Sometimes a roof can be a thing based solely on time. Not on sturdy tacks of familiar materials but on paper needs known as money and when you’re out of that, a roof can be based solely on time. I leaned against myself to the end of said time and when the end came I leaned against the bed. “This house has been with us through bees, black-outs, penny searches, jail and retrofitting,” I said to myself, and to the wall I said, “I know you don’t care.” The mystique of this house was never to be known to those without that stream of warm light when bourbon glows down in you. Amongst other bullshit I said, this, “Thank god this seldom happens…could you please stand away from me…,” I thought it exemplified my confusion and inability to explain my generation long delay in paying the bill.

It’s humid; therefore, I’m stinky. I would know as I lay on the blankets and when an attempt was made to sever myself from the bed the sticky blankets followed as good little blankets do. I took the pills with water from an elegant cup of crystal made in England and watched the heavy dust fall across my face as the pills made their way down to ultimately tell my brain its time to burn out the last of the day. I was fine with the sixty milligram turn towards ruination. I was in the backyard under the patio roof when the pills effect shot at me in lines of anxious excitement. I hit the cement patio and my eye lids flipped like a ticket machine shooting out sales for Super Bowl tickets, on the first day of sales, of course. I was under the influence and passed out naked and stinky under a roof that was now based solely on time.

My head and chin looked like an old boot laced-up tight, my eyes caught in the looped tie. No wonder, I lay unconscious for hours and felt like someone was watching me but knew once conscious that my stupid doings would bore even the devil. I went in the house and finished a bottle of gin and chewed on an old plastic Barbie shoe while placing a gin drenched paper towel on my scraped elbow. I had lost everything by now, everything. What was left I encouraged people to take, what other was left I had stacked in the backyard ready to burn to soil as soon as I could find a struck match.

Paranoia subsides, disorganization invades, nerves are diseases from glucose reactions and I don’t jump to run and get the phone anymore. I watched the mirror for the melting phase of psychosis or for the unpleasant witch to appear to tell me what to do next. I lost the house from overgrowing nerve growth due to a shorter span between intakes of gin. This span changes all the time leaving the bourbon intake at risk. Excuse me for the over sight, over due insight, or just blind sight. I lost the house due to non payment and am due to walk away from a life time of living slower than a sedation drip between the day of the last defaulted payment and the Marshall’s official lock-out.

Looking at my budget and calling friends, families and banks for a loan, mere “dinkering” in the land of primeval assholes. Each one taking a pillow and placing it on my face until I’m too numb to hear the last of the reasons why they won’t give a-lend. My darker emotions emit better in color photos, the shallower, listless, pearly emotions emit better in black and white. That is why I chose to be more listless and drank more bourbon. I sat the camera on a coffee table in the back patio laid down where I fell earlier and shot a black and white photo of myself with the empty bourbon bottle and then called my important, successful brother. He’s tall and bookish, wears a suit to work and the one thing that makes him the most important one of us kids – he won’t have anything to do with me.

Part II – Tomorrow!