Masquerade

"Starts off just whiskey and wine...."

I'm alone like usual.
Not really but by choice I've grown emotionally distant and it's better that way.
I'm an emotional vampire only feeling things I presume I'm supposed to feel like a little kid thinking really hard to understand what society expects of him.


I snap to where I am: sitting at my friend's ********* ********* party at a restaurant I couldn't afford even before my recent incurring of legal fees. I've got a good attorney, and in theory, if I don't beat the charges, the hope is the firm and his knowledge will minimize my time served and other punishments. Regardless, I'll be paying this one forward for years to come.

I know some of those in attendance at this dinner. I engage in conversation but as is often the case, inwardly I feel out of place. One of the girls fawns over my hair and my clothes.
I smile and an expression demonstrating meaning and emotion spreads thinly across my visage but it is only skin deep.

She grabs my arm and squeezes it and I know what she wants. She's been fooled by my blue eyes into thinking I could be something to her: something meaningful and substantive or at the very least based on what she's heard a wild ride on the rollercoaster into tempestuous times and elations.

Those nights and times come infrequently now and they are on hiatus for a good long while given my latest run-in with the man and his minions of the law.

I struggle to participate in the conversation of the evening and I feign all the things I'm supposed to feel and think and say.
I'm happy for my friend and *** ********** and that is enough. I know that I am being a good friend by attending and that's all you can do sometimes.

The night ends as it must and I drive home with the windows down, feeling the warm night air across the stretch of downtown where I've lost so many nights, been arrested, fought, won and lost and had my expensive mistakes and cheap thrills.

I head home, get ****, and sleep deep sleep .