Storied By Josh

There is a room that exists. It is called the quietest room in the universe. It is so quiet that one can hear their organs inside their own body. The longest a person has been able to stay in this room is forty five minutes. The silence maddens a person. It is a lonely, decent place for the insane.

 

The smoke hangs in the air. The dust mixes with it and they make love. Their children are asthma and COPD. They hang around in cough spittle and noise. Whiskey, neat, I say and move away from the bar. When you sit there everyone expects you to talk with them. To be a good neighbor and care about them losing their job or their wife or their house or…

 

 

It comes and I have another and another and soon I am irritable and too drunk, but I can write something I say, so it is okay. The bartender doesn’t agree and forces me to drink water and eat a little bread. I do and he is wonderful. I tell him over and over. He says “Yes I am, so leave me a tip.” I will. I promise. Do you know what a promise is? He says yes but I doubt it. No one seems to remember what a promise is when it comes time to keep one, but I do. So here you are.

 

It seems when my generation loses anything we seem to remember that we can gain our hollow joy again from drunkenness.

 

And we do.

 

The generation reminds me the most of the expatriates of une génération perdue. Oh my country,if you only knew our bitter love for you. Then you would see.

 

But it dances away from us. You are my oiseau rebelle. “When will I love you? Good Lord I do not know. Maybe never, maybe tomorrow. But not today, that’s for sure.”

So we drink and smoke and make dirty love beneath the sheets of another country. We whisper our sweet nothings to and in nations of sweet no ones who do not love, nor care, nor know the things we wish we didn’t. I shouldn’t speak for you. I’m sorry.

 

Silly men in silly suits think they must know how to fix it and damn the gay, damn the poor, damn the bastard and we love it so we put the men in charge while I watch it all slowly fall away. Our triumph crumbles, oh my triumph crumbles, but it wasn’t mine or ours anyway. It belonged to someone who came before who saw greatness that we dreamt of and took it.

 

Oh my love! Where have you gone? My future! My sanity! Taken away in a bottle floating. Just floating. In a sea of broken promise and regretful future. Come back to me when you are done seeing what is to be seen.I will come back too. Home is just a place to sleep and I have found many. Take me there and let me rest. Oh my love, let me rest inside of your sweet embrace again.

 

Yet you are silent. Silent like the room I will never visit.I heard a whisper of change but we knew that could not happen. Something stirs inside me and I feel warmth. I cannot tell from what. But a warmth must be lit somewhere. Who will light it? Is it here? Such a strange thing.

 

Perhaps it is in the eyes of the small boy I see in the street. He sells little gizmos and naive ideas. His eyes shine a fervor I do not know. I buy a thing from him and ruffle his hair. He eyes me and says something like “cazzo ubriaco”. I laugh heartily and go to find my silent room. A room to sleep.

 

The streets bend and twist. I try to find home but it changes and I am lost. Tell me I will make it there, I ask a man with a wide and wild mustache and a bottle of wine. He smiles and says “but where are you going?” I don’t know but maybe a place, I say and he doesn’t respond. He just laughs and I grow angry. I try to trudge off and trip on steps that were not there a moment ago.

A woman who is smart and not me but like me only with a decent thing in her bones finds me in the dark, in the narrow alley. She floats to me and she is my muse, I think but probably not. I am just drunk. She puts her hand on my face. She looks me over. “Sei triste e solo?”

“Si.”

“Let me take you home. Non è molto, ma èpiù di quello che hai.” She says.

“Fine, lead the way. Con Te Partiro.”

 

For a little while I have a lonely, decent place.