Go

Phil sits on the last step outside the back door of his penthouse. He feels purged, that sensation of an intravenous chemical cocktail not dissimilar to falling in love or a post-coital glow. His nostrils flare in response to the salty, moisturized air wafting in from the relaxed waxing and waning of the shore yards from his stoop. His lungs fill to capacity and he exhales gloriously, relaxation overcoming his entire being. Seagulls are just beginning to accumulate and converse overhead and in and around the water. His surroundings are colored entirely in pastels in the early morning light. He presses his loafer-clad feet more firmly into the almost-white sand below them and stretches, jutting his jaw forward and flexing its muscles, making popping sounds in his ears as air escapes them. He runs his fingers through his matted and misshapen hair, his graying sideburns attacking the sharp black behind them.

Phillip, having just woken up, glanced at his phone. Its screen reads: Marcia. His waking mind stops, his train of thought derailed. Now all he can think of is the Marcia he will never see again. Then Phil lost all composure.
With grips on fistfuls of his own hair, he tried to hide his hot face from no one as he thrashed on the bed, then tears streamed down his cheeks as he flung his fists about, tossing splashes of sheets and comforters.
This has happened too many times. This piece of shit caller I.D., it’s been sent to punish me, dammit. For everything. For jerking off so much growing up. For the first woman I ever cheated on. For my tax report in ’89. For stealing that box of coffee from work. This piece of shit caller I.D. was sent to me to punish me for every little fucking thing I’ve ever done.
It won’t display any name but Marcia, the first caller to grace his phone line. Every morning, as each day gets worse, it displays her name on his cordless receiver, exposed and unable to be avoided like genitalia in a locker room.
Phil threw the phone, which exploded in shards of plastic and glass and rubber against his bedroom wall.

An episode a day can wear on someone’s mentality, said the deep, dark insets of Phil’s eyes. He appeared pale. He sweated too much. He smoked too much. He talked too himself too much.
“And yet, I’m still here,” he said to no one in particular.
Phil got up from the stoop. Somehow, this sudden acknowledgement necessitated action. Suddenly it all made sense to him. It all boils down to stop or go, “because if I stop, then forget it. I might as well kill myself.”
It’s 7:30 in the morning now. The sky is a fresh cobalt, pale and translucent, just waking and stretching and barely shielding the sun as it lazily manifests into the day. Phil noticed that there was no one around, that it’s typical for peace to lay upon a setting from somewhere around 4 or 5 a.m., and sustaining until almost noon. Air charged in and out of Phil with a silent vibrato that usually follows tears. A dash of sand settled at the bottom of his Bostonian loafers as he lit a Benson & Hedges on his way up the hill next to his empty house. The blue smoke fit right into the bright and faded surroundings as he exhaled it at the top of the grassy knoll accented with his white mailbox and its traditional red flag, down-turned. He shook out each shoe, and proceeded walking faster into the transcendent serenity that surrounded him. He’s alongside the narrow road that passes in front of his house now, freshly black and adorned with a clean yellow double-line separating two luxury-sedan-friendly lanes. The shore was now the landscape and its steady wheezing the soundtrack. Phil noticed the elevated sensitivity that follows an emotional breakdown and relished the feeling of his khakis caressing the sides of his calves. Then it’s the breeze against his face and arms. Then Phil noticed the sunlight, marginally rising in intensity with each step, glazing him in an optimistic yellow.

Phil’s shadow is almost directly below him. Surrounding homes are less sporadic now, and don the orthodox suburban monochrome bluish-gray shingles that cap off eggshell paneling that surround tall, lavishly curtained windows. Each one is jeweled with earth tone, red, and black luxury vehicles in their driveways, some further studded with striped sports cars, and a few others still with boats that look like they’re genuflecting as the trailers they lay on tilt forward on their two wheels. Downtown has already peeked from over the horizon and has since expanded until Phil could make out distinct buildings from his elevated position: city hall, the library, John J. Wilcox High, the Doubletree Hotel. Phil longs for the company of civilization, having tired of excursive solitude. He made his point: his situation didn’t befit his surroundings. Now epiphany calls for a bench.

Phil’s first encounter was with a homeless man. He wore a crumpled, dirty suit blazer against a bare torso infested with arrant curly hairs and characterized by dark leather skin. For pants he wore encrusted dark blue sweats and for shoes he had oversized sneakers tied bulbously tight. As Phil’s slow, swaying, self-pitying gait approached the homeless man, he quickly rose from his siesta slouch in an alley against a building.
“Hey, man, check this out. Good shit here, man. Excellent shit. You will be in the sky man. You look depressed. You need this, man, everyone needs a little Lucy.” He kept his face toward Phil, but he motioned with his eyes to his hand in his pocket as he jiggled it.
“You have acid?” Phil cocked an eyebrow.
“No, no, man, this here is Ecstasy, EX-TAH-SEE.”
“You have ex? Let me see.”
“Twenty dollars, man. You want to see a pill, let me see a bill.”
“I don’t know.”
“C’mon, man, I need a sandwich, man, I’m hungry. Can’t you tell I’m hungry?”
Phil looks the man up and down. “Yeah.”
“Well, c’mon, man, get with it! Let’s see the money, man! Then off you go, high as a kite, and I get me something to eat.”
“Oh yeah? You’re gonna go take my twenty a buy a sandwich, is that it?”
“Yeah, sure, a sandwich.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. Pastrami.”
“You like pastrami?”
“Sure. On rye.”
“What are you, Jewish?”
“What, you don’t like pastrami?”
“I’m a roast beef man.”
“Okay, then roast beef.”
“But rye is good.”
“Yeah, yeah, on rye.”
“You sure you want a sandwich?”
“Yes, man, yes, does it look like I need anything else?!”
Phil smirks. “Well, you kinda look like you need a drink.”
“No, I—a drink?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah, I can use a drink.”
“Alright, how about I get you a sandwich and a drink?”
“For some ex? No way, man. I need a sandwich, but this E right here ain’t worth no damn sandwich. Shit, maybe I want two sandwiches, but it ain’t none of your business either way, all that your business is that you pay me for this E.”
“I’ll tell you what. How about I go get you that drink and we discuss this some more?” Phil smiles amicably.
“How about you get the fuck out of my face?”
“I’ll be right back with that drink.” Phil turns on his heel and starts down the sidewalk.
“Don’t you come back here, boy!” the bum shouted after him.
Phil walked away from the alley assessing his surroundings and looking for a liquor store. The sun was bright, but its effects were minimal; colors vividly assailed Phil’s eyes as he squinted into the urban landscape while goose bumps erupted on his arms and chest in response to a passing breeze. This same breeze rustled a disemboweled newspaper in the nearby gutter to accent the late morning’s relative silence. “Hyaline’s Deluxe Deli and Mini Market” stood beckoning two blocks up on the other side of the street. Phil walked toward the corner, his shoes audible against the darker concrete of the city. Each lane in the now complexly divided street was gray with a blurry black stripe down the middle. Just as the yellow box with the black screen across from Phil switched from a red palm to a white walking man, Joey appeared behind him.

“Phil! Hey, man! How’s it been? I haven’t seen you in forever, man, where have you been?” He amicably paces a hand on Phil’s shoulder.
“Hey. I was laid off.”
“No shit!” Phil leans back in exaggerated surprise, tilting his head forward and raising his eyes, “How long ago?”
“About two weeks,” Phil’s hands slide into his pockets as he walks.
“Fuck, man. Wow. Awkward.”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, dude, so what, you gonna get another job or…?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m just going to ride this one out.”
“Ride this... out? But you have so much to live for!”
“So much to live for? Joe, what are you talking about?”
“Aren’t you dating this bombshell? And I mean, it’s not like you were shitty at work or anything. I mean, you did your job. You just started when, May?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“Dude. This was bound to happen. We’re downsizing. You’re the new guy. So just be some new guy somewhere else. I’m sure you can slide in somewhere where they pay more. ‘I’m just gonna ride this out.’ You sound like you’re quitting.”
“I can’t quit. I was laid off.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, well, what’s what I’m going to do.”
“Aw, man, you sound like you need a drink. Yeah, how about we go get drinks? We can have a little man session.”
“A ‘man session.’? What the f—look, Joey, I’m not gay.”
“Hahahahaha, alright, alright, a man session, you know, when we watch sports and extraneously curse and objectify women, behaving in a completely infantile manner as we nullify our problems by drowning them in the cesspool of intoxication, once again accentuating the dismal fact that humanity barely matures past adolescence.”
“What?!”
“Huh? What??”
“What did you just say?!”
“C’mon, you’ve never heard of a man session?”
“Cesspool of intoxication?”
“Uh…?”
“What you just said.”
“If that’s your interpretation…”
“Hold on, I have to step into this store really quick.”
“Alright, c’mon.”

The bell that announces visitors to the store chimes once, stutters two more, and once finally as they step inside the mostly urban, somewhat dirty corner store. Joey is obviously on his lunch break, screams his orange tie as his charcoal pinstripe suit nods in assent. From his left fist hangs a leather briefcase and above it, a silver Omega watch halfway concealed by the cuff of a perfectly pressed white collared shirt barely exposed below the cutoff of his jacket sleeve. Phil finds the juxtaposition against his white, blue, and russet vertically striped shirt worn Miami-style, faded khakis, and weather beaten loafers depressing. I’m unemployed. Everyone that sees us together, speaking to one another, knows that he’s a workingman, and that I’m unemployed. This clerk, he probably thinks I’m his loser brother or his despondent cousin or his sponsored drug addict. He’ll probably expect him to pay for everything. Fucking bullshit.
Phil heads straight for the isle housing wine, directly to the right of the clear plastic-encased register. He picks out a bottle of cheap Shiraz as Joey browses the magazines near the entrance. The welcome bell chimes as a heavyset man and an older blonde pass behind Joey to the soft drink and beer refrigerators in the rear. As Phil approaches the square opening to the counter bordered with cigarettes, lotto tickets, and candy displaying against the enclosure, a tall, lanky man with a scruffy beard and bags under his eyes walks in, engaging the bell once again. As Phil instinctively turns around, Joey mutters “Oh, shit.”
“You.” So typical. Phil laments the long-since death of creativity. Human interaction appears to have been reduced to quotes from movies expressing median instructed perspectives. In any case, the tall man was referring to, and is now looking at Joey.
“Hey, Adam. Hi. How’s it going?” Adam asks, sounding exhausted, capitulating to the inevitable.
“Still can’t shake the sickening memory of your bare ass. Yourself?” a gravelly, stoic voice responds.
“It’s been okay. How’s Mary-Enya?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Yeah.” Joey looks toward the ground, and then his attentions shift toward the ceiling, anywhere but Adam’s eyes.
“So, Joey. Joey, Joey, Joey. I hate the way she said your name, like she knew something that she wasn’t supposed to know and it gave her power. Isn’t that funny? I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Y’know, it’s almost like I know you differently now. You know how someone’s name almost like a word with its own definition after a while? Yeah. Joey. Adjective. Snake.” Adam ends the sentence sharp and breathily, emphasizing the sibilant.
“Now, look, can’t we be mature adults about this? Your marriage is your business, not mine. It’s her responsibility. It’s your responsibility. It isn’t mine.”
“You son of a bitch, you were in my home!”
“I was invited in.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Take it outside!” The man behind the counter obviously wasn’t enjoying the show.
“Fuck you! Maybe I should take your wife!” Adam turns to the man at the counter with vicious, piercing eyes.
“Fuck you, this is my store! I don’t give a shit who you fucked, who he fucked, or who I fucked, just take it outside, you’re fucking with my business!” The clerk hits the counter with his fist, face reddening.
“Alright, alright,” Joey interjects, “we’ll take it outside.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Adam’s temperament worsens. The tension in the atmosphere noticeably rises.
“Look, dude, don’t get arrested over me. If we need to take this outside, we’ll handle this like men outside.”
“Like “men.” There’s nothing to discuss, Joe.”
“There’s nothing left to shop for, Adam.”
“Look,” Phil interrupts, bored of the anticlimactic exchange, “me and this here Shiraz have a date with a sharply dressed hobo. So, no sudden movements, I’m just going to excuse myself.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Adam’s eyes stab at Phil.
“I’m the guy that’s leaving,” Phil briskly responds as he hustles out the door, cheap wine-typical paper bag under his arm.
“Yeah, let’s go have those drinks,” Joey chimes in, starting for the door directly behind Phil.
“This situation is far from done,” Adam growls. He grabs Joey by the arm and swings him around.
Phil pokes his head back through the open door, the chimes sounding for the third consecutive time. “You know, Adam, you look like you need a drink. You should come have a drink with us.”
“Yeah, sure, we can talk it over,” Joey concurs.
“What do you think this is, a sitcom?!” Adam yells, losing his temper.
“Adam,” Phil begins, a terse expression about his face as he stands in the doorway, the bell chiming for the fifth time, “he’s right, you know. It’s your wife who cheated on you, not him. You’re lonely. I’m lonely. He’s lonely, what the fuck is he doing playing Days of Our Lives at the corner store? Gimme a break. Let’s just all have some drinks and forget about this shit. We don’t need this. We need a drink.”
“Excuse me.” The squat man, reddened and flustered, uneasily squeezes between the three men as the woman bounces closely behind.
“Drinks,” Adam repeats, calming down.
“Oh my God, get the fuck out! Drinks! Out!” The clerk shouts.
“Drinks,” Phil concludes, and he turns and leaves the store before the door closes on him. Joey follows closely behind, leaving Adam with no choice as he’d forgotten why he stepped into the store in the first place. The three men walk in succession down the sidewalk toward the alley where Phil met the bum. They begin to cross the street.
“Where are we going to get drinks? I’m not sure there’re any bars down this way, we’re on the edge of town—did you just call me a hobo in there?” Joey nervously questions as he hustles to catch up with Phil, worrying that Adam might suddenly attack him at any moment.
“Right here.”
“Here? Here, like, the corner, here, or there’s some place right there on the other side of the street here, or what, where here?” Joey continues, anxious.
“Right here. We’re here already. Relax.” Phil stops at the alley and looks inside.
“OH MY GOD, YOU WAS A COP?!” The hobo shrieks as he scrambles back from his perch amidst garbage and litter.
“No, no, this is Joey, and this is Adam. Joey fucked Adam’s wife, and we’re all lonely now, so we’d like to share a drink with you.”
“Phil, what are you talking about?” Joey asks, incredulous, leaning back again.
“Oh my God, this is some bullshit. So you’re gonna waste my time, are you? You think this shit is fucking hil-fucking-harious, don’t you?!” Adam’s angry again, his arm rising vertically and falling back to his side as he speaks.
“Fellas, fellas. Be cool. We’re just gonna have a drink and everything is gonna be alright.”
“Dude, you are not alright.” Joey sounds genuinely concerned.
“You people, ohhhhh man, what is this?! Is this a joke? What is this? You people are fucked up. Am I gonna have some of that? What’s that?” The bum advances toward Phil.
“It’s some wine, c’mon, let’s drink.”
“Oh, well shit, let’s drink then,” the bum, now on his feet, pulls the bottle from the bag in Phil’s hand by the neck.
“Oh, fuck this.” Adam swings at Joey. The bum immediately lunges at Adam.
“Hey, man, we’re drinkin’ here! We don’t need no nothin’, none of your bullshit in here! We’re drinkin’!” He immediately detracts, out of breath, and proceeds to work at the cork, pushing it with the end of his thumb, but staring at Adam in the face.
“Hey, what the fuck, WHOA, WHAT THE FUCK?!” Adam stumbles back, but retains his balance.
“Maybe you need some E, Adam.” Phil smiles at Adam amicably.
“E? Shut up, who has E? You have E?” Adam sounds interested. “I haven’t rolled since college, man.”
“How much, Mr. Hobo?” Phil turns to the bum, who’s panting from the excess activity.
“Uh (pant, pant) thirty… fifty (pant, pant)…”
“Thirty dollars and fifty cents? What the fuck kind of price is that?!”
“Fifty dollars! It’s fifty. C’mon, I need a sandwich.”
“You need a sandwich? What kind of sandwich costs fifty bucks?! You just said thirty-something!”
“I said fifty! You didn’t let me finish!”
“Oh, God, what is this?! I can get a pill for thirty five from one of my son’s friends, I’m sure.”
“Alright, thirty five.”
“Whatever. Nevermind. I don’t even want any pill anymore.”
“Hey, no! NO!” The bum, lifting the bottle to his lips to drink, emphatically swings his arms in panicky dissent and accidentally throws the bottle across the alley, which explodes in a burst of translucent green and red against the wall, the lower half retaining form with aid from the label and crowned with agitated shards. The solid piece drops heavily to bounce off of a lidded garbage can and land standing a couple of yards from the trio.
About one and a half minutes of silence and ringing ears pass.
“Hey, look, I need to get back to work.” Joey picks up his briefcase and gracefully pulls up the same hand to glance at the watch at his wrist before he swiftly exits the alley. Adam looks at Phil.
“Look, man, we’re all depressed. Fuck it, ya know?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
The bum begins to cry.
“You really wanted a drink, huh?” Phil asks empathetically.
“Naw, man, (sniff) I just, I’m just sayin’, man, (sniff) I haven’t had a drink in forever, man. Like, damn, man, no one’s ever, (sniff) no one’s ever nice to me, man.”
Adam stares at the bum.
“How long have you been homeless,” inquires Phil.
“I don’t know, man. (Sniff) Years. Months. I don’t got a calendar, man.”
“What about those drugs you’re selling?” Adam asks.
“These ain’t nothin’. These are some whatchacallits. Caffeine pills or something. I stole them from some store. (Sniff)”
“Oh,” Adam replies.
“You know, you really are a piece of shit,” the bum looks at Adam, suddenly irate.
“What?” Adam’s taken aback.
“You. You’re a piece of shit. You can’t even sit and drink. Always worried about some bitch.”
“Hey, what? What?! Don’t try to lecture me, homeless man, you aren’t nothin’ but a piece of shit yourself, living in an alley crying over some wine,” Adam gestures toward the bum with this open hand and rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, but… but if I bought that wine, it ain’t gonna go get itself drunk by someone else, now is it? I don’t care where I live, this wine ain’t going nowhere if I treat it right. If I ain’t smash that wine, well, it’d be right here in my hand. Does it say ‘oh, Bobby, you gonna feed me? You gonna take care of my kids? You gonna buy me shit?’ Shit?! No. No, it don’t do nothing but get drunk. And so do I. And we just get drunk together, me and the wine.” The voice Bobby uses for the wine is a high pitched marriage between amusing and obnoxious.
“How does that make me a piece of shit?” Adam asks with a cocked eyebrow.
“Because.”
“What?”
“Because. Because you was gonna hit somebody who is willing to drink with you. I would never do that, no matter who he fooled around with.”
“Even if it was your wife?”
“Especially if it was my wife. Wifes. Give me a break. Everyone has a god-damned wife. Fuck a wife. Francis who lives under the bridge, right? Got himself a nice little curly sue, dirty and stinks like shit just like him. Just like me. Poor as fuck, nowhere to sleep but where everyone else pisses and shits. Me, I don’t want it. What do you call them? A libelility.”
“Liability,” Phil corrects.
“I just said that! I just said it! See? That’s what they do, all day long, ‘no, no, you say it like this’,” Bobby uses the voice again.
Adam starts chuckling. Phil promptly follows.
“Whasso funny? It ain’t funny, it’s tragic! All I want is someone to drink with. Someone to sit and drink and shut the fuck up.” Bobby, having sat back down, makes a display of laboriously rising to his feet to shuffle to the scene of the destroyed bottle of wine. He lifts the shard-laden half to his lips and sips the remaining wine at the bottom. “I’ll bet you queers would never done this. Still tastes good to me.”

Phil lights another Benson & Hedges. “I understand. I would want to kill him too. It won’t help, though.”
“You don’t understand shit,” Adam replies.
“Well, I mean, what’s left to understand? Your wife cheated on you. I know how emotions work. They’re bullshit.”
“My wife didn’t cheat on me.”
Silence.
“Huh?” Phil finally responds.
“My wife didn’t cheat on me!”
“Oh.”
More silence.
“Anyway, emotions aren’t bullshit,” Adam concludes.
Phil looks at Adam. He stoops forward as he walks; his arms hanging and swaying before him like inconveniences. His clothes look worn and wrinkled as if he slept in them.
“What are they for, then?”
“They’re the top evolution in mental processes. They’re the ethos, the pathos, and the logos, altogether.”
“Huh?”
“What separates us from animals and all that.”
“Animals have emotions.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, seriously. There’s all kinds of stories out there about animals getting depressed when they’re abandoned or when their owner dies. They just give up. Stop eating. Like us.”
“Hmph.” Adam turns away, looking toward the buildings beside them lining the right side of the sidewalk. The sun is angled in a way that validates the mid-afternoon traffic and activity around them.
“Well, look, I gotta go,” Adam says as he bears toward the right with the intention of turning at the next corner.
“Well, hey, wait! If she didn’t cheat, then—“
“None of your business,” Adam responds over his shoulder. Before Phil could think of something to say, the corner is upon them and Adam turns.
“I guess I shouldn’t stalk him or anything,” Phil resigns as he continues to walk straight, crossing the street.

Emotions are the top in evolution, huh? That would justify the whole “God is love” business, wouldn’t it?
But God isn’t love. God has no problem letting you go. Piss Him off, and it’s off to Hell you go. What about people who’s hearts are broken? Some people get cheated on, but they forgive. They give second chances. They don’t have to go straight to Hell.
“But we don’t,” Phil says aloud, “that’s the point, isn’t it? This is our second chance. And… it’s always harder the second time around. Less trust, more alienation, a whole lot of emotions being thrown back and forth…”
So life is a second chance. Life is the messy afterbirth, the wet and sticky and strange and difficult ‘lets try to make this work,’ post betrayal attempt at keeping it together. In terms of God and humanity, man cheated on God and now God is reluctantly taking us back. And we have to prove we’re worth it.
Phil snickers. “But some of us are whores and can’t help ourselves, so we end up lonely or with the Wrong Guy.”
A breeze passes like another moment in time, never to be seen again. Phil inhales in hopes that he might hold on to it a little longer, holding his breath to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. The trees lining the curb whisper to one another, a communal intonation of fricatives, snickers, and sighs benignly releasing life into the vicinity. Their edged appear singed, some still glowing red and others a burnt sienna, and their majorities still a lush and luminous green. The suns dimmer slowly crawls down at the rate of the sun itself toward the horizon, and yellow streetlights flicker and stretch in preparation for their graveyard shift as houselights appear sporadically like stars, stoop lights hovering above doors like pixies. The entire neighborhood adopts a character of shadowed orange and blue and Phil feels the warmth of families settling in their apartments radiating around him.
But the question is, how does God let go?! How, if He loves us so, can He finally let go, with no admonish, no loss, no hurt…
“I can’t do it. I can’t die alone. I fear that I will. Your fears will consume you. That’s what I’ve heard my whole life. ‘Your fears will consume you. You are your own worst enemy.’ But I don’t hate myself. I just don’t want to be myself.
“Maybe that is what makes God more perfect than us. He knows how to let go, He can completely control His emotions while we allow ours to consume ourselves. But love! It’s all we have. It’s all we should be. It’s hate that consumes us, not love.” A man audaciously stares Phil in the face as he walks by, walking around him with an extraneous distance between, an uncomfortable look on his face. Phil clears his throat.
I hope she’s okay.
I honestly hope that everything is all right with her. I wish her well, I swear, I wish her the very best. Hell wouldn’t just be without her. Hell would be knowing that I’m without her and she’s miserable. She wasn’t happy, I guess. Many of them weren’t.
These women I’ve been with. Women are something, they really are. If they fall in love with you, they look at you like you’re Elvis, Johnny Depp, John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ Himself. You don’t have to do anything or say anything, just be. Be their savior, be their might, be their day and night… I mean, I have to acknowledge that. Songs, poetry, sculptures, tears, breakdowns, wars, and suicide, all for women. And we didn’t even want them to vote.
It’s because we’re afraid of them. Hell, I was terrified of Marcia. To think that she’d actually leave me… I just knew it would kill me. It wasn’t anything about her. It was her.
“She was… so… she was…” Phil’s vision becomes blurry and his eyes feel heavy, saturated, and warm.
But I’m okay.
Phil sighs. “I’ll be okay as long as I know she’s all right.”
I’m okay, because I know that somehow she’s okay. I know she’s okay. She didn’t deserve anything but fortuity. She deserves at least okay.
But she let me go. And I’m not okay. I feel so alone… this must be what Hell is like. Hell is when you’re completely alone.
I really don’t have anything anymore anyway. It’s all gone. But hey… maybe I deserve it. If I want God to understand so badly, if the only time I want to acknowledge Him is when I have no one else to speak to…
Oh, come on, Phil. Really, what is “God,” anyway? Optimism. God is nothing but optimism, right?
“That’s how I got here in the first place. Let’s start there. What is God?”
“God,” a woman sitting on an adjacent stoop smoking a cigarette replies, “is the only man that ever was that meant it when He said He was going to make everything all right.”
Phil stops walking and stares at her for a moment. The wrinkles on her face trace grimaces and scowls of frustration and desperation. Her drags are long, indulgent, and self-effacing.
“Then maybe we should start wishing Him well too, even when we think He left us, because he doesn’t owe us whores anything.” Phil only barely contrives the excited reaction to his statement; he turns and begins to walk forward as his senses dull to a visual monochrome, an auditory lull, an overall amorphous sensorial blur.
So I let go. Not go, silly. Not run or deny it’s happening, or try to control something you obviously can’t. Let go.

“Oh my God. Oh my God!”

“Oh shit, dude, did you see that?”

“Hey, Manny, check this guy out. A little too much, ya think, eh?”
“No, I don’t think he’s okay.”
“Oh, he’ll be alright.”

“Si-Si. Yo, Si-Si! Look-it this! Ohhhh, I don’t think he’s okay.”

“Oh my God, should we call the cops?”
“I’mma call.”

“Oh my goodness, babe, should we go over there? We shouldn’t go over there, huh. Look!”

“What the hell happened here?”
“Shit, I dunno, he was asking about God, and then, what, I dunno! I guess he got his answer.”


~ P.