I sleep the way only a man no longer in love can sleep. Restless or not at all. I lay wide awake for hours dreaming, praying. Making vows to gods I don't believe in. Bartering for the life I want with things I don't have; a reserved and passive acceptance of a tired soul neither coming nor going. The air is cold in the absence opposite me on the bed. The space between my arms clutch at the dark, looking to hold someone, anyone. My biggest pillow will do. The night envelops me, caresses me, begs me to stay with it if only until the light comes back. The negative space in the bed, the unoccupied presence, hogs the covers. Loneliness is a bitch and her hair gets caught in my face and she stretches and grows like weeds over me. I disappear into the linen jungle. In the dark I struggle to differentiate myself from just another shadow; my hand in front of my face from the nothingness that fills the room. I am simultaneously frightened and put at ease by my inability to see anything. The not knowing gives me comfort in ways my bed never could. I count sheep until I've counted them all twice. I count the seconds until the clock is too wound up to think. I speak to myself in cursive and cry her name in italics and bold. Every whisper might as well be a shout and every breath might as well be the last. I shuffle back and forth in consciousness, always on the precipice of relaxation. I’m too hot. I’m too cold. I’m awakened by the jolt of excitement that comes when I think I’m finally falling asleep. My ligaments dance and are pulled apart by an unearthly magnetism to and away from each other. My eyelids are heavy and my muscles are heavy and my bones are even heavier and my thoughts are exhausted and I am far too tired to sleep. I daydream during the night, fantasizing about a good night’s rest. I am filled with no feelings of regret or urgency or any identifiable justifiable color. I am one thousand pounds and entirely hollow.

I know that I will only be even more tired tomorrow and I know that I will get no more sleep than tonight. The cycle will continue until I find a library or a friend’s couch or a girl’s bed, cozy and perfumed with nostalgia, to share to fall away in. Anywhere there are people. Alone I cannot find the solace I seek. There is no hope, no haven, and no home for me in the quicksand of my isolation. I rely on the gravity of others to pull myself out from under my own skin. There is no greater pleasure than to love a woman and to have her reduce you to flesh and dust and blood, simply by existing. To have her make you feel not as if you are more alive than ever, but that you had never lived. Not that you would die for her but realizing that before her, you had always been dead. To find on a pillow, answers where once was nothing, or just a reflection. And with that thought in mind I am able to distract myself long enough to fall away into sleep. Then in the blink of an eye, I’m back in school, back in life. And out there in the real world distractions are all too easy to come by.

And something wicked this way walks. And she’s got on white pants and they’re tight like paint and her lips are pursed like she’s ready to kiss somebody, anybody. Anybody but me in this long ass class on social change and the state of the world. Eyes fine like a felines hide in waiting behind slim black frames and she looks at me or through me but never to me. I exist to her in the way whoever happens to be standing next to her exists to me; almost not at all. She doesn’t acknowledge me and part of me is crushed but another deeper cowardly part of my soul sighs with relief that when she sees me she sees just another face. She doesn’t register me or consider that anything potentially profound is happening and she doesn’t wonder what I’m doing when she’s on her subway ride home, cowering in a corner seat as her face is lost in a sea of unwashed crotches. She certainly doesn’t spend her free time writing about the boy in class with the same clothes as last week, with messy hair, whose eyes cry tears of carnal intent. She looks but doesn’t see, acknowledges but never remembers.

When for a brief moment her look meets mine she doesn’t notice the hangover that overstays its welcome in my dilated eyes, red and glassy like church windows depicting saints that have long since given up on praying for me, or the hand-me-down cologne I wear to cover the smell of cigarettes that always burn too fast, or the Colgate toothpaste or the bourbon underneath that its minty shield protects. She doesn’t look at me like an old friend or with the longing of a lover or even with the downtown gaze of the midtown gays who whistle at me and buy me fireball shots when I’m drunk and lost and in need of the attention. She doesn’t see any of the hurting and for that I thank her but I damn her in my mind anyway for not sticking around long enough to find it in those few beautiful terrifying seconds when her eyes meet mine and my world stops and hers keeps on spinning. I am a voyeur to my own self-loathing living vicariously through the things I do in blacked out states, only ever faintly recalling the person that people have come to know me as. It’s not her fault but I blame her anyway and continue to stalk and sulk and resent her for not looking at me and myself for not having the courage or balls to do anything about it.

Even in my own fantasies I am at a loss for what I might say if given the chance. I could grab her by the shoulders and look deep deep deep into her eyes. I’d tell her about how I could protect her and make her laugh and make her smile and make her the best damn omelet she’s ever had and how I would love her and never cheat and I’d make friends with her friends and be friends with her mom no matter how much I hated her and I’d never get too drunk and come home in the wee hours before morn’ stumbling, screaming, dreaming and drooling, still drinking, banging on her door apologizing for things she didn’t know about yet. I could grab her and tell her everything and anything. I could love her or lie to her or accept that to love is to lie and that all we can hope to do in this life is realize that we’re all falling and to grab hold of someone for dear life so that the bottom or the end or the opening doesn’t feel as bad when the pearly gates open up or our descent begins to feel warmer and warmer. Obsessed with love and every other unobtainable thing, I pass through each day a pariah, a martyr of my own internal divorce; Living life without god which is like running up a tab with a currency no longer backed by anything. There is no gold standard or net of salvation. We scramble in the dark to give it meaning, bumping into walls, constantly tripping our way into early graves. Only once we’re dead can we smirk at the irony that our meaning was in the very meaninglessness that drove us so insane.

I love her because I love this life and hate her because I hate myself. I could never love in the way that my children will never fly because I am not fit, right, or cut out for it. Like every beautiful flower and songbird I was put on this earth to rot and see if I could have fun while doing it. I absorb blessings when they come and dish out misfortune as I exit. I will not leave this world any prettier than I found it, but from a million miles away nobody will even know the difference. Pretty or ugly or fat or skinny or short or tall; we all think of ourselves as Susan Boyle’s in one way or another; true transcendent beauty trapped in the cruel expectations of others. We didn’t ask to be born and our only guaranteed gift is an end to it but the jury is still out on if it’s as bad or good a deal as it sounds. I could climb Everest or fake my death and head East or eat an entire strawberry rhubarb pie by myself as diner onlookers stare in horror. Or I could procreate and give life and be a father and grow old with somebody and see a piece of me grow and do the same. Or I could sit in my room alone and write about doing things, wondrous things, things I’ll never do, as I melt and meld into the fabric of my bed, fading away into obscurity, leaving nothing but a shadowy black John-shaped stain on sheets for mother to keep, throw out, or cherish.

Or I could talk to her. Oh to just be rejected by her. To be accepted by her and to disappoint her. To learn each other’s flaws and accept them and say they’re our favorite things about one another. I could do it-I won’t, but I could. Make her smile and marry her and either die before or after her. With options like that what’s a guy to do but stay home and imagine a life instead of living one. If reality is a paralytic then love is the anesthetic. Dead, dying, or numb. That is all we can hope for. Find someone or something to distract you long enough that death greets you as a surprise. I have writing and drinking. Neither of which I felt I had a choice in choosing. I do both alone and in excess until my head hurts. I would like for love to be my driving force but for now I wait. I wait and I write and I think and I drink. Maybe the girl in white pants with slim black rims will come along and dust me off. Or maybe I’ll be the girl in white pants that ‘comes along’ in someone else’s story. To remain cautiously optimistic seems ill-advised enough as it is, but hope and speedboats are the only things that separate you and me from the chimps. And while I spend most of my time feeling sorry for myself, shaking a coin cup of pity, I haven’t given up just yet. I’ve had love before and I can have it again. It doesn’t help that I fall in love once a week but with numbers like that I fancy the odds are in my favor. So lover girl, female from the future, bride-to-be, whoever you are-if you’re reading this, which for my sake I sincerely hope you aren’t, don’t lose faith because I’m coming for you, and I’m bringing all my baggage, love, and omelet-making skills with me.