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     ## ##  ###    I S S U E   # 0 9 6        0 7 - 1 5 - 0 0   ###  ####   
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    ####  ###                   "Excerpt #1"                       ###       
     #######                     by Infernal                           
      ####                                                                  

        Anyhow, the point was, I was talking to E. and some other people
 about M. and his horrible girlfriend, and E. rattles off this list of women
 who "think M.'s great" and would just love the chance to hook up with him.
 Of course, he names off two Laura, who told E. I was "too nice" back in
 the day, and Amanda, who I've always had a thing for -- as girls who'd drop
 everything if fat, sluggish, lazy, never did shit for himself
 M. lummoxed along and grunted his intentions.

        It was an icicle to the heart -- what the fuck?  Who's out there
 hanging on the line to hook up with me?  With bizarre, carless, drunk,
 broke, disheveled, gap-toothed, metalhead me?  No one, that's who.  I'm left
 to withdraw, discreetly far enough away now that there's no chance I'll
 accidentally die or show up drunk on the porch anywhere in their ZIP code.
 I'm sealed up in this east side ghetto, crumbling like the rotted buildings
 I've thrown my possessions into, like the rotting organization I've somehow
 grafted myself onto, a weird tumor, an unwanted cousin.

        No one wants me.  I don't think I'm worthless, or hideous, but the
 facts are in front of me, and there's not much to be done about them.  One
 denies, by sheer ignorance or by the dumbing dullness of alcohol, or one
 deals with the hand dealt and moves forward.  But the problem is, I have
 never been good at dealing with reality.  Ever.  I would think that if I
 could have dealt with the loneliness, the isolation, the misery of trying
 to stuff my square meat and matter into the round holes given me by the
 people I've met along the way, the booze would have never been necessary,
 right?  I could have been at home in despair, I could have done my dance on
 the scaffold, perfected my rakishly grim smile, and who knows?  Even won the
 battle and the war by attracting some fellow ghoul whose infatuation with my
 don't-give-a-fuck nonchalance in the face of ostracization might have
 translated into something warmer, given time and sincerity.

        But no, like everything else, I do it half-assed.  I get withdrawn,
 then I go drink and act like a grinning, sweating puppet for other buffoons
 in bars.  I call women at three in the morning.  I go through the painful,
 unanesthetized surgery to remove myself from the world, and at the last
 second decide I like being attached to it like a tumor or a Siamese twin, so
 I stitch the gape closed and pour alcohol and platitudes over the seeping,
 searing wound.  I can't jettison this pack of fucking clowns, but I can't
 stand it either.  I can't become truly sullen and bitter, can't close the
 door on these hyenas and create, but I can't become one of them either.  And
 no one looks dignified stuck in a doorway.

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 # (c)2000 aNAda e'zine                           aNAda096 .*.  by Infernal #
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