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looking for luciferin numerology on the dollar bill, taking care of my roommate's cat, I snort a baggie of white residue I find before making a cup of yerba mate blended with coca leaves, later pleasuring myself for an extended period of time to pics of my online gf before stealing some DCK I previously gave to my other roommate, coy, before finding him in the kitchen filling an empty bottle of LSD with water and drinking it
he gives me a second cycle of the container, some trickling down my chin before I prime a canvas for an hr and a half in the driveway, later skateboarding to 7/11 for a slurpy and pack of bugler, surprisingly high on acid, etc., when asked for proof of identification by the cashier
"oh man, I don't know," touching my pockets
"I know how it is," he says
returning home, coy shouts from the front lawn, "ARE YOU ENJOYING YOUR INFINITE DAY?" before he and my friends critique my somewhat ironic greeting of namaste
finding america to be in a worrisome state of affairs, a substantial lack of dopamine in my brain makes me want to kill myself yet my soul refuses to die
there's an altruism in existing within a binary system, smoking resin from a bong, and not voting
the next day, during belated breakfast of roommate's toast and avocado, a guest enters the kitchen where I resign to a safe, unwelcoming demeanor until spoken to
"is taylor," who doesn't really live here, "home?"
of the house's nine residents, three, including parrot, pay no rent, two, including me, pay little to none, three are hastily attempting to forgo their lease, taylor lives in her van in the driveway, and coy, who feeds me a single meal a day since inviting me in poverty to stay w him for the spring, has just left for his job at the library
I carry my yerba mate into the sunroom, pour a few mg of DCK mailed via NYC into the mug before continuing work on a short story collection I'll soon give up on
taylor enters the room some time later, informing me of having given the aforementioned guest, mika, my phone number, who texts me until the next day when she lies w me in my roommate's bed, shares her vicodin and kisses me in between conversation about my poetry, her judaism, and our collective history w drug dependency
we meet that night at a 24 hr spa, I find her eating sushi w her uber driver, she later falls asleep in the clay sauna after telling me of thousands of dollars she stole from her father
I cycle through various pools and saunas in the bathhouse, shower a handful of times, shave and brush my teeth as miscellaneous nude men carry neutral tenor in my periphery
in the co-ed area, I lie next to and gently awake my love interest who notes my shaven face before masturbating me in the toy house of the empty children's playroom
paying our tab in the morning, her card is declined and she's instructed by the polite receptionist to not return to their establishment
mika makes apprehensive plans to meet me sometime soon before breaking up w me over text the next night, later changing her mind and arriving to my place the day after w in-and-out burger when her mother enters my home and begins to accuse her of promiscuity and drug use, soon followed by her father, who I hear assault her from the kitchen where I'm explaining the situation to an irritated roommate
dissociating on research chemicals, I greet her parents with this request: "please no hurt, there's no pain here"
they go through her purse and record my home's interior on their phones as I continue to calmly critique their parenting
"you don't understand," the father makes intimidating gesticulations towards me and my roommate, "she's sick in the head, she can't be out," before peeling out on the street in their SUV
"I'm almost thirty-three," my roommate concludes from the porch, "I work for a gallery that is somewhat reputable, I come from a working class family, I'm the first to admit I have my vices, I know it can be hard to like someone like myself, but this is not something I expected to be dealing with at this point in my life"
*
it's late spring and the disappearance of MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT MH370 is starting to wane from public awareness when the protagonist (he/him) is solicited by his klonopin dealer for columbia's journal of poetry along w invitation to an academic seeming party where he quickly enters the bathroom after spotting a previous love interest, leaning his back against the door, and wondering if those are real seashells in the sink before leaving the party early, it was awkward, jumping down the last few steps of the stairwell and out into a nondescript chelsea-type neighborhood, recalling a perception of his past self w mixed feelings of envy, wanting to change his thoughts and successfully doing so, reflecting instead on the state of his mental health for the duration of the transit home where upon entering, his roommates' absences allow the young and impressionable poet to wander around his apt to varying degrees of nudity, absentmindedly masturbating sans sexual connotation throughout the day
*
cutting parts of my hair in the bathtub when my landlord introduces me to my roommate, a nurse who tells me of her responsibilities at a nearby clinic and asks what I do in return, before I insufflate leftover bath salts alone in my room and on my way to get tacos w gio
"how do, uhm," she begins, "never mind," before telling me of a swedish children's book she's having trouble translating about a father's difficulty in putting his toddler to sleep while the mother is away
"the word translates to, 'like a dance,' like the child falls asleep as gracefully as a dance"
"like piece of cake," I suggest
the bernie sanders open discussion is in a gallery space, the exhibition described on the exterior plaque as "A PANORAMA OF SHIFTING CONCEPTIONS AND UNCONVENTIONAL JUXTAPOSITIONS," where the first volunteer speaks for nearly 9 consecutive mins spanning topics of postcolonialism, jordan peterson, private space colonization, to the possibilities of a resource-based economy before gio leads me by hand to insufflate 4-HO-MET on the sidewalk outside
everything begins to feel so improbable it makes me want to cry, the sun shining on us only a few thousand miles away as I tell gio who isn't paying attention how I feel naive to what roles I fill for those close to me, as well as what roles I seek fulfilling in others
we overhear two children in the middle of a verbal dispute and start to bellow w an almost worrisome degree of laughter, "why do they bother," gio gasps, laughing so hard we're crying, "what could they possibly have to learn from each other?"
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