Wicked Game

Originally Posted Monday, June 23, 2014

And then suddenly you realize that you have been killing yourself for a number of years, and you know you've been trying even harder to leave something behind before you do.  And just as suddenly. . . you are sad.  At first you think to save yourself, to live right again and to reverse the damage you have already done, but there is no going back, no making any of it right, and you are going to be stuck with who you've become. 

It is an awful moment. 

I made the usual Sunday dinner for mother last night, and we talked of this and that but something was dreadfully on my mind, so I told her about it.  I told her of my feelings and the troubles that lay there.  You cannot always have what you want.  Things get more complicated than you can fix or bear. 

"I'll pray for you," she said. 

I asked her if she was going to pray for what I wanted or for my redemption. 

It was a beautiful meal of grilled pork loin that was cooked perfectly and Brussels sprouts whose texture was just right.  Jasmine rice and an avocado and tomato salad.  My mother drank most of the bottle of wine.  The light of the late afternoon was soft and then the setting of the sun.  After she'd gone, in the purple dusk, I thought about my life right now, the things I wish, the things that are. 

This death I have chosen has had its comforts.  Its had its thrills.  But I am awful now, cut up by whiskey and pills, fat and limping, and I am no longer proud.  I thought to post a picture tonight, me, what I've become, but I pulled the thing.  It is simply too gruesome.  I had thought for some time to give up the studio, the project, the rest.  I still have a power in me, but it is broken now and easily recognized as a remnant of something that once has been.  There is no use in trying to turn back, to think of walking in the sunshine.  I will keep the studio.  There are still people who need me.  We, the walking wounded, need some light for the night. 

I rip the label off another bottle of scotch.  I'll take a pill and sleep. 

Please understand me, everything's alright, 
I just must of notta gotta lotta sleep last night.

*     *     *     

Morning now, the sun blinding my sleepy eyes.  I drank the whiskey, took the pills.   It is all here now.  Dumb.  Numb.  Listless.  I think of Michael Caine in "The Quiet American," Peter O'Toole in "Venus."  I'll buy new things to hide my dissolution.  I'll assume a manner.  "He was a quiet, mannered man," they will say.  

They.  

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