Beats Entropy

(CONTINUED FROM PART 1 , PART 2, and continued in PART 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 Part 6)

There are three kinds of friends: false, true, and products of circumstance. I’ve only ever had the patience for the third; easy, extinguishable, bonds of mild consideration. This is no slight on my friends (though they are, by and large, terrible people), just a hitch in my perception: I can’t see the point. Situations are fluid, and I… am a man of questionable buoyancy. I’ve contested that notion in the past. Unsuccessfully.

Tom found me on the steps. I‘d been there a time. He was as drunk. Profoundly. Still, he hauled me into the living room of our shared apartment with comedic efficiency. He then made an egg (left in the pan), drank a gallon of water, and came to rest in heap near by. He slept; my mind wandered in slow convolutions.

“Dave. Dave. Dave.”

A hard flick between my eyes accompanied each Dave.

“Dave.”

Flick.

I opened my eyes. Tom flicked me again on general principle.

“Are you all right? You don’t have a pulse” said Tom.

Tom lacked a certain ironic capacity.

“I don’t see how I could be” I said. My voice clanged like an ugly tape recording.

Tom sat, absorbing the information. Several minutes passed. He began poking my chest with a ladle he’d found on the floor.

“You’re not breathing” said Tom.

He had a point. I wasn’t.

“I think I’m dead” I offered.

————

Tom considered this for a very long time.

“Should I call someone” said Tom.

It was tempting, but I needed to think this through.

“No real point, I suppose” I said.

Tom put down the phone, relieved. Reams of hypothetical paperwork fluttered from his shoulders; tedious doves taking flight. Should I have seen that? Tom lit a tightly rolled joint; he claimed it helped him think. There was limited evidence to support that conclusion. He did, however, possess the coping skills of a defeatist Buddha…so there was something to the practice.

“Does it hurt” asked Tom.

“Not really” I said.

It didn’t. Not exactly.

“What does it feel like” asked Tom.

I’d been trying to put a taste to it all night. It was a hard thing to contextualize: this blurry absence of sensation…like Winter asked me to hold its coat, punched me in the stomach, then ditched me at an bad acid party thrown by Charlie browns teacher.”

“Its cold and tired” I said.

Something in my throat tore mid description, giving the last few words a guttural warble. Tom stared with sick fascination.

***

Continued in PART 4