A Minor Storm

by J. David Osborne

I almost felt shame, but then I reminded myself that shame is just a demon that loves taking showers.

Either these men had been whipped by life to the point that my refusal to be a man’s dog struck them as mental weakness. Or, and this is what kept me up some nights: maybe I am weak. Maybe my inability to eat shit, even a little, is what keeps me from moving forward. It’s different flavors of the same problem. I can’t stop smoking cigarettes. I can’t stop drinking. And I can’t even for a minute swallow my pride for the five bucks that would pay for a pack of cigarettes or a beer/shot combo.

After work, we picked up some Burger King and a thirty pack and a root beer each. I wondered if this is what I would do until my body failed. I couldn’t think of anything else. I knew that deep down, all I wanted was to rest for as long as I possibly could. Deep down I hated real work, and I hated doing things that I hated.

But I drank too much beer that night like most nights, knowing that the next day I’d have some time off, and I’d be able to catch up on Netflix or maybe even read a book, and I promised myself the same way I did at the end of every work week that I wouldn’t let the bitch inside of me fuck this whole thing up. The coward, the weak man, the person who I knew I truly was, I kept him locked up and out of sight and over the weeks I talked about cars with Charlie and god knows what with Shane and sometimes I drank so much beer that I texted people I shouldn’t and then I woke up and in the shower I told myself to feel no shame, that I forgave myself this one transgression, because overall I had been paying penance for who I’d been, and there’d always be slip-ups. Two steps forward, one step back.

“Feels like that’s all anything is now. Half-finished stories. Everything we can get and nothing that we can cultivate. Everything is speeding up. It’s all so fast. Everything everyone says is wrong and sometimes it’s evil. We’re all taking. I’m taking. You’re taking.”

I said, “Most of us have no inner life. We want to scold and correct and mold the world. So you like to wear beads and shit. These people don’t even have beads. They’re the walking dead.”

The thing about bosses is, once they’re mad at you, they’ll stay that way for a good couple weeks no matter if you’ve done what you’re supposed to or not.

“I can’t do it anymore,” I told him. “I thought I could but there’s so much to being alive that I don’t know if I can.”