Pencils Down

Face off.

I feel like there is a constant layering. Underneath all that is obvious and transparent, there is another layer. And another. A deeper aspect. A truer thing. And I can't stop digging for it, in the everyday of everything. And this is what makes me holier or lonelier than everyone I know. (I've forgotten which is which.)

He asks me what I do, and I tell him I write. After he listens to a few bars of my song, he tells me that he hasn't yet found his passion.

I've been nailed to this cross for as long as I can remember. I try to imagine not knowing. And how free that would feel. And at the same time, how incredibly alien.

He begins to tell me about his fear of death. It was strangely intriguing. I push, I want to hear. He asks what time it is and I lie.

I know, I know. Two minutes for tripping.

I offer to buy him a drink. I want to dig, I want to get below the surface to something deeper. We order a new set of carbombs, and I ask him. I ask him about death.

He says, he's afraid of not getting another chance. He's afraid life is a test, and he's blowing it. And that death is that final exam. And he's failed.

I remembered being 14 and sitting in the car waiting for my mother to come out of confession. I was just learning to reject it. I was just tapping into the deeper part of me then, the part that downright refused to face the god that had made me so different.

And now here I am, sitting on a barstool decades later, having come full circle. Now, I reject all of those that have made god into something different.

It's like celebrating the glory of virginity only after mastering the fine art of fucking.
There is no such thing as a latent Catholic.

I've repaired that hole.

Ten minute game misconduct.