even playing the game. Everything begins to still, and I make my way out of the room in the motionless tranquility that follows.

My only consolation is that I'm awake before any one else is, the only severance package that I got from months of whole-hearted labor in my "off-months" seems to be the deeply engrained reaction in my circadian rhythm that springs me to whatever degree of life I can muster so that I can dutifully drain my soul for whoever will pay me. I know that it sounds like the work of a whore, but what else can you call it when you sell your well being to do something you despise so that you can grab at something a bit wider when you go to pay a bill. I want to talk about the self-respect of walking around with enough money to hold myself up, but I don't have enough respect for what I do to talk about it when we get home at night without feeling a gag-reflex kick in, accompanied—in full—by the taste of stomach acid and whatever it took to keep the day down in the first place.

I know I have to be someplace, so leaving doesn't require any debate. I take a minute to freshen my breath to the point of managing to keep up a presentable facade and take a swig of the mouth-wash I find under the sink. I spit into the sink and catch a glimpse my hands holding me up above the porcelain, and I chuckle quietly as I remember a tête-à-tête I'd had with a friend shortly after I'd come back to enjoy some time away from school. I had been mulling over how removed I was from my former self and said, in the closest thing I could sustain to a resolute tone, "I've decided that no matter how far I fall, or how much debauchery I partake in, I have drawn a line in the sand, and I won't sell my soul." Without missing a beat, and before my mouth had even closed, my friend told me that I shouldn't draw my lines so close to the water, lest the waves wash them away.

I've had enough self-reflection to grant me a reprieve from the mirror, which I’d been avoiding since our encounter that night. I don't even question where things have gone wrong, the waves came, and the sand had resettled. It all seems to be like the lady mantis to me. Once I hit a peak, and my mind and body are caught in a heated battle where my mind appeals to my better nature to run while I still have something worth running for, and my body wants to soak in every minute, she strikes. When I hit that majestically pivotal stall point, she turns around and bites off my head, and now the debate is tragically one sided; the waves came, and the sand had resettled. With my id at the wheel all I can do is try to piece together the still frames that my mind’s shutter will snap of the plummeting night, into a Picasso of a cluster fucked memory that would mean everything if I were the artist and not the viewer.

My shirt is in a ball next to a bed in a dark room that smells like mistakes. There’s someone in there sleeping peacefully, but I don’t know who, and I’m not going to find out; I can’t remember, and I don’t want to remember, so I run my head and arms through their respective holes in the fabric and walk out on carpeting that cloaks my footsteps. They might not remember me, and if we all walk away, maybe we can pretend Berkeley was right.

I am controlled enough at this point to get in the car and get out. I wouldn’t normally be up for seeing someone on such a quick turn, but I’ll be getting an upper out of it, and if I can just stall for long enough for that to kick in, then this charade will have worked like so many before it.

I get to the café first, which gives me time to order and start taking the caffeine in large enough doses to finish a cup before my friend arrives. I dispose of the proof that I’d had a cup before she got there, and buy another round. I always buy when I go to coffee with someone else, because it’s a five dollar therapy session where I don’t have to tell myself I’m in therapy, and they know that—for the price of jumping around with me and my streaming mind for a few hours—they get a free drink. So we drink away the afternoon.

I try to keep the conversation on a level, I’d made promises about not passing out, and I knew how to not incriminate myself, but when I get talking it becomes harder and harder to temper my conversation jumps.

“You think that was bad? Well last night I…” This is where I see what I’m made of. I don’t even have time to notice I made a mistake; I just feel it, and take a route back to safety. “… I boxed until I could almost see bone.” The knuckles are proof, and it wasn’t a lie, but it sure as hell doesn’t bury me like the truth. I make some witty remark about how I’m destined to die young to disprove the belief that only the good do, and to save myself from age. She never knows what to say to those quips, and I’ve worked hard to make sure of the fact. The boy who cried wolf is an attack strategy if you use it correctly, and I am always on the offensive.

I notice that the conversations are eating each other. We don’t even spark anymore, we just argue over what was said in the past, when things were fresh and there was something to say, but now we are the burning embers in an ocean of ash. I know this feeling, but I don’t know how to outrun it. I know that it’s a stall and that a retort is coming when I can’t climb any longer. I’ve worked myself on the offensive so long I didn’t see the clouds forming behind me. I try to keep up the race, but it’s no use, and I’m locked in a trap.

The words anyone like me hates to hear: worry, concern, care. They all roll together into what I know is nothing short of an impromptu intervention. I know how to play it off, sink it in under the surface so they can’t see it running off before it gets past the layers they hoped to penetrate. I can pretend as well as I can be honest, and who’s to say which is better or more real.

It was a good run, the coffee cups are empty and we both have places to be. I promise that I’ll get better, and half mean it too. The mind has recovered, and the lady mantis is no where in sight; the tempest has subsided, and it’s time to redraw the superficial lines. So I think, and I draw, and I breathe deep. I drive slowly home, and shower until I’m red, and brush my teeth until I can’t feel the bristles anymore over the numbed surface of my mouth. I’ve made a full recovery and it’s time to leave my past and face my future. Without debauchery to keep my hands from going idle, I’m left flipping through the pages of whichever Hemmingway I left by my chair and hoping to hear about something better. Then a friend calls and tells me that his home is free that night. This time the mantis won’t get me; it never has in the past, and I won’t let it this time, I have lines in the sand that will stop me if things go to far, lines that I would wager my soul upon.