Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Nancy Reagan's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, November 10th, 2007
4:55 pm	My (Comment on this)
Friday, February 2nd, 2007
8:02 am	The thing is I am trapped in my own consciousness. Imprisoned. Confined. And I will probably never escape. I sit here in an empty apartment next to an overflowing ashtray in the middle of nowhere. I have been with so many girls. Some of them were beautiful. Some of them were ugly. Some of them were just flesh and bones and one of them was brilliant. And my greatest fear is that while they are getting married, having kids, finding jobs, rendezvousing with Fortune under a brand new American sky... I will still be here. With this cigarette and this fucking keyboard. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
7:20 am	The thing is I am trapped in my own consciousness. Imprisoned. Confined. And I will probably never escape. I sit here in an empty apartment next to an overflowing ashtray in the middle of nowhere. I have been with so many girls. Some of them were beautiful. Some of them were ugly. Some of them were just flesh and bones and one of them was brilliant. And my greatest fear is that while they are getting married, having kids, finding jobs, rendezvousing with Fortune under a brand new American sky... I will still be here. With this cigarette and this fucking keyboard. (end) (Comment on this)
Monday, January 29th, 2007
5:50 am	God, man, Poor Paul's turns into an even more surreal gathering every time I fucking go there. The first guy I see when I walk in is some dipshit from my Beat Generation class; guy turns out to be even older and even further behind in his undergrad work than I am. He and I start talking to two girls who we assume to be 21ish but turn out to be my age (and still in college). Every bar tender in the place is a hipster chick who's median age is 29, at the lowest. One of whom was wearing a Black Flag t-shirt. Place is like a mecca for fuck up's my age who are still dicking around in school. They were playing The Dead Milkmen on the jukebox and half the people in the bar were actually singing along. I dunno what the fuck happened to my generation, but something is definately up. I used to think that I was a huge exception to the rule of people who Grew Up, Got Married, and Got a Life. Now I'm realizing that more and more people my age are complete fuck ups. Between us and the 21-24 year old internet crowd who seem to be dropping out of school like flies and get completely lost in space while checking their cell phones every five seconds for a text message that is usually the equivalent of "what's up, dude?" or lower, the prospects for the future do NOT look good. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 22nd, 2007
7:46 pm	hate. I think if guys knew half the shit I know or realized how horrible the stuff their girlfriends say about them behind their back is, they would either kill themselves or turn gay. I think I would rather be castrated than be somebody's boyfriend at this point in my life. But I wouldn't mind fucking your girlfriend... In other asshole spew, I practically teach the Beat Generation class that I'm taking. Which is being taught by some boring, overtly homosexual 40-something Art History major who somehow crawled his way into teaching a lit class that he knows nothing about. At first he was interested when I would correct him in class; now he's pissed off that I try to usurp his power and won't even call on me. So if he asks us a question, I will have my hand in the air for ten minutes while the class is totally silent and he scans the room pretending he can't see my arm in the air. Finally some dipshit frat kid will raise his hand and be like "Umm...because of like, The Cold War?" or whatever bullshit answer and the teacher will be like "Interesting!". Hey asshole, I pay money to go to this shitty school. One thing we do have going for us is a decent English Dept, of which you do not have the educational background or talent to be part of. Who fucks up a class on The Beat Generation, for God's sake? It's a total bullshit elective. Any other teacher here would have made this fascinating; you're the only idiot with enough lack of teaching skills to actually fuck up a for-fun liberal arts elective. So if I raise my fucking hand in class because I have the right answer and you don't, fucking call on me. Total waste of time, total scam artist. I see right through the guy and I'm calling him out on it when we fill out evaluations at the end of the term. Fuckin' shit makes me sick; no wonder we're a distant, distant number two behind UF. Another guy who's starting to piss me off is Saurez, who I'm taking Fiction Workshop with. He doesn't piss me off because he's a bad teacher; he pisses me off because he's brilliant, could give good advice, but is too lazy and well-tenured to give a shit. This is a guy who's published something like 15 novels, and we are sitting around in a workshop for an hour working on a girl's story that starts like this: "It's a nice day," she thought. Quotation marks obviously don't go around thoughts. Most people know this. A published author who makes a shitload of money teaching creative writing workshops most certainly knows this. After an hour of bullshitting around with this girl's horrible story, I finally raise my hand to point out this particular to him. "You're right," he says, fondling a cigar in his hand. You know why he didn't point it out in the first place? Cuz he saw it and doesn't fuckin' care. The guy thinks the writing is so shitty that his reaction to bad grammer in an advanced workshop is basically "why bother?". And that sucks. God, I fuckin' hate this goddamn school sometimes. And this life. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:38 pm	sucksck: i might sucksck: i doubt it sucksck: maybe a tie sucksck: guys look like fags in costumes, anyways sucksck: i wanna hit on girls. Jack4287: well i guess you could just wear ur normal black sweater over a collered button down shirt and tell everyone u dressed up as an emo/depressed/sexaholic sucksck: I could never pull that off, though... sucksck: I'm too upbeat and buff. Jack4287: oh yeah ur right...they'll see right through ur rugged manliness sucksck: What was that you just said? I'm sorry I was kicking someone's ass and didn't catch it... (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 20th, 2007
11:20 pm	God, so last night this girl Liz and I went and got drunk at Bullwinkle's and then Poor Paul's. Poor Paul's almost exclusively employs people my age who are either fuck-up's like me who are still in college/grad school or are just townies bartending. And they are mostly hipster girls. So of course I walk in and they are blasting "Jesus Built My Hotrod" by Minstry. Welcome to the 90's timewarp. For some reason it really struck me as odd. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 18th, 2007
7:40 pm	Durham County Rape Unit It's an ugly world. Like a knife. Really eating away at you; acidic and toxic. Finally fading like the yellow sunset. Feeling each breath passing through my lungs. One final burst of air into the cigarette stained night. Head slumped into your hands. Where is everyone? The party is over, the party is over. It's an ugly world. Disappearing girlfriends and smiles, time fades happiness like water rolling over the rocks. Churning, smoothing, reshaping, destroying. Final heartbreat under neon T.V. light under golden sunbeam. Washing your hands at midnight you look in the mirror; finally find one faded out smile slipping away from you. It's an ugly world. All life and then death. It's an ugly world. Trying with every second to explain what's wrong in a word, a frown, a hand gesture. Trying to say something by saying nothing. And the words are all static, and the volume was turned down, and nothing gets through. You look at her and smile. It's an ugly world. Me here on the computer trying to type this bullshit and it not coming out right. You on the other end flipping your hair. And a million things going wrong and a million things to think about. A million reasons for an ugly world. But once, I saw it shine. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 1st, 2007
4:14 am	Hmmm so I hung out with that girl Liz today. Kinda odd hanging out with a girl you met in Tallahassee when you're in Tampa Bay. Went to Ybor City to watch some shitty stand up comic. The guy was Korean, but grew up in the deep south. So of course this was fodder for his entire lame stand up routine. I dunno. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 31st, 2006
12:29 am	two minutes. She floats past me like a fucking angel and then evaporates. Tight pants and beat up shoes. My hand on a paper bag. 21 and full of cum. Howling with the werewolves outside of a convienence store. This is the intersection of juvinile delinquency and adulthood. I'm so gone. I can feel it. They're all out there, hiding underneath their skin. Unlacerated like you knew it was clean. Nice homes, big television set. My cock gets hard on the way to the car crash. Nothing out here but jobless boredom. Gotta go back to school, grow up, learn to like the feel of dust settling on your shoulders. Pack in and give up. Hand on a cock like a hard gun; all white t-shirt and bicep. I stare at my face in some broken down mirror. Out the door, close the handle. Riding around in a big white car with the clan of psychopaths. October never felt so good. Cold skin blowing against my face like I'm pure again. Back home, snow melts on broken hearts. I can't hear any of it from the static on the dashboard. So long, fuckers... The fastest afternoon ever, girls spinning by like clouds and thunderstorms. She floats past me like a sound wave on an FM radio transmission to nowhere. Everybody around me is drunk and talking. The world is FULL OF POSSIBILITY. Confusion and libidinal urge transcending the reality of my real, total, final isolation. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. Don't go home. Stay up with me all night in this eternal park. Sip from a can of warm beer; rub your body against my hands, let me quake underneath the shadow of your heartbeat. Moaning for now gone youth and the screams of red lipstick on pink cock. I reach into you like a vampire, thirsty for anything that can make me alive. No one ever understood. Moon shines out in the black sky; looks down at us like some corrupt southern cop. "You kids old enough to drink?". The whole fucking world exploding. A new possibility; a thousand eyes staring at you in a mall. You walk past in dull desperation. Maybe everything is real again. The only way to beat the clock is to run, run, run. Faster than bullets in movies, I veer towards her like a speeding car, 120 miles an hour, let my cock collide with your sleeping pills, we'll never pull over to side of the road; morning might come like an atomic bomb and destroy our whole lives, fucking you in a parked car by the side of a soft drink factory; dismal shrill of airplanes in the sky. Nobody is looking. We are finally alive for one estatic moment. I hope you remember this. Time stops moving in a straight line and finally becomes ours for one millisecond of desperate grasp, feel it in your sweaty little white palm, hold onto it harder, faster, the whole night caving into me like some terrorist attack in my heart, finally beating dead and alive on the naked pavement. thump thump thump. She floats past me like a ghost now. This is just a memory. Graveyard of missing dreams gone unreported for years until I can find the right syntax. All blue jeans and lost sensation... (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 28th, 2006
10:23 am	For: Fowler's Class, Campus Scene Project. When we were done, she asked me to pour her another cup. I stretched out towards the bedside table and grabbed the bottle. I poured some more vodka into her cup and handed it to her. While I was giving it to her, the covers slid down towards the bottom of my stomach. I quickly snatched them back up towards my chest. “Can I smoke in here?” I said. “This is a dorm,” she said. “Well do you want to go outside and have a smoke with me?” “In a minute,” she said. I leaned back into the mattress and stared up at the ceiling. I folded my arms. The room had this anti-septic smell to it. Like a laundry room. Or a hospital. It started to drive me a little nuts. Suddenly, her cell phone rang. “Be quiet!” she said. She picked up her cell phone and snapped it open. “Hey,” she said. A vague smile crossed her lips. I could hear a muffled chattering coming in through the other end of the line. “I miss you, too, baby,” she said. She turned over on her side, with her back to me. They kept talking. A little bubble of perspiration had formed on her left shoulder blade. You could just barely make it out in the dark. It glistened on her brown skin like a wet diamond. I suddenly thought it would be funny to reach over and wipe it off her shoulder with the tip of my finger. Right there in the middle of the conversation. But I didn’t. “And so my grandma is meeting me at the airport,” she said. “Uh-huh. Well I can’t wait to get back to South Carolina, so you know…” She had that deep southern accent. It cut into the words. Like nails on a chalk board. It was starting to drive me a little nuts. And so was having to listen to them talking. I suddenly realized I needed to use the bathroom. I pushed the covers off of my body and stood up. I’d had a lot to drink at the party. The room was a little wobbly. I found my pants crumpled up in the dark, pulled them on, and buttoned up my shirt. She shot me an annoyed glance and pressed her skinny finger up to her lips. “Shhh,” she said, covering the receiver of the phone. I stumbled into the bathroom and switched on the lights. The dorms were adjoining; two rooms shared one bathroom. I leaned over to make sure the door that opened in from across the way was locked. I was afraid someone would walk in on me. I looked at my face in the mirror. I was a wreck. The glare from the overhead lights was killing me. I studied my face for a few minutes, then used the toilet. The handle was jammed up a little. It took some coercion to get it to flush. I looked down and noticed there was a dark stain in the middle of my shirt. I didn’t know how it had gotten there. I wetted a piece of toilet paper under the sink and dabbed at it. It didn’t seem to do any good. “Fuck,” I mumbled, throwing the paper into an overflowing metal trashcan in the corner of the room. She was still on the phone when I walked back in. She was leaning back against the headboard now, twirling her hair. Her lower body was still under the covers; her chest was exposed. Her breasts heaved up and down every time she giggled. She didn’t seem to notice I was in the room. I reached out into the darkness and grabbed the bottle off the table. It was still wrapped in a paper bag. Then I realized what would happen if I got caught walking it back out. I didn’t have anywhere to hide it. I set it back down. “I’m going to go,” I said. I tried to whisper as softly as I could. She gave me an irritated look and raised her index finger in the air. After a brief pause, she cupped the phone with her hand. “What?” she said. I pointed towards the door. “I’m going,” I whispered, as if it were a funeral. Then I waved good-bye to her. She put her palm up in the air, then let if fall back down against her thigh. She pressed her face back into the phone. “Uh-huh,” she said. “Well I just can’t wait to see you when I get back, and so what night is he doing that?” I pulled the door open as slowly as possible and walked out into the hallway. I shut it gently, making sure to be silent. A short blonde girl clutching a black purse was walking towards the door. It must have been her roommate. She staggered a little; you could tell she was drunk. She flashed me the whitest set of teeth I have ever seen. “Hi there,” she said. I walked past her without saying anything. When I got out the front door of the complex, I looked back down at my shirt. A little fine mist of rain was falling. I grabbed the cloth in my hands and tried to rub the stain out with my thumb. I worked at it furiously. Nothing happened. It was really large; maybe an inch across. It looked pretty horrible. For a second, while I was rubbing at the stain, I felt like I might start crying. It just came from out of nowhere. I was standing out there in the rain, drunk. And her back inside. Whatever her name was. And the stain. A guy started walking towards the door. I straightened up and stopped playing with my shirt. I began to walk home. “Hey,” he said as I wandered past him. “Hey,” I said. I wondered if it was raining on cell phone towers in South Carolina that night. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
11:02 am	Christina Ricci- so hot right now. "Black Snake Moan". Sam L. Jackson. Christina "I am the third hottest woman on earth" Ricci. Let's talk about it. Synopsis: Black blues singer (SLJ) tries to redeem the soul of the town slut (CR) in rural southern somewhere or other. This involves tying her up to the stove with a chain. Eventually, she is cured of her wicked ways. I can't tell if this is going to suck or not. For of you who are less cult film geeky, this is sort of a take off on "Baby Doll". Replace the baby crib and thumbsucking with chains and some added racial tension (note the confederate shirt), and you get the gyst. The movie poster leads me to believe that there is some heavy duty Russ Meyer/Golden Age of Sexploitation b-movie shit going on, too. All of which adds up to this possibly being pretty cool. Howeva, I have heard from people who've seen screenings of it that it totally blows. Like, sucks worse than "Snakes on A Plane". We'll see. Bottom line: X-tina Ricci's tits!!!! Ricci chained up and heavily airbrushed (note SLJ with a Gibson hollowbody guitar in the background...how fucking ridiculous is this movie?): barefoot Carroll Baker sucking her thumb in a crib circa 1955...so amazing... (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 23rd, 2006
2:07 pm	early punk rock movements: so hot right now! And just to keep you updated on all the latest and greatest in moving pictures, somebody finally made a documentary about the 70's NYC No Wave scene called "Kill Yr Idols". Thing looks pretty good, covers Suicide, James Chance and The Contortions, Teenage Jesus and The Jerks, DNA, Mars, Sonic Youth, whatever. Suppousedly Lydia Lunch rips Karen O. and other new school NYC art fagz a new asshole for totally ripping off her style. Agreed. Also of note: there is another new documentary out now called "American Hardcore". Pretty much what the title suggests: a rundown of the 80's US harcore punk scene, from Black Flag to Minor Threat (and probably alot of dipshits inbetween). I'm semi-interested in seeing this, although I've always had mixed emotions about 80's punk. Hardcore to me always symbolized the turning point for when punk went from smart/funny/cool to when it just started being dumb. I think I went through an 80's HC phase for about two weeks in 9th grade, probably induced be hearing either "Damaged" or "Everything Falls Apart". Then it was back to The Undertones...I dunno, the revisionist punk history thang that's been going on since I was a kid has ALWAYS seemed to take this time period way too seriously. Everybody with a brain knows punk died in 1979. Incidentally, the same year I was born! (Comment on this)
5:23 am	Truman Capote: so hot right now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZw8ORyIbLI HA! I'm actually not posting this to be sarcastic; this looks like it might be better/more acurate than "Capote". Although having Sandra Bullock play Harper Lee is kinda like casting John Stamos as J.D. Salinger. We'll see... Gotta love Hollywood. Now in addition to every moron thinking "Live at Folsom Prison" is the greatest American musical achievement of all time, they can think that "In Cold Blood" is our best book. yes brahs! (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 21st, 2006
9:16 pm	suck my academics, bitch. AMS3810 01 BEAT GENERATION A CRW4120 03 FICTION WORKSHOP A ENC3310 02 ARTICL & ESSAY WKSHP A ENL3210 01 MEDEVL LIT IN TRANS A Comments CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE ON THE DEAN'S LIST PRESIDENT'S LIST Term: 4.00 (Comment on this)
1:04 pm	thought for the day slow dull thud of the suburbs. Caught inside the computer for an entire night again. An eternity of digits and secret codes; can you read me out there? Here we are lost in transmission, one more shooting star burned out hollow against the naked backdrop of the August sky. White clouds above my house like ghosts floating inside a dream. i saw you with glitter in your eyes once. you fell on me like a brick. Shitty world, right honey? Where are you now?; lost cold tired out there in the heatwaves and nine to five obscurity. Dreams colliding with calendars, months drag on into eternity, one more cigarette and then I fall into bed hungry messy alone as usual. You hear them out there? They're coming to get you. They'll climb all over you like wild animals, untamed retribution for a life wasted on cheap pleasures. Welcome to the human zoo. Shadows in your eyes like a dark highway at midnight; clinging to the edge of some desperate pillow. You peak, you fall, you fall again. And so on. Back to the ravens piled a mile high out there, wings flapping in wind, waiting on my flesh. I've had guns pointed on me since I was born. Assasination of the will to live. Endless torment of keyboards and cumstains. I've walked this path before. I held your hand. Everything was grey mist. Maybe it signaled the end of something. I wasn't inside of your mind/not even inside of mine. Clock chimes in the background like rifles shooting pellets at wild game. Welcome to the human zoo. They're coming for you. Look, there's one of them now. Standing naked before you, all shotgun blast and no fire. Annhilation of a dream. Floating into space like vapor...you've been liquifed. I saw it. Witeness to the persecution of a thousand sex fantasies gone mad. Eating away at flesh and bone as if my own skin consisited of nothing but acidic chemicals; a fusion of hate and lethargy beating nightmares down into shallow graves. Look, there's one of them now. It's a long slide downhill. The cushion at the bottom is made of mud. But I saw/you/shine/once. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 17th, 2006
10:53 pm	thought for the night. Smell of winter gloves on a December day, frozen wind hitting you like an abusive father, feet covered one inch one foot one mile deep, loud skies screaming the inmate's howl, electric chair about to buzz him into Never Never land, huge steep forests of white and ice, rubbing hands together red like you knew it was true. One big flat earth, glaciers and sidewalks, little girls running through the pavement like lions out of cages, animals in ice, the television that blew up sideways, noble telephone poles reaching out to heaven hands spread legs spread ice spread all over your childhood warm cool soft, Christmas like you really mean it, really had years spinning ahead of you, some drunk dead out on the ice, Highway 99, all blood and no guts, rotten tooth pressed broken against the dashboard as the wife (agonized) calls all the local hospitals trying to put out a Missing Persons report, cops in flashlights, highways blurry like the aftermath of a dream, last second just before you wake up in the morning, your cock buried in some fantasy vagina of pure lust and exstacy, "looks like he feel asleep at the wheel Jesus Mike what a mess you can barely make out his...", two kids building a snow man a mile down the road, blood all over an icicle hanging translucent in the white mist of the afternoon, urine snowman in the field across from my house, funny haha like you knew you had years ahead of you, far from the alcohol scent of unemployment, cheap pussy, bad wine, age, life. Little kid wakes up from a Santa Clause dream, looks out the window, "the sky is pink!", snowflake angels like cheap nativity scenes, Jesus crucified with his cock sticking out, the stuff you don't read about in books, curled up television brain at 12am the night before Xmas dad rummaging around in the basement making shotgun shells, birds flying naked cold two million feet above earth, "look at that!", planes in the sky slicing through ice clouds, all of this a thin mist in the fog of time, cop still caught out on the side of the road with his flashlight on, running of dead batteries in the naked cold tinsel factory of the night, folks just getting off work at 5pm, smell of exhaust mixed with coal, nothing could be more foul, reaching out to make a snowball, ice melting onto your glove slow as a river, toungue out to taste the specks of white dust falling from angel land, "don't do that the snow has factory dirt in it!", "does not!", my father went into rehab just to come back to this, crawling around in snow shoes, mittens, a black hole in the middle of the night ice, one more sled ride down the hilltop in front of the church, bells going off like bullets, whole choirs of hope and enchanted joy, future like you really knew it, not stained/sick/dirty like now, say it like you mean it, "weee!" down the slides into the ice into the trails we created the marks we made with our own rubbery JC Penny boots, black and slick as my keyboard, feet clenched up toes curled up ready to shoot back down again, seems like a mountain top, hands in the air, screaming off your childhood like a viking, "look at me!", cop waiting for cop on ice dead rode crust of blood scent of burning flesh in the dashboard of eternity. Who really knows. Who knew. It was all presents and games. Cars zoom by sidewalks, little girls giggle in the crisp winter cushion of the snow, funny like you mean it, funny like you never have to grow up. Hearing the train coming around the bend, the tracks across from my backyard (i would stand for hours with a pair of cheap binoculars, looking up at the moon, wondering eternal why/me/here?), steel tracks running out of this town for miles maybe back in time centuries to nowhere start all over again and live in caves. You see? (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 16th, 2006
4:17 pm	The Fount of Bullshit So at about 7 am today I flush my toilet and go outside to have a cigarette. When I get back into my apartment, I realize that my toilet is overflowing like Niagra Falls. There are about three inches of water on my bathroom floor. I make an urgent call down to the night manager (who is not the real manager). "There is nothing I can do about it, I'm the fill-in for the night manager (who's not even the real manager). He's off duty (it's not even a real job). Sorry." "That's fine," I say. "I'm just letting you know your plumbing is causing a huge problem. I turned the water off. Don't send somebody busting into my apartment tommorrow afternoon bitching about water leaking into the apartment downstairs. I'm telling you what happened, and now you know. You can deal with it." "That's fine," he says. "I will let them know." FLASH FORWARD TO SIX HOURS LATER WHILE I AM SLEEPING IN BED NAKED, PROBABLY WITH A BONER: (Huge black man lets himself into my apartment and bangs on my bedroom door) "Holy sheeeeit man you's must have water leakin, yabba dabba doo, lemme in there, whoooots going on? Yabba dabba dabba you realize you got a water leak? Holy sweet mammy, Jesus, and Joseph!" Thanks dipshit. I'm glad the "replacement night manager" gave you my message. Anyways, my bathroom is dry now. Apparently the three inches of water leaked down into the apt. downstairs, knocking six tiles off their ceiling. Meanwhile Fat Albert is bitching at me, as if I purposely make my toilet overflow. Yeah, I love wading through a pile of my own piss water as much as the douche downstairs loves having tiles fall off his ceiling. Don't emphathize with me or anything. Moral: your shitty toilets are not my problem. Don't bust in here while I'm naked to warn me about something I warned you about six hours prior. Assfucks. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 8th, 2006
7:11 pm	United In Smog. I was 21 and back in Manitowoc. I had been staying at my brother's house, sleeping in his attic. It was colder and lonelier in there than you can imagine. Like a cage. Like a job. Like a life. Manu called me up and wanted to go to the bar. I was 21 and said, what the hell. This was a long wait and I was never old enough to go to the bars when I was growing up there. Not that I ever wanted to. They held images of sad drunks, factory workers, and my father sipping his pain away at 2am. Nothing glamorous about small town bars. Mostly drunk, angry men; there are very few women. It just seemed like the right thing to do. At least once. We met up by the bridge. Cold air blew in my face, swept my hair back. It felt like it might rain. The whole downtown area had a dull, ghost-like quality to it. Everything seemed to be obscured by shadows. Fog drifted in from the lake. Street lights glowed yellow under wet mist. Everything was clouded in this haze, this grey veil; you felt like you were viewing the world through eyes of a vagabond drunk even when you were sober. It's hard to make anything out behind the shadows, buildings, machines. And the constant clack thump thump of the factories pressing out plates, grinding on metal, blowing out smoke. He had on a pair of ragged blue jeans and a white wife-beater. It was a dull white; grayed by months of use or months of not being washed. The first thing he did when he saw me was ask for a cigarette. That was always the first thing. We walked in silence. This was our way. "Which bar should we go to?" I said. "Doesn't matter," he said. "They are all the same." "Well, which one do you think would be funnier?" I asked. "Where are the idiots from High School?" "All over," he said, making a circular gesture with his hand. At 21, Manu was a sort of sad caricature of his former self. A one time skateboarding juvenile delinquent sex object, he could have easily been mistaken for a poster boy in a teen magazine during his prime. A ladies man, a mooch, a high school drop out. Always high, always barking out the sharpest insults. A punk rock Romeo. Now he was just sort of blank. Older, wiser, not as good looking, and living on someone’s couch. He didn’t talk so loud anymore. We walked into a bar that was blasting heavy metal out of some god forsaken juke box in the corner of the room. It was dark, semi-crowded, and hard to see anything. We wandered up to the bar and proudly displayed our new found tickets into the world of legal drinking. The bar tender paused when he glanced at mine, grabbed it from my hand, and gave me a stern look. "You were born in 79'?" he said. "Read the I.D.," I said. He hesitated, looked back down at it, then up at me again. "You sure?" he said. I didn't say anything. He handed it back to me. We ordered one beer a piece. We drank in silence. It welled up in my stomach like warm piss. When it came time for another beer, Manu looked over at me. He had this desperation in his eyes. "I'm actually out of money," he said. "I'll buy for tonight, I'll buy," I said. And this was his way. Sleeping on couches, crashing in backseats, begging for drugs or beer. I let it slide. Only for tonight, only because I no longer live here. And soon it will be back to my parent's house in Florida, and a warm bed, and television... Men were throwing darts into a dart board. They were so drunk that they missed most of their shots. Occasionally, someone would get a bull’s eye. A loud, boisterous, annoying cheer would spring forth. These guys were all wasting the hours until 2am; then it was back home to sleep and get up for the factory in the morning. A couple of guys stood next to the dart boards, shooting pool. A few badly dressed, dirty haired blondes clung next to them. They sipped on beers, looked over at us. Manu started to give one of them the eye. I stared off into the cracks in the wall. I recognized a few people here and there. Jesus Christ, I though. Ghosts. Cogs. Tiny pieces of shit rusted brown metal in the machinery of a small town factory. They looked dull, tired, and empty. No glory. Shadows on beer stained walls. These were my peers. These were the people who didn’t make in into college, didn’t move out of the city, didn’t do anything but wait here to die. And I felt ok. The way having someone to look down on always feels good. The way we always feel ok when we made it out of our own private hell. The way we look back into the furnace and laugh at the people still clamoring to get out. A kind of half-smile crept over my face. Manu got up. Ostensibly, his excuse was to go take a piss. Realistically, he was going to go hit on the blondes in the back of the bar. I stayed with my drink. I nursed my drunk. I loved my drink; fell into it like a warm stream of water. Suddenly I heard someone call out my name. Not in a friendly way. In the sort of way that implied hate. It implied a vague, resentful recollection of someone who hadn’t seen you in years. “Heeeeeeeey,” he said. The word hung there in the air. Like a vulture. I looked over. I could barely remember the face, but I knew him. Sean Anderson. A fat behemoth of a kid. A real prick. I didn’t remember much. Just an unspoken hatred. I knew him, alright. Sweat dripped off of his forehead in little wet clusters. He had his thick fingers wrapped around a beer glass. He looked over at me. In that dumb, slow sort of way. The way of the former fat high school bully. “Hey buddy,” I said. I flashed him the biggest shit-eating grin I could muster. He stared at me, chewing on a tooth pick. He pulled the tooth pick out of his mouth, gulped down half his beer, and walked away. He kept looking back at me as he wandered off. I kept staring at him. I ordered another beer. I cannot describe to you how much I hated these people. I cannot describe to you what these people are like. They should be extinct. They should be living in caves. I want to feel sorry for them for not getting out of this city. But I can’t. You see, I’m GLAD. And the factories burn on and on through the night. And the small town babies cry. And the cars break down, and the snow falls, and the bills don’t get paid on time. And life. And death. Manu was a good guy, though. He wasn’t part of it. He was a misfit; he was someone clinging to the outer edges. He knew he was never one of Them. So he fought it hard, and he lived it well. But everyone gets old. I’d had five beers and it was time to go. I got up, used the bathroom, and wandered back over to the bar. My stomach was starting to cramp. I began thinking about my flight back to Florida. Little details began to nag at my mind. Did I pack this? Did I pack that? What if the taxi doesn’t arrive at the airport on time? I suddenly realized Manu was nowhere in sight. He might have gone outside. I finished my last beer, set it on the bar, and walked out into the grey mist of downtown. I heard the scuffle and ran into the parking lot. Manu was locked in battle with some drunk kid. Their arms were flailing back and forth. Manu was struggling, but putting up a good fight. A little streak of blood was running from his forehead. They were really going at it. I froze in my tracks for a second. Violence always catches me off guard. I started to run towards them. Something drifted towards me from outside the range of my vision. It was Sean Anderson. I didn’t get hit; it was more like I just ran into his fist. Like a concrete wall. It smashed my glasses in two. I could feel my nose crumple up like silly putty. I fell down on the ground and covered my face in my hands. I was down on the ground for awhile, bleeding. Someone opened a door and started yelling in our direction. I heard two pairs of shoes squeak off into the night. When I got up, I had fragments of glass all over my shirt. My glasses lay on the cement blacktop like two broken wings. A feeling of embarrassment and anger swept over me. When I got up, I was dizzy. “You ok?” I said to Manu. He was lying on the ground, doubled over. He was holding his stomach. A trail of crimson blood had stained his white undershirt. It looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. He was furious. “Goddamn,” he said. “Where were you? Where the fuck were you!” “I was inside, I thought you…” We got up and started walking back towards the bridge. The bars were just letting out; people drove past us and honked. I could feel the air blowing in from the lake. It was thick, choking, freezing. We walked in silence. I fondled my broken glasses, wondering if there was a way to get them fixed. He wiped at the blood on his chin. “Well,” I said, “those guys will forever be faggots.” And then I just sort of started laughing. I wasn’t mad. The whole thing just seemed funny. That fat fist. I couldn’t stop giggling. I looked over at Manu with a big, drunk grin on my lips. His face was stoic. I realized that while I could escape this and never have to hear about it again, he was stuck. He would have to deal with it. He was trapped here. There would be no aftermath for me; this wasn’t my problem. But in a way, it was his. One drunk night for me was the rest of his life. He couldn’t climb back out of it like I could. I stopped laughing and looked over at the road. “Goddamnit,” he said. He clenched his fists. I didn’t say anything. “Goddamnit”, he muttered again, looking out at the lake. We parted ways at the end of the bridge. I started walking towards my brother’s house. I shoved the broken fragments of my glasses back down into my pocket. When I got to the end of the street, I looked back. He was still standing there. A machine hissed out in the distance. The factories are awake tonight. They never sleep. (end). (Comment on this)
6:01 am	hey new livejournal, new really bad story: rapex_in add me. (Comment on this)