Author's Commentary
Written the following afternoon
The cigarette last night fucked me over. I sucked viciously through that smoke. I lied on my back, and the moon was shaking. The girl that gave me the light was nearby with a friend. Horseshit on my shiny black marching shoes.
I’m in a café now, and as I was saying:
A pot is a lot of tea. there’s no bathroom in the lobby, and I got sick of walking to my dorm to take a piss. There is a place to piss in the lobby, actually, but the residents can’t access it. Ridiculous. the security guards can. It’s in our fucking building. Speaking of my fucking bullshit building, guess the name! Southernwood. Southern, Wood. Closest thing I get to a hard on in this shit pile in the corner of the bull’s pen. Anyway, a security guard came in to piss and buy a drink. She asked if I wanted one, and while I appreciated the offer, I really did, I already mentioned that I wasn’t going to buy a fucking soda. “They jacked up the price” I told her. 1.65 for a soda. Coca Cola: 2,000,000; Us: zip. Before I got up from that chair next to the greedy hum of corporate soda, I told another girl about the change in the 1.50 usual: I was the bearer of bad fifteen-cent news. I walked around outside, looking for an open bathroom, gave up, and returned for the second or third time to my own room. Then I went back out. I was going to write in the recreation room, but there were people in there at 1 AM or whatever it was. I sat outside. the table next to me had people smoking weed from a hookah. I left. Then I smoked a cigarette, lit by some pretty girl.
A few weeks earlier: “Hey, can I talk to you about Jesus Christ?” “I’m on my way to a study session.” Hah!
It was my second cigarette if the day. The first was taken outside the recreation center, around eight. Know what that was? Time for bible study! I saw them all in that room. What is this arrogance, this ignorance they have? They have it down on all parts of the racial spectrum, yellow black and white. They think they are exempt from social protocol, from being polite. Perhaps I don’t want to talk about your magic sky man! Maybe I don’t want to be preached at! at 4 in the morning, 1 in the afternoon, 7 in the evening, and definitely not at 8 at night on a fucking Tuesday. So I smoked a cig outside, wearing my collar and chain leash, looking menacing and dislikable. Know what held the door open to that bible study? What kept the door ajar for anyone curious? a trashcan. Hah! Rubbish holds open the door to Christianity! I dropped my butt, burned right to the filter, in that religious door jam. Hah!
Enough of them.
Cigarettes made me feel miserable and that’s why I smoke them. Smoked them. I quit last night. For a while. I was going to give the rest of my pack, a good ten or fifteen smokes, to the girls, but they left. I threw my lighter – yes, I had a lighter. I asked for a light because they were pretty – I threw it across some cement for someone else to find. I think I had found the lighter on the ground. Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust.
the café is nice. Let me tell you about this one girl: I see her all the time. She’s asian, my favorite flavor, and I like her sense of style. She’s pretty, too, with or without the glasses. A midget, a dwarf. I admit – I’m infatuated with someone maybe half my height. I don’t know, Maybe I’ll talk to her eventually. Rabbit shit.
My roommates: one’s 25. He drinks a lot. One’s Mexican. He’s whiney, effeminate – I don’t think he’s out, though. I hate talking to him. Number three is black. We’ve gone over this: his friends steal things. He’s hardly ever in the dorm. that’s all there is to know.
I threw a cigarette on the ground when I realized the girls were gone. I crushed it with my foot. It was nice to have something to quit. To quite. and so easily. No strings attached. No disappointed parents, no peers, no hassle. I just quit and no one had to know – most people didn’t know I started in the first place. I did what I did symbolically: I threw a cigarette on the ground and crushed that tobacco stick with my shoe. Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust.
That asian girl walked out of the café, and left her stuff. I love her, in a way. Because I can’t have her. Because I’m a coward and a creep. Because I look threatening and I know it. But you know… maybe I’d give it up. if I knew I could have her, and it would be good. If I knew there was a good beginning. I adore her. I want to have her. Partake in mutual procession. But I’m a creep. I’m a coward. I’m too patient. Nice guys finish last.
I threw the pack in the dumpster. With the object gone, I lose temptation. They were illin’ me, killin’ me, but not fulfillin’ me. They’re gone now. I quit because I can. I wish I could quit more. Ashes to and Dust to. I wish I could be home again. I hate, hate, it here. I wish I could quit adoring her. Maybe I’ll talk to her. And she’ll just walk away. Hah. Until this infatuation is ashes, (she’s leaving the café now, I say goodbye in my head) and my building named after a boner is dust, I’m stuck in this bullshit. I’m shoveling my way around, and if the smell doesn’t get to me,
the tobacco, the roommates, the Christians, the fifteen-cent price hike, the infatuation, maybe I’ll dig upward enough to see some day light. It’s dark now, but I know this:
no matter how far buried in this shit you are, no matter how far you have to go, if you can just see the light – not of christ, no! I’ve reached the bottom, the ground, and I know god isn’t here to care. I’m here to care. About me, and anyone else this low that will keep me company. I dig upwards through this bullshit, knowing two things:
I have nowhere else to go.
No matter how far down you are, or how far there is to go, once you can see the light of day, once you know it’s not bullshit forever, once you know it’ll all be Ashes and Dust, you can smile; hah!; there’s no stopping you, honey, no stopping you.
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