Pressure.

There were pressures that were getting to him, he felt as though, if he allowed things to continue in this fashion. He might end up happy.

The problem with happiness is that once you have it, it's something that you can lose. When you don't have the things that are actually worth real value in life. You can behave however you want, without fear of too much consequence.

As soon as something happens, or comes into your life that is actually worth giving a damn about, well, that's when your behavior actually starts to matter again. Because if you truly care about something in your life, even if it's just one small thing. That one small thing actually makes your life worth living. That thing, makes your life; a life.

So when he actually got something that he cared about, it wasn't until he got scared of losing that he started to act as if he didn't want it. That's how these things work. You enjoy it, you take it for granted. You get used to it. Then, you start to wonder what your life would be like without it. Maybe, the pressure of having your life matter gets to you a little too much.

The responsibilities. Accepting the fact that not only does what you do matter, but you can go back to it not mattering any time you choose, because you chose for this thing to be in your life.

It's easy to go back to what you were before, because what you were was rock bottom. It's always easy to fall, climbing takes practice, and a defiance towards gravity.

So you're forced to choose, the fall, or the climb.

A Painted Face.

I painted my face for you today.

I hope you notice, but I don't think you will. I paint my face for you all the time and you never notice. You take my painted face for granted. You think it's my real face. You force it to be. You'll only notice if I don't paint it.

I dressed up for you today.

I know that you won't notice. You think these are my clothes, you think this is who I am. That these clothes are mine, and not yours. You think that I want to wear them. You think that I want to wear them for you. You think I define myself by the standards that you have set up for me.

I have never not painted my face.

I have never not dressed up.

I do not know whose fault it is.

I didn't know who I was again; for you today. If you noticed, you kept it to yourself. You allowed it to happen for reasons beyond my own reasoning. If I knew who I was, would you still be here? Would I want to be? If I was me, would you still be you?

I don't want to paint my face.

I don't want to dress up.

I want to know who I am.

Waste of Time

I have spent, in my life, more time than I would like to admit, imagining what it would feel like to be stabbed in the back, near or directly(if I knew anatomy better) the kidney.  Now, that I'm sitting here in a back alley, holding my stomach, as my own blood pours out of me, it would appear that those imaginings were; a complete waste of time.

It probably looks like a movie, even though it doesn't feel like a movie. If that makes any sense. I'm sure it does, you've seen movies right? You've also been alive? Then you know what I mean. 

I wasn't supposed to be stabbed. I bet you could figure out that that wasn't part of my plan.

I just wanted to have an adventure.

I'm nothing special, I have no access to any valuable information, I have nothing to do with government, or power or anything cool or flashy. I have a degree in Sociology. I keep two regular Joe jobs. I didn't and don't, have a need to do all that much with my life. I just wanted to live it.

I watched too many movies I guess, and I supposed that; though I didn't want to accomplish much with my life, I did want it to be exciting. So, for fun, I grew a pot plant. And then I sold it to my friends. It wasn't very good. I'm not much of a gardener. I'm not like the guy from Breaking Bad or anything. Plus I think he does something other than pot.

I live in a small city, there are a lot of drugs, and none of them are all that high quality. It's all kind of shitty, so when I gave my own small amount of shitty weed to my friends, guess what happened? They loved it. They loved it so much they wanted more. And they told more and more people about it. So I started growing a whole bunch of weed in my apartment, and selling it to friends, who would sell it to other people.

It was really easy. And it was exciting. I don't know if you've ever broken the law, but I highly recommend it. Lots of fun. Keep in mind though, I'm telling you this while I'm dying in a back alley. I'm sure you could guess that the two are related. Drug dealers don't get stabbed in back alleys for no reason right?

Right.

I'm running out of time here, I don't think anyone's coming for me. I don't think I can keep up telling you this story. Blood loss and all. I think this is it. I didn't love enough, I didn't give enough. I'm not sure it has to do with this mistake or not, but maybe it was all the mistakes I made that led to this one that did it. I hope I get to do it all again. I kind of do look like the guy from Reservoir Dogs. That's neat right? Nothing to write home about, I guess...

A Short Poem. Not a short story, but yesterday's was really long. Enjoy!

Look at the rush we’re in.

Not going anywhere. Pushing through as quickly as possible to reach what?

The surface? So we can breathe.

Breathe what? More wasted time.

A man stands alone unless he is with others. But the others have too much influence on his posture.

Women too.

Sometimes I forget to include them.

Because I forget that we’re supposed to be different.

I have no hold. There once was a grip, but something told me to let go.

I did. And now I am floating. Not falling.

I float, not moving, and I get to see every angle of my perspective.

It gives me nothing. A better sense of what I see isn’t what everyone else sees.

It’s still just me. And I need to let go of me. But.

I have no hold.

Dreams, the stuff of the unknown, abstract is the explanation.

The explanations have no hold either.

A Trampled Man.

The main problem with never standing up for yourself, is that by the time you actually do, it's always way too late.

I work for a security firm, I get paid minimum wage to basically call the cops if I see anything that would require calling the cops. I'm supposed to make myself seen, so that people will know to stay away from whatever it is that I'm supposed to be watching. Mostly temporary structures, or malls. Nothing ever happens, I never call the cops. Mostly kids try to pull some shit. And I stop them before it gets too serious.


It's a shit job. It's meant to be a shit job, it's the kind of job designed for the kind of douche bags that were too big a douche bags to be allowed into the army or the police.


I work with a lot of douche bags. I'm not a douche bag.


I like working nights, I like keeping a place safe, I like keeping kids out of trouble. I'm not allowed to be a cop or in the army because I only have one arm.


I was born without it, so don't feel bad about it. I just don't have it, I wouldn't know what it would be like to have one. It might as well be a vagina, I'll never know.


If you are going to feel bad for me, feel bad about the fact that kids are mean, real mean. I got picked on for not having an arm for a solid twelve years. It was horrible, gruesome and violent. I'm not going t get in to the details, but lets just say that it probably has something to do with the reason as to why I allowed myself to get walked all over in this situation, until it was too late.


I was working security for a theatre company that put up plays in the summer in tents. Shakespeare or whatever, I guess they used to do Shakespeare each year, until the past couple, when they had to get more modern plays and musicals in order to make money. I don't know.


So the job, was mostly just like, sitting in a truck outside the tents from midnight until eight in the morning. Racoons were the biggest problem. They got in to the garbage. It was annoying. Until the kid showed up.


The kid said that he was one of the actors in a play, and that him and his friends just needed inside to rehearse and hang out after hours. He said this by arriving at like twelve twenty, and handing me a beer, he asked all of this of me. He had the kind of smile, the smile that looked right through you, and made you want to be his friend. He had that power over me almost right away. To be honest, talking about it now, he still might. I don't know.


So, instead of saying no, I decided to buddy up. So I said that I needed to be in there with them the whole time. He said that that was fine. And we got out of the truck, and I let a group of about nine of them in. With me, I guess there was ten of us.


The first night was fun, they hung out, got drunk, the kid, his name was Alex. He banged one of the girls right on a couch in front of everyone. Everybody else just kept on hanging out like it was normal. So I did too. Even though it made me very uncomfortable, not that I hadn't had sex before, I just didn't want to watch other people have it. It was the second time I let him walk on me. There would be at least a hundred more times.


It made work fun, it wasn't work. It was getting drunk with a bunch of really good looking actors, that seemed interested in me, for who I was. They would always call me a real person. As if, some guy with one arm working security was a rare novelty to them. They couldn't get enough of me. As long as I did all their favors. Which would always be slightly degrading or uncomfortable. But they would celebrate me afterwards. They even had me making fun of myself for my lack of arm a couple of times.


All good things come to an end. Actually, all things end. This was no exception. So one day I actually decided on my day off, to go to the plays, all of them, in one day. And you wouldn't believe it. But not a single one of my new friends was in any of them, at all! So I got to thinking, because, frankly, even though I'm a push over, and even though I only have one arm. I'm not actually, all that stupid. Really. So I got to thinking, what were they doing with me every night, why were they wanting to drink and fuck inside the tent, every night? When they clearly could do that anywhere. Why involve me?


I had three guesses, either they were drug dealers, and were somehow, doing something with drugs. Or, they were terrorists of some type. Maybe anarchists or some shit. Or they were simply just stealing from the theatre, right under my nose. I figured it was probably the third option. I partially hoped that it was one of the other two. More dramatic that way. I'm just a push over security guard, not much happens to me.


Mostly, I was hurt. I was hurt that I had been used. I was hurt that they never tried to include me in whatever it was that they were doing. That they clearly had just been pretending to be my friends. So, that night, I told Alex, that I needed to talk to him. So we went out to the truck that I was supposed to be keeping watch. Alex, was clearly on edge. I had grabbed a couple beer, and we sat in the truck. Sipping at our beers.


He asked if there was anything the matter, and I said there was. I was getting emotional, already, before we even had the confrontation, I was very hurt and upset, I thought I could keep my cool. But the beer wasn't helping. I asked him why he and his friends were such mother fuckers and why they felt they had to lie to me. He asked me what he thought they had lied about. I told him I went to the shows. He said that technically they were actors in those tents, since every night they had been pretending to be my friend. I was already blubbering like an child, but when he said that, I had to slap him. And he took a knife and put it against my throat.


I don't know where the knife came from, it was like, one second I was crying and I slapped him, and the next thing I knew, there was a knife on my throat. That kind of thing had never happened to me before. Things had escalated very quickly and I was beginning to panic, I'm a security guard. I'm not trained for this kind of thing.


In my teary blur, I saw through the window of the truck. The view was of the stage tent, sure, but also to the right of it was the ocean harbour. I could see there were those tiny black boats that you see in the movies, and people were moving boxes and boxes of stuff off of them, and taking them into a parked semi trailer. I said:

“Oh, drugs. Well, at least it was something cool.” Then there was something cold and sharp against my neck. And everything stopped.


I guess those words were my last.