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 ^{(it's beta!)}

A friend said, "A heart attacks feels just the same as a long run when you get that bad; just the run'll leave you dead in the woods but the heart attack leaves you dead in a restaurant with the cooks trying to get you out of there as soon as possible for liability and public relations reasons. All in all, the heart attack seems the better choice.”

He died, alone, bitter, in his room, pissed himself, semen stained sheets around him, an old TV playing I Love Lucy, smelling like a brewery. He died without much hope, or without ever knowing happiness, but he would never call it a suicide and no one would ever call it that, except he knew the danger, and he knew he couldn't do anything else, so he died, and so he is mourned as a lost soul struck down before his prime, but he would never say that either. That is for mourners and there are ideas of happiness which never seem to coincide with the deads'.

A girl cries pretty lonely because her boyfriend just doesn't understand; she cries and he just sits, unaware, unsatisfied, uncouth, in an arm chair reading a book. He enjoys the book. It's by William Kennedy. The girl does not know who William Kennedy is. He finds this more of a problem than any tears and any failure. He would find her sobbing of ultimate importance if only he knew it were occurring, and so she keeps crying, and he keeps reading, and a glass lies empty on both their kitchen tables.

A heart beats lonely; the sky falls in frustration at the world, young lovers hold each other in the rain, the rest of us leave our cars with our arms above our heads, either in surrender or in defense and not realizing the two are one in the same. The lovers stop seeing the beauty quickly as the stains start to show and they run outside and maybe they find a great meaning in all of it or maybe they're just wet. The sky falls upon a generator and all the power dies.

Watching the lovers is my dead friend; staring out the second story window, not meaning to gawk, he watches a young girl kiss a young man and lay her head against his chest. He nurses a bottle and the noises of dying machinery echo from the television. He nurses a bottle and the world seems to stop for a moment; the embrace ends; the power dies.

In a hotel down the road, the sky has regained its composure, the cherry pickers have fixed the wires; in the lobby there are men, in the men are dreams of comfort and of convenience, in the dreams are memories of better times forged into tools with which the future can be designed and constructed. The past has no use for them except to build the future, and they come embittered to every day, for there is no remembrance of what the good times were. In this hotel, men fall into beds tailor made for desperation, clean and pure and waiting to be torn apart.

The young couple sit on a bed, talking, the night before now deconstructed into how it has changed the relationship; the afterglow burnt out too quick. She doesn't even touch him, he only wants to find some sort of peace, yet now she's talking about where they are now, and where they can be, and before he grows, he wants to at least make a few memories before he has to lose them.

My friend is dying now, his heart is stopping now, the rain is stopping now; he doesn't make a call but he could make a call, he lets himself fade out not consciously, his hand is dialing but he doesn't know what to dial; remember, man, just remember, but you won't, try and make it but you won't; is this massive or is this minor, is this even the time to ask that? The call made his breath hanging phone trace he crawls to his bed, lies beneath the sheets, finds himself feeling better. In our reality, he's losing all the blood flow to his brain and somehow experiencing euphoria. In his reality, he's found a peace.

The girl lies her head on her boy's shoulder, telling him about her family, telling him about everything she can think of, and he tries to take it all him, but it's been too long and she knows it won't save anything. She keeps talking, he pets her back; it looks like rain.

At the funeral there was emotion and heartache and a man with a bad toothache who offered vicodin to those who were feeling too distraught by their aches and pains. Lying in the ground was my friend, still smelling like liquor and pity; he would've been proud of the way his belly made the pants near impossible to zip. He would've been proud of his son, who is my son now, getting himself too drunk to think and then pouring his heart to a girl who needed to have him pour his heart out even if it wasn't entirely voluntary.

Skin ripples like water; just tell the girl you care and let her talk a while and when she's done kiss her and don't say anything, because a man's never at peace, and if he talks he doesn't know what to say, and if he doesn't he thinks he does know but knows not to, and if he just doesn't say anything and shows that he cares, that's all he can do.