Wolves

            What's it like to be me? You probably wonder the same thing about yourself. We're these slightly similar things splattered about the earth, just trying to figure out where to go and how to get there. There are times when I feel like I really know Mike. And there are other times when Mike is some forgotten fragment of some life I can barely remember living.

            I know that love has been the most important thing to me since I was a little kid. I just wanted her to love me and want to stay with me until we died. But that never happened. For whatever many reasons, they all left. And I truly had what I consider the pick of the litter. All of them were beautiful and kind and good and free to be who they really were. And yet, here I sit and type alone with no one wondering when I'm coming to bed. No one cares when I go to bed. No one is concerned with my late-night habits. They're gone. And so what happened?

            How can someone who puts being in love as the only real desire on this planet fuck it up so many times? Christ! The chances I've been given would boggle most minds. So many. "There must be something terribly wrong with you." I truly believe that if something awful happens to you more than once or twice, it's probably you in which the problem swishes around in.

            I think about all my loves. Everyone. Too many to name, although I think they've all been named by now elsewhere in this thing. This thing other people call a book. I call it typing while drinking and crying and listening to whatever comes on Spotify. That's my life these days. Or at least these nights. Where did they all go? Why did we talk like we did? Why did we pretend to imagine a future which could never happen? Did I fool them that deeply? Surely the heroin ended some of them but not all. Some just died on the vine with me, desperately trying to water the shriveling little plant. Maybe I watered it too much. I've been told that can happen.

            It seems the lucky amongst us get fucked as little kids. Literally fucked or forced to suck cock or lay back when some older person does it to you, and you reel with the guilt of the pleasure and then sin, and all that's left is that it's your fault. But lucky ones endure that, and for the rest of our lives, we have some answer to why we can't stay in love when it's the single thing we've ever wanted. We have something to blame. I was so lucky and yet it doesn’t really work. I don’t really buy it. People like me we just get through life, we rarely live it. We slide underneath piles of wet snow and can barely breathe, but we crawl out and emerge alone with her gone. And who can blame her? I'm such a handful. Even without the heroin addiction, there was always the relentless assault of Jack… I've talked about Jack. And we slowly convince them they've made a mistake in loving us, and so it makes it easier for them to leave and lift any thoughts that they're destroying us. And, of course, they aren't. None of them destroyed me. They did their best, and some part of me, yet undiscovered, pushed them away.

            So what is about me that has fended off love so successfully? I don't think I've been unkind. I don't think I've been anything but attentive. The sex has always been something they said might ruin them for other people. I attach to them at the hips. I think that might be it. I needed them to love me so much that it was just too much pressure on them. Now you might ask them why and get all sorts of answers speaking to my lack or weaknesses. But I think that's not the truth. I think I committed some larger, more earthshaking sin. And I don't know what it is. It's the thing that's compelled me to shoot heroin or eat horrible food to gluttony or isolate for months at a time. The unanswered question of why they always leave. It renders my tongue a collection of speechless slivers. No tongue can tell secrets while in little slips of flesh getting tangled up in each other's length and blood.

            I may sound like I'm asking for compassion. But I'm not. That is the absolute last thing I’m asking for. I'm asking for concrete boots of truth slamming down into my throat to tell me the truth. "Mike, You were just too fucking….." What is this last word? They never say it. They try, but it is lost in all the static of the preceding statements, and I almost fall out as if ODing trying to hear them. What is that last word?

            The problem with Mike is Mike. I don't believe I've been dealt a hand any harder than others and certainly better than most. And yet, here I am. Just wanting to hold some warm body who wants to be held. And all I have to hug is the pillows I keep next to me just in case. I've never used them that way, but I've considered it and kept them there just in case.

            How did we get through the beginning? What did we talk about? Who puts these questions in us? And where does it go when it dies? She seems to transfer onto some other person, and they wind up marrying. And although I love my exes as best I can, I still wonder what it was that made us die on the vine. Again, heroin was at fault at times, but for others, it was something else. It was that last word screamed in the static with a boot upon my neck.

            The last thing I want is compassion. Or empathy. I want brutality and shame, and truth. Why has everyone left me? Perhaps I'm just too much to love. Not in the sense that I'm too lovable but as if I'm too much of a job.

            Today I saw the end of Thin Red Thine. The private who has flashbacks of his love at home gets a Dear John letter. My immediate thought is that he's surrounded by loaded guns. How can one not kill themselves in such a moment? I know that the future holds infinite possibilities, but in that second, how did he not pull the light weight of the trigger and, in a flash, put 100 or so grams of lead into his brain, and then it's over? How did he not do that?

 I recently started online dating. I'd been terrified of it for years. Firstly because it would kill me to see Nery on there. And then I heard she had moved, and still, the terror persisted. But then this thing happened. This writing attempts to lead with everything I most want to hide. I feel like I have a tool now and an acid test. If they can read any part of it and come back, there's a chance. Most of them don't. I send them the link, and I joke that this is where the conversation usually ends. And it often does. I don't blame them. I'm such a huge liability at this point. The chances of me destroying your heart are mathematically high. And yet I feel different. But you can't put that into words. Who says such things? Who's responsible for the dialogue that would explain such a life as mine? I figure when I die, I'll have been a net negative. I've caused more pain than I've shown love. Maybe it happened too late for me. Maybe there's not enough time left to show love and balance the heartbreak I've caused. Maybe, I'm fucked. I really mean that. Maybe I’m past the tipping point. Maybe anyone who winds up with me, if only for a week or two, risks being pulled under by my sickly undertow.

            So who am I am? I'm kind. I believe in love. I believe in showing love, and I believe in making people feel that they're heard and risk no judgment. I'm all of these things and more. But there's that one concrete boot on the throat that won't allow me to know the full secret of who I am.

            God lives in a little blue house at the end of my block. I walk by there every day. His dog barks and barks, and God asks him to stop. Sometimes he does. But sometimes, amidst all the barking, I look at God in his eyes as he stands on the threshold of his early '20s craftsman home, and he says nothing. I just look, and he says in his eyes, “I wish I could help" I thank him and look down at my feet and just continue shuffling on throughout this jungle. I look back, "The last word" Do you know it.?" He smiles and says. “Of course, I do."