Thirst And Serenity

Dim light and outside it's cold and I've had way too much to drink and she's leaning on my shoulder, also intoxicated, as we drive on our ride to the next bar.
I have the window open to splash cold air on my face in an empty attempt to sober myself up.
She fades in and out and that's a warning sign and I see the electric blue sign burning in the air in front of me and I'm staring outside and I stare at the building of my new employment and I say, "Hey, that's where I work."
And she wakes up and stares at me in the dim light that is getting dimmer by the mile and she half whispers, "Congratulations, again," forcing the words out as she wakes up.
And she is smiling and leaning on me and I stare at her smile and wonder and look away again and again I'm looking outside in the dim night.
"I don't know if I'll like it. I don't know if it'll be good for me."
"Don't panic, now."
"I want to go back. I want to go to Iraq. Iraq would be good for me."
And at this point the ride is over and we're at the next bar and I take another drink and drink harder, for no apparent reason, I think. But I'm wrong.
"Iraq would be good for me," I say and I'm forgetting what I'm saying.
Light gets dimmer, even in the headlights from the street as we walk out of that bar and on, to yet another one.
"I'd miss you."
She said it a hundred times. She said it a thousand times. I wonder if she is looking at me and I wonder where we are and I think that I can never get away from the same old themes in my life.
I look at her and then away and then at her, again, and we're drinking together, the two of us, in the last bar, and the light is so dim that we can't see anything else and there we are, the two of us, somewhere, in that dimming haze.
"All that I know doesn't really make sense."
"I think we drink for the same reasons."
"I think you lead me on."
"Blame it on whatever."
"I'm thankful for whatever."
We toast to ourselves, drink, stare at each other because there is nothing else to stare at. And then it's all dark.
The lights go out.

Starring at the blue sky, dreaming of the ocean

The turbulence wakes me up.
My headphones have fallen off my head and I was about to drool on my shirt, but then the ride got bumpy and my dreams got shaken. My eyes rip open, back to my world. It was a good dream, I think. I shake the sleep from my eyes and cough. The stale smell of fake oxygen fills my nose. A headache follows another cough.
The movie on the screen in front of me is still playing, but there is a glare from the sunny sky outside and I can't see the screen. I think it's a good film, the beginning was anyways and I put back on the headphones, not to listen to the movie - never mind fantasy - but to drown out the sound of the twin engines pushing us through infinity, engines that drown out every other sound.
I look out the window, at the day from the point of view of the sky, and out into infinity, the endless world.
I wonder how hard it was for Magellan to find out the world was round during his attempt at circumnavigation, finding out you can really only go on forever, that there is not fantasy edge of the world. He searched for the end of infinity. I think that we've both found out there is no end to it.
The speaker above my head blares and hisses and comes to life and over the roar of the engine the captain says that we're passing over New York City and to fasten our seat belts because turbulence is expected. I tighten the belt around my waist. Sit. Think about infinity, and look out the window. Sailing through infinity and I wish there was a good song playing right now. One that describes Europe to North America. Dream to reality. Germany to the States. The Rhineland to the Bluegrass. Frankfurt to Kentucky and everything in between. And infinity all around. I look out the window and down onto New York City and wonder if the people below realize they are the center of the world.
The center of the universe, really.
I watch as it passes and I head back into infinity and in my headphones, over the monotone hum of the engines, that endless hum you can't escape, I hear a guitar and wonder if Magellan ever played guitar as he traveled aimlessly through the world. Seems like something one would do passing through infinity. I bet he wished he had a guitar.

Dark Eyes

At night I try and remember why I left this place in the first place.
A specific reason, I mean.
Tossing, turning, wondering, wandering; waiting for the momment when things make sense.
A lot of things don't make sense. Questions lead to answers that are more questions.
Now I'm back home.
"Home."
Doesn't feel like home. But Home is relative, anyways.
I think I left home to find Home but in the end only found more questions. That and a deeper yearning.
Tonight I'm sitting in that huge open room with the skylight windows three stories big above me. Starring out at the stars and the bleak open space of night I wonder why, exactly, I left this place in the first place. And what I learned.
People scamper around.
Across from me a girl with dark, piercing features is starring in my direction with absolute lust filled to the brim in her eyes, and I'm flattered. I think to myself that there are more important things than sex, though, and think that I never thought I'd say that.
Away from her starving glare I'm looking for answers on a computer screen, sifting through the vastness that is the internet and finding only space and all of this makes me thirsty for a drink, I think, but wonder if I really want liquor and wine, or if water would do just fine.
The guys behind me tell each other how drunk they'll get come Friday, when their week is over, each one trying to one-up the other in a brinkmanship of envisioned binge drinking. Dark Eyes vodka is on their to-do list. Cheap, but whatever gets you there.
Friday nights can be better spent away from the watering hole, I think.
But what kind of statement is that? Stupid me. Friday nights are to be lived, experienced, where sex, lies, drugs, lust, life, liquor, feast and fortune come together and torch everything we hold pure and sacred - forgiven, in the end, because Sunday morning is right around the corner.
I've given up singing on Sunday.
God doesn't hear my song.
I think to myself that God has left me, truley, and that's a hard thought to think about so I turn my attention to the girl, passing, her perfume leaving a wake around me, filling my emptiness with... something. Lust is a lost life for me, as it should be.
Evening light seeps through the skylight.
Drifting in the night above is my mind.
Focusing on the task at hand I wonder what the task at hand really is.
Clouds gather above. Storm sounds. Rain beats down on the glass ceiling and echos through the caverness, empty, five-story building filled with written words and frustrated faces.
I'm a frustrated face feeling as empty as my surroundings.
Another girl walks past, nice legs, lips, eyes, hair, waist. Her dark eyes flow across me in my chair, yearning for that appetite that we all yearn for from the oppositte sex. Or the same sex, I think, and laugh, watching as a guy stares at me with the same look. I wonder if emptiness can be filled with lust and liquor.
It has before, in this place.
Things seem different now.
I left and now I'm back. Back to lust and liquor. Back to what I ran from and finding that I'm still running in an endless triatholon.
I left for all the right reasons. And landed back in the grasp of those reasons.
Why did I leave in the first place? And where did I ever go?
The girl across from me slants her body and the night light makes the curves of her chest shimmer.
Her dark eyes look up and meet mine and she smiles, and I smile back.

Hard To Explain

Pirmasens soccer stadium.
At the top.
Inside the crowded room I'm warm and the alcohol is partially to blame. I sip.
I'm looking outside, at the grey, hazy day and below, on the field, as the whistle blows and the game starts.
Someone asks me how I got tickets to the VIP suite. I tell her it's hard to explain. That is a good way to let people know that you don't know how to answer their question. Usually that's how you answer when you don't want to talk to someone. I do anyways.
"Where are you from?" She asks.
That is a question that is also hard to explain, I want to tell her, but I don't feel like expalining. Born somewhere, raised somewhere else, definately not what people claim I am, but, rather, something I think I wish I was. I don't really know.
I settle on, "Kentucky."
"I've never been there," she says. "What does it look like?"
At this point I drink and am really only interested in the conversation because she reminds me of Kentucky.
"Beautiful."
"Didn't you invent fried chicken?"
"Not personally." And then I remember that they have Kentucky bourbon at the bar and we go and get a drink and then walk outside to watch the game.
The cold hits my face as soon as I open the door. I think to myself that I'd rather not feel right now. She tells me she hates this place. I think to myself that I could die here and be content.
I'm not really focused on anything as we sit: the game, the cold, my drink, her conversation, her breasts...nothing.
I feel empty.
Rain falls on the field. I'm sipping on my drink a little faster.
She leans close to me, her coat pulled tight because of the cold wind and whispers into my ear. I half listen.
"You want to go back in?" She says.
The other team is mounting a come-back. I watch as they score to tie the game and then get up and head to the clubhouse. Inside I order another drink and she talks to the owner of the club, who doesn't seem to be interested in her at the momment because his team just blew a 2-0 lead. A waitress walks up to me and hands me my drink and asks what I'm doing later and I drink and tell her, "Nothing. I really don't have anything...."
And before I finish she writes down her phone number and slides it over with a wink. I smile a half-hearted smile. And drink.
The rain falls harder and I think to myself that I could stay here a little while longer.
She asks something.
"I go back in a few days," I say.
"How long is the flight?"
"Too long," I say. Gives you time to think about where you're going and what you're doing and how to do that and what people will say and what you will say to them and how they'd react and how much you'd drink based on their reaction.
I settle on the fact that all of that is hard to expalin and don't say it.
I feel useless, talking to her.
We leave when the game is done and head to a bar. Somewhere. Outside a man and a woman are fighting. I focus mostly on their hot breath, coming out of their mouths in a spiral of smoke and disappearing into the night. She shoves him. I cough as we walk past. He looks at me. She is shouting. Hee drops his bottle and it breaks on the ground, the sound shattering the cold night. I look back to see, but they are in the dark.
We walk into the bar and order drinks. The wind outside blows hard, cold.
We talk. The bar is loud around us.
She asks me again and again I say, "In a few days." She's drunk. I'm drunk, too.
"Are you excited?"
"Not really."
"Why."
"A lot of reasons. It's hard to explain."
"If it's as nice as you say it is, I'd be excited."
"There's a lot I didn't say."
"Why leave?"
"Kind of have to."
"Stay a little longer."
"I've stayed long enough," I lie. I cough again.
"Are you sick?"
"No, just...tired."
"It's early. Why are you tired?"
"What are you drinking?"
"It's a juice with...either....vodka, no, something else...I'm not sure what kind of juice. Or if it's even vodka. It's juice and vodka, I guess."