Between the here-and-now and the hereafter

I wanted to get drunk last night. To lose myself in the warm comfort of amused and smiling darkness, looking happily down on all my friends from the lofty heights of apathy I am only afforded in complete oblivion. I wanted to cuddle some girl and tell her how great I think she is in my opinion and not have to know in the back of my mind that I’m letting someone fall in love with me; someone I won’t stay with for more than a month.

What’s my curse? What feminine mystique of an idea haunts me so? Why am I so incapable of enjoying myself in the simple pleasures of an embrace when nobody else seems to have any compunctions about enjoying a moment when it comes? I wonder. Call it conscience, call it care, call it prudish, call it whatever you want, I can’t abide the idea of lying to myself.

Nobody warned me that honesty is lonely.

People ask me why I don’t drink anymore. That’s why. I want to sleep at night without my lies and inconsistencies keeping me from REM. Because they used to, you know. I went for years without any deep sleep. There were months when I got just a few hours of sleep every night. I don’t know how I survived that time in my life. I was haunted by the idea that someone who knew my soul for the mess that it was would talk, and in no time everyone would know who I really was, know me for the liar I’d become.

I’ve observed that it’s unwise for any man to declare to the world that he’s changed. A man with something to prove is almost always a fool. But I didn’t drink last night. And I told her I’d miss her and said good bye.

I’ll sleep like a baby tonight.