Not a Very Good Time By Joe S. Thomas

***

More of my good friend and the evil bastard insomnia visiting me tonight after hearing the morons I have to live among wrenching doors open and digging through the kitchen like 400 pound cockroaches at 2 A.M…  And people wonder why I hate, why I’m suicidal…  Do you really have to think that hard about it…  Anyway, I awoke and began listening to Lydia Lunch’s: So Real it Hurts book on Audible…  I made some coffee knowing that sleep was a sick joke that always eluded me…  I began thinking of a relationship I’d had when I was a drunken fuck…  I make myself sick at times…  A lot of times…  I wonder if the guy who wrote to me earlier yesterday telling me how much he loved me and the bands that I was in knew the real me if he would waste his precious time typing kind and undeserving words in my direction…  Probably not…  I wouldn’t…  Except maybe to tell me what a goddamn piece of shit I am…  The relationship:  As I said, I was a drunken, lonely fuck…  A good friend of mine (who was an abusive asshole) was having problems dealing with his girlfriend who was having some mental issues along with some addiction and epileptic seizure problems…  She was staying with my sister to get away from him…  I had come by to visit and hadn’t seen them all in a while…  Of course I was on pills, drinking and no doubt smoking tons of pot…  I’m not making excuses, just telling the truth…  I hated myself a lot…  I invited so much misery down upon myself back then, thinking I deserved it for many reasons…  Reasons I will refrain from going into at this moment…  I was sick…  Sick of myself and my life and the way I was feeling about everything…  When I was drunk I didn’t give much of a damn about anything but myself and the pleasures I thought I needed to seek at all times…  Never once stopping to think of other people or the repercussions that would befall me when I sobered up the next day and realized the awful things I’d done…  Tomorrow be damned I always said, until it rolled around…  I was still wasted when I went into the bedroom and sat at the foot of the girl’s bed and started up a conversation knowing all the while where I wanted it to lead…  Fuck the fact that she was my friend’s girlfriend, fuck the fact that she was sick and vulnerable…  Knowing the abuse my friend was throwing at this woman and how he treated her even during good times, it wasn’t hard for me to be kind and sensitive enough to let her know that there were people who cared for her and wouldn’t treat her like a slave and a piece of shit…  I ended up laying down beside her and passing out…  I awoke the next morning with my arms wrapped around her and a fairly harsh fucking hangover…  Nothing sexual happened that night, but something emotional did and perhaps that was even worse on my part…  I did care about the girl…  I’d known her for years and to be perfectly honest we’d had sex before she ever hooked up with my friend so it wasn’t like we were strangers or anything…  However, that’s no excuse…  I ended up feeling like shit for what I was doing to my friend and also what I was seemingly doing to her…  I knew I was in no condition mentally or physically to be in a relationship…  A relationship of any kind, muchless one where I would have to fight for what I wanted…  Here I was yet again fucking things up…  What I seemed to do best…  Eventually, she would start pulling away from my friend who she lived with and would begin having feelings for me…  I knew from the jump it wasn’t going to work, but I was too much of a jerk and an asshole to be truthful with her…  Not to mention my friend…  Though doomed from the start, I allowed her to move in with me…  My friend and I got into a few fist fights and lost a couple of years of friendship over it until  we both stopped drinking, apologized and saw the error of our ways…  I’m not sure why this girl and this situation in particular ended up on my mind as I was startled from sleep this morning, but that’s what happened…  There’s no way for me to come out of this story looking good and I’m honestly ashamed of every aspect of it…  The thing is, I saw the two of them together  at the clinic the other day and it made me think of something she always told me that I never did and still don’t understand…  She said to me, even after our relationship was over: When I’m gone, you will never be in need of money ever again…  I didn’t understand that then and I didn’t understand a few years ago when she reiterated the same sentiment when we were alone and I was waiting on my friend to arrive…  I just smiled shyly and said I don’t need anything…  She surely saw through my bullshit lie…  I need a lot…  Every single day, but something within me will not let me ask anyone for anything…  I have a feeling it will be this way on my deathbed as well…  She  and I ended up living together for about a year and a half until I just couldn’t take it anymore…  Obviously, she went back to my friend who is again my friend and I went back to being alone…  At least I’m no longer drinking…  Maybe that’s the reason for the story…  Live and learn, right…  I still have so much to learn…  Wading through all of the chaos and wreckage I’ve left behind is certainly a big job sometimes…