The War on Drugs

'those who use meth can lose everything,' my computer screen tells me. another bullet fired in the war on drugs. but those who use colgate can lose everything too. or those who take cream in their coffee. or children just barely learning to walk. it is the blaring uncertainty of modern life.

and so tight-lipped middle-aged men frown at the gas pumps with pink-slips in their trouser pockets. their wives withdraw from reality one prozac at a time while the tv screams out WAR, RAPE, MURDER, and GREED in 30 second sound-bites. flash to commercial.

i have a good job, i don't dread lay-offs or job cuts. but i can no longer sleep at night. too much caffeine. a grande vanilla breve latte + an extra shot = 300mg caffeine. acute overdose of caffeine may result in restlessness, nervousness, excitement, insomnia, flushing of the face, increased urination, gastrointestinal disturbance, muscle twitching, a rambling flow of thought and speech, irritability, irregular or rapid heart beat, and psychomotor agitation. In cases of much larger overdoses mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, loss of social inhibition, delusions, hallucinations, psychosis, rhabdomyolysis, and death may occur. 'those who use caffeine can lose everything.'

my wife sleeps in the room next door as i flip between informercials and b-grade movies. modonna and willem dafoe are making love on my tv. she drips hot candle wax on his chest. he flinches. she switches to wine, pours a drop, licks it off. repeat. i wait for dafoe to disapear in a flash fire of paraphin and pinot grigio but it never happens. instead they move to the shower. i am disapointed. flash to commercial.

Confusing Capitalism with Love

I.
'go to bed,' i tell krista as juno ends. i bought the movie for her at
circuit city. it came in a big orange box with a t-shirt inside.

'well, neither of us wears a size large,' she said, as she dropped the
shirt on the living room floor. it was red with a yellow embled that
said 'dancing elk condors.'

'would you at least come lay down with me?' she asks. i stay up late
on the nights before i work so i can get back on the graveyard
schedule.

'did you drink more than just the bacardi tonight?' i ask after i
taste liquor in our kiss.

'i drank captain morgans with orange juice too.' she turns on her
right side to snuggle against me. lightning flashes like cheap chinese
sparklers through the eastern-facing bathroom window and peeks into
our bedroom. i hold my breath waiting for the thunder that never came.

'did you drink because you are sad?' her sister had tried to kill
herself with tylenol pm and a steak knife just a few nights before
after her husband caught her in bed with the neighbor. it was her
third suicide attempt and second involving tylenol.

'not because i am sad--maybe a little. but i haven't drank in a while
and this is the last night before you work; i wont drink for the next
7 days at least.'

a pause. i shift uncomfortably; april can be incredibly humid in
texas.

'would you turn on the fan?'

i slide off the sheets and flip the ceiling fan on, then lay back on
the bed. her hand rests on my bicep.

II.
i see god through american eyes. what i mean is that i try and earn
god's love because i have been taught that nothing comes for free.
tanstaafl: there aint no such thing as a free lunch. my continued
obedience will lead to god's continued approval of me; this is a very
capitalist mindset and one i wish to escape.

the root of this issue is my mistaken views on love. i had never been
in love until recently and my information on the subject came largely
from second-hand accounts that i pieced together into a hodge-podge
collection of trite antedotes with enough skepticism to keep things
hip. my patchwork-opinion on love was that it was something like a
business contract with seperate parties agreeing to certain
stipulations which, when carried out, resulted in love. the church
taught me this with uber-conservative dating advice, advice that
stressed abstinence more than honesty and sobriety more than
selflessness. and when it came to god, i cut my teeth on guilt. i was
too young at the time to realize that organized religion uses guilt as
a way to extort money and gather power; i was too young to see the
absurdity of thinking that god would resort to guilt. love, to me, was
just a checklist of do's and don't's that i could never perfect.
now i realize that love is not our own, it is a borrowed emotion. what
i mean is that it springs from somewhere outside of ourselves; that
can be a spiritual urge or a sexual one. and true love causes us to
create.

III.
my friend matt came over at 8pm. we drank rich bitter vodka from
martini glasses with lemon-slices as we sat on the floor playing
vinyls on my turntable.