McGlue

Right," I said, but it didn't feel very right. I didn't want to make it. I wanted to lie down with it and strangle it and kill it and save it and nurse it and kill it again and I wanted to go and forget where I was going and I wanted to change my name and forget my face and I wanted to drink and get my head ruined but I certainly hadn't thought about making it. That wasn't anything I'd ever sought out to do.

I am a drunk. It took me some time to know this. Here is how I know. How it’s always been is I don’t know how to talk or move or sleep or shit. I wake up mornings with my head in a vice. The only solution is to drink again. That makes me almost jolly. It does wonders in the morning to take my mind off the pain and pressure. I can use my eyes after the first drink, I remember how to line up my feet and walk, loosen my jaw, tell someone to get out of my way. Then I get tired. I whine and need to lie down. I lie down, I want a drink. I cannot sleep without having already forgotten my name, my face, my life. If I were to sit still or lie down in a room with some memory of myself – the time I have left to live out, that nasty sentence, that hell – I would go mad.

The law was all set up to keep people convinced their fears were well-guided. They came up with ways to prove themselves right about people who seemed a little different.

They want good meat on your bones before they eat you alive.

I lie down, I want a drink. I cannot sleep without having already forgotten my name, my face, my life.

I had the feeling, like alone on the road at night, that there was something watching me, something waiting for me to falter, something just hidden in the shadows waiting to pounce. That was God.

They'll twist your nose until it smells death in a bed of roses.

The stars come out. I look for the moon, but it eludes me. I can't find or measure my way. Drift, drift. If I just close my eyes I'll get there. I sleep some more.

There was a time I knew there was a god hearing my thoughts and I was careful what I let get said and there was a time the shame of what I heard up there made me bang my head against the wall

Above the altar a wooden man hung magically bleeding, his head bowed and face hurt but not unhappy. That was God, they told me.

I drank a bottle down and had Johnson pay for a few more and I opened the next one and passed it to Johnson and he took a swig and winced and laughed and passed it back to me, and that was it.

...you’re a good kid, and a drunk, but you just do what I say and you’ll make it with me, right?” “Right,” I said, but it didn’t feel very right. I didn’t want to make it. I wanted to lie down with it and strangle it and kill it and save it and nurse it and kill it again and I wanted to go on and forget where I was going and I wanted to change my name and forget my face and I wanted to drink and get my head ruined but I certainly hadn’t thought about making it. That wasn’t anything I’d ever sought out to do.

It's the captain. He looks fresh shaved. My own face is covered in little wires that amount to nothing but the look of dirt. It is a kind of dirt, things that grow out from me. It means I have dirt deep inside of me. A head full of dirt, maybe. When I've had a few, a nice soft dirt. Otherwise I am livewired, hungry-eyed like a scorned wolf, but give the appearance of a nervous boy, tittering along in search of something, namely, another drink.

The young men were born with knives in their brain.” RALPH WALDO EMERSON Life and Letters in New England (1867)

The people here, in this town, county, see what looks bad and make it worse. They’ll twist your nose until it smells death in a bed of roses.