Someday I will be the perfect man and shed the body of a boy. I will look into the mirror and not feel the places fingertips touched which I hate to remember; I promise to rip off skin to make that happen.
When I drink, I hope to someday enjoy conversation instead of shoving my hands up my sleeves or saying all of the things which come to mind when I am alone at night. Sober, I will not be so angry.
When I look in the mirror once more and examine this body that I’ve had for too long which has not served me well, I can tell my mind hasn’t changed much at all except now I can’t remember what my parents’ house smelled like before dad died and I think too much about the Greyhound ride back from Vegas.
Someday I will neglect the memory of my father, curse the unforgiving love of my mother, and mourn my first wife by silently poisoning the second and third and fourth. I do not deserve to be loved. It is exhausting and guilt-inducing.
Do you think the men like Soseki and Murakami and Neil Young were right in that the final experience which makes a man is to inhale tree-soaked air, dig up a box of memories, and exhale the little life which remains?
