Creature: 1:1

Earlier today I was dropping my 3 kids off at school and about to head to the store so that I can pickup milk so that my wonderful wife of 7.4 years could make her family famous 7 layer chocolate cake for our church's covered-dish social...wait...no...that's not me.

I'm not that guy.

That's the guy I'm supposed to be. Maybe even, the guy I want to be

But. I. Ain't.

No wife. No kids. No mini-van. No church.

No church a lot.

I am the guy that stalled.

The guy trapped under a mountain of debt that is keeping him locked in a state of arrested development. Still having his 90's Era long hair and a Hot Topic frequent buyers card. The guy that is still wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt and jeans as his dress uniform for his 30th birthday party. The guy that still brings home girls from bars and yet, too broke to take them somewhere nice. The hope being that a relationship will start and he can have that home and wife and kids and life.

I have to get love quick. I've fallen in love dozens of nights knowing full well that when the night is over, my love is forever lost. A victim to my charms, to my unattainable dreams, to my ego...my vicious ego and to my shame.

I'm that guy.

That guy does have a job, however.

Bill is in his early fifties. He's been working offset presses for 17 years and working the in the shop with me for the last four. He always looked like leather, with the tattoos he'd gotten in 'the clink' now, nothing more than blue blurbs across the animal hide of some bizzare Indian redneck. In the past, Bill grew up poor, went into the Marines, got out when his time was up without ever seeing war, kept the same friends through high school, went to prison, got out, and did whatever until he met me. Bill talks constantly, but it's not in the way that makes you want to staple something to your face. His stories are usually laced with face words (So, here comes Santa in a raggely ol sleigh and 4 kludged out whitetail...), racial slurs (So, my wife and 4 other koons went to Crow's nest last night...), and general redneck insanities (So, she's callin me a-sayin 'Deddy! Booger shot my dog'!!!) to be listenable, and, more often than not, at least semi-entertaining. And his stories were rattled out in what remained of a voice. The husk of a voice. A voice attacked by years of cigarette and meth and reefer smoking, by years of nightly screaming matches between him and his 6 daughters and wife, and most from his inability to stop talking. He sounded like a toad.

Which I always enjoyed the hell out of.

Today Bill is not on the ball however, and he is rambling about some foreclosure or repo in which he had to tell some bank to “kiss his smelly ass”.

Naw dude! I really told em that shit!! For real! You think I'm liyin' but huh, yeah, it happened!

I believed him. I was just distracted.

Earlier this morning I was laying in bed with Kristy and for now, I love Kristy.

I met her at my bar, made sure she overheard a story I was telling and made her laugh all night, offered her a night of free movie watching at my place, and then had sex with her. I have about 7 hours of interaction total with this person and much of that was sleeping, but I'm not lying. I love her. For now.

I remember how she laughs, how she looks in her overdone makeup, how she tells me about 'loving weird movies like American Psycho', how she seems sincere, how she seems like she may be dumb but she's not. She gets the weird references. She knows a few good books. She had a nerd brother so she likes nerd stuff. She's a 10. This morning when I dropped her off in one of my t-shirts and an Egg McMuffin (parting gifts) she smiled and hugged my neck and said her goodbyes without seeming morose. She won't want a return call from me. If you drop a girl off at her house and she doesn't seem a little sad, then you just had a one-night stand my friend. She doesn't want to be with you. She just wanted to be with you. She'll respond to texts from now on but she will never answer a phone call. I don't even try. This is when I start getting over her.

I'll be 100% over her at around 3:30p.m.

No hard feelings. We will joke and be friendly when we see each other out. We will facebook flirt. Once in a blue moon, she'll come home with me again, but that's all. My reputation keeps me in a lot of beds, but very few hearts and this has worked out well for the last few years.

Which is the saddest fucking thing I can imagine.

I shake it off and start listening to Bill's latest story.

So yeah, she came with Shorty Craig to see me one time in the clink, right. So, I says to Craig that I can get her on the list and I really liked her and she seemed cool as hell or whatnot and that good woman came to see me e'ry damn week I was in that hellhole. And that's where we got married! I ain't bullshittin you! In the clink!

Sounds romantic to me.

When I get home my cat reminds me that she needs to be fed, and not the hard stuff today. Just the canned stuff.

Yes Maam. I love being my cat's butler. A constant reminder for me to stay humble...at least to her.

After a few well placed scrubs on her calico butt, I feed her and walk back to my room. I put on my sleep/workout shorts and dark grey wife beater and in casting off my jeans notice the residue on the pillow. The Makeup Ghost. A smeared representation of the night before. I can smell her in the bed.

I take off the sheets. Take off the pillow cases. Throw them in the washer and get over it. When you have a 3 year relationship and you're not really over it you gotta throw it all away. Photos, poems, love notes, dead flowers, ticket stubs, they all gotta go.
I call it laundry day.

I replace my sheets with the spare set that my sister left me. All 100% victoria secret pink. She thought it was a great joke. I do too. So I use them as my backup whilst I erase women in the washing machine.

I draw, write, play video games, eat, beer, and camel wide before I nuzzle into that snuggly pink bed and turn on cartoons for me to sleep to. In the dusk of my consciousness I check my phone. 5 missed calls. They are all bill collectors. And one text.

Mary: I never knew you were the biggest asshole on the planet! Forget my number ASSHOLE!

I delete the message, delete the number, and snuggle deeper into my warm. Pink. Sheets.