There is no fucking behind the bar.

Sex is everywhere. You can find it in the cracks and seams in every aspect of our lives from when we are young and still wondering what exactly it is to when we are old and we consider that we should have stuck more fingers into said cracks and seams.

Sex is so prevalent that they have a hard time giving it away these days. Sex has to be dressed up or modified until it isn’t sex at all, but a part time job at a hardware store, or a strongly worded letter. There is so much sex in the world that it has become the thing by which we describe how mundane something is. How often have you heard the term, “it’s better than sex,” huh?

There is no fucking behind the bar because it is a refuge. I can pour drinks and I can cast my gaze over the small empire I have carved for myself out of the crater in which this city resides.

There is no fucking behind the bar because there are forces at work which I may have had a hand in creating, or may not exist at all, aside from in my imagination.

Once, drunkenly, I masturbated behind the bar when everyone had left. I drank that night harder than most nights. I drank with the customers and watched a young couple in the corner touch and talk and for some reason I could taste and feel them together and once they had gone I rubbed myself until I splashed my jizz all over the already dirty mats that lay at my feet behind the bar. I remember coming to my senses then. A clear sobriety that echoed through my body and seemed to vibrate out into the very room.

I knew I had done something wrong. Perhaps, one of the gods who watches over this place saw me bend or break a rule that I had been resolute to follow. I’m not sure. All I know is, what followed was a terrible week. It was like I had been cursed. Looking back it must have all been a self-fulfilling prophecy, but at the time it felt like the only way to atone for my sin was to wash my mouth out with the shotgun I keep underneath the bar beside the dusty unused wine glasses.

I made it through, though. I made it through and learned my lesson, that the rules you set for yourself in the realm you created are the worst to break and bear the harshest consequences.

So, now, there is no fucking or sex of any kind behind the bar. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a red-blooded barkeep and my perversions remain intact. I saw that couple again that had caused me to violate myself that night I broke my own rule and I slung them drink after drink. I flirted with them both and told them about the after-hours special where they could drink and touch and play and fuck all for free as long as they let me watch. I watched. I helped. However, we did it all on the other side of the bar. Where it is safe and the rules are different. We didn’t fuck behind the bar and because of that the week proceeded without darkness or fear.

What about the killers?

We need to think about the killers. We have made such wonderful progress in identifying and moving to help those who suffer from mental illnesses. Just think of the strides we have made in these past years spotting things like obsessive compulsive disorder, or dyslexia, or attention deficit disorder. Before, not long ago, those would have been lumped together into a sub-heading of bored or hyper active.

But, what about the killers? You know, the people who need to murder. Who need to see blood and guts and feel the tactile sense of life ending at their own hand. Is that not also a mental disorder? As it stands right now we lock those people up. We put them into cells and we throw away the key and punish them for the way their mind works. In some parts of the world those people are killed for being killers.

Perhaps, one is lucky to identify that they have this predisposition and illness and go into a field where it is a boon to them. Maybe, they join the military or they become a doctor, or perhaps a hang-man.

Should we not protect these people? I read once that of the soldiers that experience traumatic events 2% have no response. That is, they have killed someone in the line of duty and return home unaffected from their experience. Extrapolated, this would mean that potentially 2% of the population has the disposition of a serial killer.

Now we should fight fear and should seek not to label these people if we are to help them. Indeed, that is the failure we made before as we called women forced into bland marriages bored and we gave them drugs to combat something that was systemic and not a personality disorder.

So, I ask you all what about the killers? Do they not also deserve our compassion? Should we not seek to understand an illness rather than condemn it? As we move forward and catalogue so many other types of mental illnesses why are we so hesitant to do the same for those folks who are born with an absence of a moral compass.

We now try to educate individuals on mental illness. Do not judge someone with bi-polar disorder they have a difficult cross to bear. Be kind to the person suffering from depression. They are in a dark depth and require more empathy than others. But, spit on the killer.

I urge you to educate yourself on the killer. Perhaps, in understanding we can help them and bring them into our homes in the spirit of rehabilitation. We will become a greater society if we do. We need to stop looking at a series of calculated slayings as simply a crime, but rather, a cry for help.

Please donate to the Church of Xenophon the patron saint of murders. Your donation will go towards helping killers.

–A pamphlet left at my door.

The Afterlife.

There have been deeper despairs, sure. Indeed, there have been many times when he slipped back into the hole. But, tonight there was a definite air of melancholy. It was thick and it oozed from the walls and the windows. Even the bright light of midday could not penetrate it.

Most despair looks the same. Dark, for sure. In this case, it is represented as a man who cannot stop staring at his cracked wall. He sits on a off-white couch with shoulders slouched forward and simply stares. It is the ultimate waste of time, but in that for him it is symbolic of the fact that everything is a waste of time. That all these little stupid distractions are simply a waste of breathe.

If you end it early, opt to get out, one might be labeled as a coward or there would be an inaccurate representation of the true history and from the heavenly fields that would be quite vexing.

Which, of course brings us to the real reason most people who feel that nothing matters, don’t just simply end it right then and there and that is because we don’t know what happens next. There has to be something, no? Even if it is nothing, that would have to be represented in some small way. Perhaps, Nothingness is simply a pinhole of white light in a dark void. Something that one focuses on and works towards, but never really reaches.

This is what we know for sure. When people are near death they scream and moan about a light. Perhaps, as one dies, this light narrows to a pinpoint and it is chased through the eons until finally a high consciousness is reached. This is because when you focus on a pin-prick of light one finally understands that everything is encapsulated there.

I look around frantically. Did I figure it out? Am I going to ascend???

Nope. Unfortunately not. I am still here, but goddamn if it isn’t a swell idea. A swell idea indeed don’t you think?

This is it. I am going to really discover what it is all about. So, maybe it isn’t a pin-prick of light in a dark void. Perhaps, there is more to it than that, Perhaps, the afterlife truly is nothingness with no people, no morning coffee, no sadness, no hatred, no bad blowjobs, no mediocre sex, no racism, no funny racist jokes, no people to blame, just a vast plane of nothingness. Would it even be perceived? Maybe certain people can do it. The people who understand that the fabric of what we call reality is so tenuous they would understand that the thin membrane of what is real and what is make believe is permeable and lucid. These people would know the truth and be Gods in the next world as they are able to command it to their will.

No, no, no, you idiot that is too much like The Matrix. So much faith that this is all a simulation is really your erotic sub-conscious pushing it’s way through. It is ALL real and really has to be. It has to be, because, what about Lizzy? She has to find love. It has to be real because she worked so hard to get those implants and those injections.

What about Avery? He worked so hard at the gym and he sweated and toiled and in the end he looked good. Sure, he didn’t look like a celluloid super-hero, but he looked better than he did before. We can’t let Avery know that it’s all a scam. It has to be real because it needs to be for them. The dreamers. The ones who seek to make themselves better. And better. And better. And better than me. They are all so good and better and engineered and welcome amongst those who come and go in our world.

It needs to be real. No, no, no it is not a fabrication because of them.

Or, it it? Because of them?

The Lack of Love Letters

Why have Love Letters gone out of vogue? Why are they no longer popular to be written? It is as if the love that used to exist in this world has taken on a new form and a new way of being expressed. Indeed, it used to be that a man or woman was judged on their actions, not simply how they navigated a person’s psychology.

Love is hard and difficult and now it is as if folks are looking for the hack, the work around to get it done quicker or harder.

SearchEngine: I like I girl how do I make her like me back?

Result: Here are 20 articles distilled down into manageable bite sized facts that will inform you how most female brains work and how you can use a twisted evolutionary human biology to your advantage only to realize that these tricks will work too well.

Instead of all that why don’t we take risks anymore? Reach out from across the void of our own existence and put pen to paper for someone we think we love and express that. Perhaps, the words never meant as much as we thought they did and it is all propaganda from the Love Corporations who wanted us to spend money on pens and papers. Now that those mediums are obsolete Big Love is trying to make us buy into the other modes of expression. Don’t write your feelings down like some 20^th century sap, no; use our crafted emote pictures to really express yourself.

Do you love this woman? Does the yearning in your soul make you wish that you could simultaneously rip out your beating heart and pounding brains and smash them together to make them stop moving to the rhythm of your longing? Well, fear not, citizen. We have just the tiny animated picture for you!

It also takes time to write a Love Letter and this may be why they have gone extinct. You see, in the time it takes to write a love letter one must spend that time thinking about the words to write down on the page. These words are inspired by the feeling inside you and for an effective Love Letter one must allow these feeling to flow from the interior down into the ink that is hitting the page. Prolonged thought on a subject causes an individual to explore different facets of the idea. In the time it takes to write a Love Letter one may come to find that they never really loved the individual in the first place. Or, quite possibly the opposite. That all those feelings have been reaffirmed and made stronger.

Perhaps, this is more a treatise against time and the distillation of our efforts to fall in love. Everything is quickened now and optimized. So, as a result so to may our thoughts and decision making promise. No longer is it acceptable to spend some time and think about how one feels or how to even put into words. If we have the inkling of a feeling we can express it immediately and directly onto someone else.

I didn’t even get started on sex…

Unloved.

I think the reason I set up shop in an illegal bar on the Moon was to have a purpose. You see, I have come to find that men as a species are expendable and always will be. I have seen wars come and go, various man-made disasters, and the other kind that seem like an act of God. In each of these I have seen the breach filled with human lives. Eaten up and destroyed, sometimes to return; more often than not to disappear.

I have played my part in these. I was lucky in a few cases to be thrown into the breach and come up for sweet air afterwards. Many of those who went with me did not fare as well. Others were scarred by it and they are the haunting reminder of what came to pass. I see them in my bar whether they are real or not I still pour the drink to honour them.

I have come to know a great tragedy and that is when a man is unloved. I have seen boys killed, dying in silence, pure courage in the face of final knowledge that no one will suffer heartbreak at their passing. These men are often mourned as a group, but by and large the individual is forgotten.

It is why I seek purpose in my little bar. I fulfill a need for those who seek inebriated distraction, which is an important aspect of our society. Yet, even here in my domain I see the boys who are unloved and who move through life largely unmalevolent. I see them as the ones who stand just outside the group, the lonely drinker, or the fellas paying for drinks in the small hope that later that evening he may disguise pleasure as love for a few moments at least.

It helps that I serve a purpose. It helps to have my patrons to focus on to distract me from the oppressive truth that I am indeed unloved. I will say this to the passerby who feels as I do that there is some benefit to our condition. It is that we can move through life untethered and without fear that when greatness or opportunity knocks we will need not hesitate to answer the call.

It is why so many idealistic boys go into the breach. It is why we are expendable. Because many of us are unloved and seek greatness as a substitute.

Wandering with Conviction

I have forgotten the way. It once was so clear and easy to find in my mind’s eye. Now I wander. I move forward, but without direction the destination seems to be getting further and further away.

Once, along the way, I met a young boy sitting by the path. He was dirty and unkempt, however, he smiled and it was a brilliant smile. It was such a smile that to gaze upon it for anytime would in turn cause a smile to form on your own face, or at least that is what it did to me.

I stopped and sat across from him and we smiled at each other. I asked him why he smiled.

“I have nothing but my happiness. If I stopped smiling then I would be truly poor.”

I stopped smiling and moved away from the boy then because I knew he was delusional and sick. He had also become lost along the way, but his journey had made him insane. I, on the other hand, would continue to wander, though I do not know the way. My option is far more sane. I am not a child and childish parables will not suffice to make me stop my wandering. It is no simple matter of finding a tree and hugging it to find my way.

That being said, I haven’t seen a tree in a while and when I did see them I did not stop to hug them. But, I am a wanderer with conviction. Not some sick and smiling boy.

Kill or be Killed.

“…and I just think we are different people now.”

The young man takes a deep breath and runs his hands through his long dark hair. You can tell he has done it a lot today because the strands are curled and greasy from repeated touch. A sure sign of frustration. He exhales steadily. This is his shot. Say the right words and everything can be okay again:

“I am difficult. I know it. I know it because I can feel myself being that way. It is like small bits of sandpaper that scrape across my cerebelum as I speak the words that I know are destined to displease you. Please trust me, I know when I am doing it, but I really just can’t help it. It is a testament to how I feel about you.”

Another breath and a look around the bar. It is quiet this time of day. Just commited drunks and the others.

“It is not a bad thing either. No, no. It’s just you make me a little crazy. You run through my mind constantly and as you do it I am conflicted by how much I am in awe of you and how much I feel that I am not worthy. I feel this way and when I see you outside of my mind only the awe exists, but when you are gone the insecurity remains.”

“Plus… Our history. Mistakes on both sides that only add to it. But! Scar tissue is good. A reminder of what drew blood, but did not kill. I know this: I would suffer for you; more scars and abbrasions. Even now as we seem to drift apart and the pain is most intense I would stay in this flame. “

They look at each other and then to their drinks. She is hunched forward and his shoulders have sagged. He takes a sip of his drink and it seems to revitalize him slightly.

“Remember our perfect day? In the shell of that ruined church we found along the river path? We sat and talked and we talked so long that we nearly got stuck out in the woods. That was right before we left, together.”

“I think about that day a lot. There was no rush and everything seemed important and unimportant at the same time. Like, the words no matter their subject, held their own seperate and intense meaning. We loved each other then, I think.”

The last words cause her to sit straighter and cast a sideways glance at him.

“We did. I remember the next day I said so while we were laying in bed in the morning. You were pretending to be asleep and I told you I was in love with you. That wasn’t a dream, right? It wasn’t a mistake. It was a purity in our lives that we have seldom sought for again and I am truly sorry we have not. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

More silence, but also heat. I can feel it as I refill their drinks. It cinges my knuckles that grip the bottle and I feel a sweat break out on my forehead. He’s not going to win. They weren’t the right words, but there is fire in that soul of his. Briefly and insanely I worry about it physically setting fire to the spirits just behind the bar, but I mentally shake that worry in time to hear her:

“I’m sorry, too. I have to go.”

There are losers every night in my little bar on the moon, but I felt for this one. He charged the battlements, but sometimes a lady’s cold steel resolution cuts through even the most valiant of heroism.

Drinks on me, fella.

The Joke is in Your Hand.

Love or lust? Love or lust? Love? Or, simply lust? Is it a complex series of emotions? Or, are you just getting hard?

It can’t be both, you fucking idiot.

This isn’t a quandry of chicken or egg. Distilled down, it is simpler than that. Which happens first? Heart flutter, or localized swelling?

You better hope it is the latter. Trust me on this one, bub. Love is much more virulent and hurtful than lust and with lust there is always the chance you’ll get what you want. Love on the other hand just takes and takes and takes like the most sinister vampire you’ve ever heard of.

There is one benefit: Once you are sucked dry you can only persue lust. So, maybe just get the love over with and then focus on the lust.

From Across the Bar

I have seen many first moments. You work behind a bar night and day and you see a lot of them. In literature there is talk of a thunderbolt or a shared look and then it is all over. Star-crossed lovers, blam-o right then and there. But, in my humble experience it is a little different.

Firstly, someone sees the other one first. Like a game of visual tag and yet no one knows that they are playing. One of the individuals spies the other one and the game is on. I have heard tell of the ‘3-second rule,’ where you need to make up your mind in three seconds. I think that’s all moon-dust. What kind of crazy person knows what they want in three seconds?

It also defeats the importance of the next part: Courage. It takes guts to talk to someone face-to-face these days. Heck, what with the technology we have you never need to see a person ever if you really didn’t want to and some don’t. So, the old-fashioned stuff. Like, walking up to a boy you like the looks of and introducing yourself takes courage.

There is battle courage, sure. I have seen enough of that and individuals have spoken on that subject with far more eloquence than I ever could. No, this is a different type of courage. It is accepting failure, but hoping for the best possible outcome. It is steeling yourself against your enevitable demise, but allowing the winds of fancy to push you forward towards doom, destiny, or both. Courage is slugging back some cheap whisky and then making your fool-hardy move. I can say that it is rarely executed well, but sometimes there is charm in that too.

That’s the true romance of the moment and you can’t help but get close to it and listen in. Especially in my position.

“Hi.”

“I, uh, was hoping I could buy you a drink, or uhmmm if I could introduce myself. I’m K. Hi”

“Oh. Well I already have a drink and you just introduced yourself.”

“Right… and, right.”

*Silence pervading the noisey atomosphere*

*The Moon spins a little more slowly*

“Well, I introduced myself… What’s your name?”

“I’m T.”

“Hi, T what brings you here? I’ve never been here before.”

“Well, the whisky is cheap and this place never seems to get shut down. Plus, my friends dragged me here.”

“Oh, well it is sort of the same for me my friends got me to come here too. That’s them over there.”

“Yeah I can tell by the gawks.”

“Are you sure you don’t want another drink? I, uh, don’t really know anything about whisky, but I will drink what you are drinking.”

“Fine. Just ask for the rail stuff. It’s not the real stuff, but I like that.”

“Okay. It’s better if it’s not real?”

“Oh damn. That’s not easy to answer and if I got it wrong and someone overheard they might kill me.”

“Ah you look like the dangerous type. T, the whisky spy.”

“You have no idea, K.”

The occupants of the bar all blur and become static as these two drink their whisky and indulge in each other’s company. They have time. It is a speakeasy after all and closing time is some hours off. They go slow, but there are moments of extreme honesty that catapult them further along with each other.

Who knows where they will go from here. They sat together and in those moments their world was confined to a two meter cubed space. They drank and there was some laughter. They were both shy in their own way and also both courageous in allowing a stranger intimate time in their own lives.

As a seasoned barkeep I did my part: I left them alone.

Final Moments.

Hunkered behind a small crater on an unnamed moon in a corner of space relegated to witness my demise. It isn’t funny but at the same time, I have to say, it isn’t overly cruel either.

Coming from an impoverished farming planet and being whisked away on an adventure only to make a last stand in a meaningless place is more than I could have ever hoped for. Instead I could have been stuck on a plough all my life. At least this way I got to see one or two stars.

More gunfire. The telltale puffs of dust as projectiles impact the the crater and beyond it. I can hear some chatter over the radio, so maybe somewhere someone from my unit is doing better than I am. It is a small comfort as I look down at the read out of my rifle: 2.

2 projectiles. A far-cry from the 500 projectiles I started with not too long ago. I move slowly and peer quickly over the crater embankment. Movement left and a flash right. Great. They are going to come at me from two sides. I sigh and clutch the grip harder. With eyes closed I think back to 8 months ago and smile at the warmth of those memories. However, something else lingers there. Bordom.

What would I do? What would the fantasy version of myself do in this moment? I have imagined my life as a Star Soldier for as long as I have memory. A wave that emenates from my chest sends warm chills throughout my body. A sense of what the answer is and the horrific and wonderful things it means. A last stand.

Okay. Death enevitable and hilarious, how do I make this happen? Just pop up and try and get a bead on my pursuers? No. Too simple; and the holographic drill seargent I had in basic would reanimate and ream me out as I died. Hmmm. Why even use the projectiles? I mean, all the Star Soldiers are issued a bayonet. I had gutted animals before and although killing someone at sexual range is typically frowned upon there is no substitute for killing the enemy.

Alright bayonet it is. How does it even attach to my rifle? Ah, yes. Twist and click. The rifle looks even more deadly now if that was at all possible and I am surprised that I had not seen the rifle in this configuation more often. Most recruits don’t even get training in hand-to-hand so perhaps they simply saw no use to explain it.

I am a little closer to the movement on the left. “Let’s go that way first,” I murmer to no one in particular. I decide to start my blaze of glory off with a combat roll that looks more like a somersault in low-G. I come up a little further than I have intended and see the creature tracking me with its weapon. They are slow in the cold and I keep hustling left. I see a small embankment and lunge for it load my legs up and explode towards my enemy. I close the distance fast and I plunge my bayonet into what passes for a neck. Black blood boils out of the wound and the creature lets out a death shudder.

Whoa. Easier than I thought and I still have two projectiles left. I spin around facing the threat that was previosuly on my right. I see the creature firing over the crater not far from where I was hiding before. I push my vicitim in front of me and give it a hard kick. The recently deceased creature rockets towards his companion. It bumps and tumbles wildly, but obstructs me enough to soak up a number of projectiles. I roll left and level my rifle and squeeze the trigger letting loose my last two projectiles. They miss and in frustration I fling my rifle like an axe towards the creature. The rifle spins like a throwing star in low-G and my jaw drops when I see the bayonet lodge itself in the creatures chest.

Slowly I regain my composure and slowly walk to the dying creature. “How the fuck did that work?” I ask the now dead creature. I pull the bayonet out and try to ignore the sensation of flesh clinging to the blade.

I look around and notice an audience. Star Soldiers wearing the same blue on blue outfits as me. The one closest to me, a woman, stares at me mouth agape. I look at them all and shrug, “It seemed like a good idea in my head.”