Twilight Nights Bathed in Moonshine

Take Note

Soundtrack


Picked up some add'l side work that may just ease some of my current deep financial burden due to legal representation.

I actually spent a bit of time out downtown after getting off work last week.
It was the 2nd time I'd done any socializing since my arrest.

I flirt with some girls who open me, but my heart isn't in it.
They are either too drunk or too forward for my tastes as it's nearly 2am and the desperation phase of the night has set in.

I walk into the street as I bid fond farewell to my co-workers and call it a weary night.
I made some $$ which feels productive somewhat, and I head home to finish my biography of Augustus. I don't smoke or drink, I just climb into bed, read 20 pages and doze off.
It's not much, but it's not bad.

I read much more non-fiction these days.
My taste in contemporary fiction is borderline if not overtly sociopathic and it feeds the dark passenger so I have to eschew Brett Easton Ellis and coterie.

I'm living a healthy, repetitive life of work and training and it's what I have to do or I'll fucking end up dead or in jail.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't get that urge now and then.....a whisper as the dusk settles, an involuntary chill running down my spine or the hair on the back of my neck standing.....

I haven't called the two girls I met last week and I don't know that I will.

Just the thought of the monotonous ramshackle question and answer session makes my eyes involuntarily roll into spasm.

Dr. Jekyll has to keep his hands firmly on the wheel of life as we venture along.
--

I walk out of my girlfriend's place.
She's asleep, softly stirring upstairs.
I see her dark hair in my mind's eye, and something shifts inside.
---

I'm checking ID's and a girl stares into my face, slightly drunk and swaying. Her perfume tickles my nostrils.
"Why so serious?" she asks half in jest.
I want to tell her b/c I have a drinking problem that has led to * arrests in the past * years, but instead I settle for "it's a bit chilly out here, can't you feel it?"

A girl I used to date ages ago comes through the line with some boffed off go fuck yourself clown looking dude and she won't make eye contact as I check her ID.
Quickly she asks if I'm still *****ing, and I tell her "yeah, this is just something to keep me busy on the weekends."
She smiles, tucks her hair behind her ears the way she always did as she'd prop herself up in bed then rest her head on my chest.
She's aged ever so slightly but she's still cute.

I put her out of my mind as I do the fond memories of us dating.
I was different then, more reckless, equally selfish, more intense.
Later, she'll step outside for a cigarette and try to casually mention, "I heard you got married."
"Yeah, I was."
"Past tense," she repeats and simultaneously asks in tone.
"Yeah, something like that."
We both smile. She offers me a drag but I shake my head and she bites her lip as she takes my hand and squeezes it for a moment.
It is a fleetingly powerful moment and I actually feel something register for an instant which surprises your humble narrator.

I don't need my business all over downtown and not that she'd do it purposefully, but she has friends with loose lips and equally loose pussies and I don't need those ravenous gossip-fiending whores knowing my business.

I'm in a better position to meet girls than ever before, and I have less interest than I've ever had.
I lack the devil may care attitude I once exuded and I'm not sure where it's gone, probably still sitting in a cold jail cell with debilitating white lights buzzing overhead wearing a scratchy jumpsuit and beaten in rubber flip flops.

I realize I need a weekend with a new girl at the beach, late mornings in a hotel and strolls with a beer in hand on the sand and eating some seafood at a place I've never been to before with her sundress pulling against her lithe frame in the summer's breeze.
But then as it is, I slip on my hat, my sunglasses, grab my gear and head to the gym to beat down the dark passenger and my urge to drink and hide in the bed of my girlfriend and run my fingers through her hair as she sleeps in contentedness by my side.