You don’t even know how you got here, but here you
are, in some fucking dive bar with two empty bottles in
front of you, and who-knows-how-many taken away, and some
forty-something bar whore hanging on your arm and tears
welling behind your eyes that you won’t let out.

        Your wife is at home, probably packing her bags.

        She’ll be at her sister’s by the time you get home.

        “Buy me another drink?” she asks.

        The bar whore, not your wife.

        You don’t know her name.

        You think it starts with an S or a B or a K or an F.

        “Another drink for the lady,” you say.

        “Thanks,” she says, and kisses your cheek. You don’t
even look over at her. You don’t remember when she came
over to you, when you started talking, how she attached
herself to you.

        A parasite.

        That’s what she is.

        You know it. You know it but you don’t care.

        It feels good to have someone attach themselves to
you. Even if they are sucking the life out of you. It feels
good because it makes you feel wanted in some way.

        You haven’t felt wanted in a very long time.

        “What has you so down?” she says.

        “Life.”

        “Oh,” she says. “That.”

        “Yeah.” The last third of another beer goes down the
pipe. It tastes good. It feels good.

        “You know,” you say, “you women are so hard to deal
with. You think … you call men pigs and dogs and say how
horrible we are, and it’s true, but, you know what, you’re
all worse; you’re worse because you do all the same things
that you hate men for doing, but you pretend that you
don’t. It’s horrible.

        “I’m fucking tired of it,” you say.

        “Men,” you say, “they don’t pretend they’re better
than women.

        “But you women,” you say, “you are vile. It’s
horrible.”

        The bar whore looks at you. She takes a drink of her
amaretto sour, and she puts a hand on your shoulder, and
she asks, what made you like this?

        “Was it,” she says -- “did it start with your mother?
It did, didn’t it, honey?”

        And her eyes are so big and sympathetic and blue that
when you look into them, something inside you -- happens.
You don’t recognize the sensation. You don’t know what to
call it. But something happens.

        “She was such a cunt,” you say.

        When you were a boy, must have been eleven years old,
right before your best friend Charlie brought those
mentholated cigarettes to the park for the two of you to
smoke, something strange happened.

        One day, you were a happy family, a complete family.

        Dad went to work every day.

        Mom stayed home and made breakfast in the morning and
dinner at night.

        You went to school after mom made sure the part in
your hair was straight and you didn’t put on dirty clothes
and your teeth were brushed.

        And then, mom was gone.

        There were no discussions about it. There had been no
talk of a divorce. Nothing. Just one day, you came home
from school and mom wasn’t there and when you asked dad
about it, he didn’t answer.

        He just said, “Eat your dinner.”

        He had picked up pizza on the way home.

        Your favorite kind.

        You sat and ate it and watched The Six Million Dollar
Man on tv.

        Then dad put you in bed.

        You couldn’t sleep so you simply stared at the
ceiling, wondering what the hell was going on.

        At some point, you heard a weird noise.

        After almost ten minutes, you finally knew what it
was.

        Dad was crying.

        Dad was a mailman, and he went to work at five a.m.,
and so you were all alone at home in the morning.

        In one day, you went from a life in which your mother
would fix the part in your hair in the morning and have a
snack for you when you came home from school, to a life in
which you were on your own from five a.m. till nine or ten
p.m. Nine or ten because after mom was disappeared by
magical forces you had no understanding of, dad spent most
of his evenings in bars, hunched over beer after beer after
beer.

        (Sort of like you are right now, you fucking loser.
You useless sack of shit.)

        Because dad never told you what happened with mom (and
mom wasn’t around to tell you), and because you weren’t
very social and most of your friends lived in your head,
you made up a story about what had happened.

        In your head the story went like this:

        You went to school.

        You were wearing your blue Wranglers and that plaid
shirt mom always liked, and aside from that cowlick of
yours, the one that would haunt you till you turned thirty-
two and didn’t have any hair in that spot at all, your hair
was combed to mom’s satisfaction. The backpack was strapped
over your right shoulder. The brown bag with the peanut
butter and grape jelly sandwich, apple, two cookies, and
thermos with juice, was in your left hand.

        And as you walked out the door, on your way to the bus
stop, you were thinking of meeting Jessica there, Jessica
who was your best friend, and also the girl of whom you
thought while yanking your thing, which is something you
started doing not too long ago.

        Anyway.

        You went to school -- walked to the bus stop, waited,
sat next to Jessica on the bus, went to Mrs. Parham’s
class, and everything seemed normal. It seemed very normal.

        But it wasn’t.

        Because back at home, mom was with another man.

        Pastor Robertson stopped by like he did sometimes when
you were home sick from school, to talk to mom about pot
luck suppers and such silly shit (as dad called it) that
she was planning for the Wednesday night prayer meeting.

        The thing about Pastor Robertson was that when you
weren’t home, he wasn’t talking about pot luck suppers.

        He wasn’t talking about much of anything.

        He was fucking mom.

        You weren’t quite sure about all the specifics of
fucking, but you knew the basic idea behind it.

        Back at home, while you were at school, Pastor Robertson
was fucking mom, and coincidentally, at the same moment,
dad walked through the front door.

        You see, he had forgotten his lunch and come home for
it, and to say hi to mom and give her a kiss and pinch her
butt the way you’d seen him do.

        That always made mom giggle like a little girl.

        Through the door dad went and he heard some noise
coming from the bedroom, and he thought, what the fuck is
going on here? and went to the bedroom and tried the knob
but the door was locked and so he kicked the fucking thing
in.

        Just kicked it.

        Wood splintered and flew.

        And in the silence afterward, there was mom on her
back with Pastor Robertson sweaty and on top of her and
looking nothing like a man of god, whatever that is.

        Dad simply stood staring for a moment. He was trying
to process what was happening, trying to wrap his brain
around it. Once he did, he went a little crazy.

        It triggered something inside him.

        He stormed the bed like a soldier, Pastor Robertson shouting,

        “Henry! Henry! Henry, don’t!”

        He grabbed Pastor Robertson by his left shoulder, and
threw him to the floor, the fucking pig, and he kicked him,
and he kicked him, and he kicked him, and he shouted,

        “Get the fuck out of my house!”

        And Pastor Robertson did.

        Pastor Robertson scrambled out of the bedroom, through
the hallway, and out of the house, forgetting his clothes,
probably afraid his career as a manipulator of the people
was over for good, that he would have to work instead of
asking people for money for the service of god. Unaware of
how easily manipulated people really are.

        Yourself included.

        Trusting idiots.

        Once Pastor Robertson was out of the house, dad turned
to mom. Mommy up until two years ago. Dad turned to mommy
and he said, with tears in his eyes,

        “What,” he said, “have you done?”

        And mom said, “Henry.”

        And dad said, “No!”

        And before he could even think about what he was
doing, he was swinging, and there was a loud crack, like
the sound of a dry summer twig snapping, and a hand print
in pink was rising on mom’s cheek.

        After that, things just got ugly.

        And the shovel in the backyard got damp with wet and
dark with mud. And dad ended up with blisters on his hands
from digging. And you never saw mommy again.

        Sometimes, when dad was in a really bad way, you
fantasized about mom coming down from heaven, just coming
down and taking you away from everything, from this harsh
and horrible world where everything hurt you in one way or
another. You just wanted to feel safe and warm, the way you
once had. But safety and warmth were gone.

        Now all you had was a cold wind like razorblades.

        “Your dad killed your mom?” the bar whore says.

        “No,” you say. “That was just something I made up. I
used to tell people that. I used to make up all kinds of
things. Sometimes lies are easier than the truth. And
better, too.”

        “So what really happened?”

        “She left dad and moved to California.”

        “So you followed her here?”

        “I guess,” you say. “I never saw her after she left dad. After
she left me. But I came out here all the same.”

        “Why?”

        “I don’t know,” you say. “I guess because when I was a
kid I imagined California must be heaven because why else
would my mom leave me for it?”

        “Jesus,” the bar whore says, “that’s pathetic.”

        “Thanks,” you say.

        “Let me buy you a drink,” she says.

        So you do.

        And you think of your wife at home, a suitcase laid
out on the bed, folding her clothes so neatly, the way she
is wont to do, and putting them in her suitcase very
carefully while tears stream down her face, with black
lines of mascara like silk ribbons.

        Another woman about to leave you.

        The women in your life always turn away.

        And they walk away and they never return.

        It’s happened to you all your life.

        From your mother to your first girlfriend to your wife
now, at home, packing her bags, you’re sure.

        Everything you want to hold on to always seems to slip
through your fingers.

        The thing about women is they’re impossible to get a
grip on. The tighter you hold them, the harder they fight
to get away. They think your love is control and they don’t
want to be controlled. But you aren’t trying to control
them. You only want to hold them close to you, to keep them
forever and ever in your love.

        Why do they always misunderstand your motives?

        Why do they always go away?

        What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

        Jesus Christ.

        Get a few beers inside you and you lose your brain.

        Get a grip, idiot.

        You scum.

        You fucking adulterer.

        Lying on the couch in the bar whore’s apartment, you
push her off. She had your pants around your knees and was
sucking your engorged penis just a second ago, and then the
image of your wife burned itself on the inside of your
closed eyelids, and so you pushed.

        And now she’s looking at you, the bar whore, with a
strange look on her face. Confusion.

        “I’m married,” you say.

        “Honey,” she says as if speaking to a child, “I know
that.”

        And she leans forward again and licks the length of
your shaft.

        She says, “But she’s packing her bags and I have your
dick in my hand.”

        “But,” you say.

        And she spits on your dick and strokes it in her hand.

        “Honey,” she says.

        “Relax,” she says.

        “If your wife loved you, she wouldn’t have left you
like this,” she says.

        And you’re drunk and not thinking clearly, and her
hand feels good, and you just need some kind of release, so
you close your eyes and you let her stroke you, stroke you
while she takes your purple head into her mouth, moving her
mouth down and tickling your balls with her tongue, your
taint, all the while stroking your saliva-wet cock in her
hand, and it feels good and you feel guilty, and your head
is swimming with dizziness and you shouldn’t be doing this
but you want to be doing this and nothing makes any sense
at all, and god, oh, fuck, god, you throb in her hand, and
you feel it happening, the tension coiling up just below
the surface, coiling up like a spring, and then, the bar
whore says something, oh yeah, come, baby, something like
that, and you do, you come hard, and it shoots out of you,
some of it hitting her face, and neck, most of it simply
running down her hand, and onto your fat fucking
adulterer’s belly.

        You fucking piece of shit.

        After the bar whore wiped her face off with a Carl’s
Jr. napkin she found under one of her couch cushions, and
you pulled your pants back up and took a leak, you said you
had to go, and you did. You went.

        And here you are, still drunk, walking through the
night toward your house.

        Walking, the guilt twists inside you like a knife.

        The pointlessness of what you’ve just done.

        The pointlessness of almost everything you’ve ever
done, and everything you’ve decided not to do.

        You don’t know what’s the matter with you.

        Why you do what you do.

        Why you don’t do what you don’t.

        Everything is nonsensical and stupid and pointless,
and yet the world keeps turning on its axis, and that
somehow makes it worse, makes it more pointless. Because
how dare the world not acknowledge what’s happening to you.
How dare the sun continue to shine. The wind continue to
blow. Clouds continue to form. Babies continue to be born.

        You’re falling apart and the world doesn’t even
acknowledge your pain.

        If you died tomorrow, all the tears cried for you
wouldn’t even fill up a goddamn teaspoon.

        What an ugly world.

        What a fucking...

        The red and blue flashing lights behind you snap you
from your thoughts. Your heart starts pounding. You start
thinking of the bank robbery. You must have been
identified.

        For a moment, you consider running. A brief fantasy of
life in Mexico plays through your head. Following the
fantasy immediately is the realization that you’re just
some random guy walking drunkenly through the night to the
cop; he couldn’t possibly know who you are. What you’ve
done.

        You stand and wait for the cop to pull up next to you
and arrest you for public intoxication, but he doesn’t. The
lights were never flashing for you. He drives right past.

        Figures.

        You’re not important enough for flashing lights.

        You useless sack of shit.

        After a moment of just standing, you put a foot
forward, and then another, and soon enough you’re walking
again. Through the night being dark.

        After approximately twenty minutes, you can see the
gray silhouette of your little street neighborhood. The
dying lawns. The shit cars. Your own shit car parked in the
cracked driveway next to your own dying lawn.

        The car is there.

        In the driveway.

        Maybe she didn’t leave after all.

        Or maybe she just left you the car.

        You think:

        I don’t even deserve that.

        She gave you love and took your name, and you can’t
even keep your dick in your pants. Things get bad between
you and you use it as an excuse to fuck the face of some
woman you met in a bar.

        Okay, so maybe things between you are a little worse
than bad. Maybe your wife has been on the verge of leaving
for months, and maybe she was even less able to handle your
erratic behavior after you lost your job, and maybe you
losing your job was all your fault anyway. Maybe all of it
has been your fault from the beginning. Maybe you’re
completely to blame for everything that’s ever happened to
you.

        You fumble in your pocket for your keys as you
scramble toward the front door, wondering how you’re going
to be able to look your wife in the eyes after what you let
happen tonight. After what you took part in.

        You fucked some woman’s face, and that woman wasn’t
your wife.

        You adulterer.

        You claim to love your wife and want it to work out,
but then you do something like that, something that can
destroy a healthy relationship, which your relationship
with your wife is far from, you idiot.

        You pull the keys from your pocket, find the correct
one, and stick it into the doorknob.

        You turn the key.

        You turn the knob.

        You push open the door.

        You walk inside. Into the dark of your house.

        “Honey?” you say.

        “Are you home?” you say.