Chicago Blues

James Bowden

After two nights of drunk and high buffoonery, televised stupor and gluttony all over the couch: a zit on the point of my nose. Milky as my eyes. Squashed: sobriety, now red, a scarlet mark.

I read Infinite Jest and relate, though I don’t identify a problem within myself. This, just postmodernist coping, yes? But it was nicer before when that was all there was. It was nicer before in college, when I didn’t have to return to real life: just Max and I, waking up soggy on the deflated bean-bag cushions, sunlight streaming through, what’s that?, time to shower and get lunch. When I felt okay, enough, with all of this: when the pressure of productivity and progress did not bear upon me so heavily. Now, I wake with an ache in my chest. An anxiety. A knowing how much to be done, how I have been trading off, and I cannot level it with myself. I think about smoking and I cannot breathe. I think about eating one more bite of greasy food and I cannot breathe. I think about TV and I cannot breathe. I think about friendship and love and falling back upon another and being caught comfortably and: I feel hopelessly lost in the unlit corners of my skull. If nothing satisfies me, have I not become a monster myself? A shiver courses through my body. I want to sob, but there is nobody around to hold me, not even myself. I know not why I am alive, nor why I came here. I picture my parents. Nothing feels right. Like, it’s just me, here, abandoned without the slightest clue why or what I ought to do. I walk around the little suburban front yards and try to rub my hands warm. I want to scream: I miss external structure! Let me back into the system!
I’ll make the britches fit this time, I will, I promise.