bare minimum hackery

I looked at my bank account today and couldn’t fathom how I was going to pay my bills this month. One check completely goes to rent now. My renter moved out and with him went $250. I started getting health insurance. Another $100. And now, my student loan has come due again. Payment is $280.

That’s $350 less a month coming in and $280 more a month needed. Math isn’t hard when it’s that simple. So…It means I’m running a deficit right now. Just like this fine country I live in.

That won’t last very long. I’ll be drowning soon. Especially when I do stupid things like cut my hand and have to go to urgent care. Boom, another $100 out the window. Which, of course, doesn’t exist.

Ugh.

I watch as a hack, a complete bore of a writer and person and journalist is now writing a novel. I’m jealous. And the only one I have to blame is myself. I’m a lazy turd when it comes to this.

I read his words and I cringe.

But I read my words and cringe.

So, what does that make us? Cringe brothers?

See?

Cringe.

My hand is throbbing. Yet I keep typing. I want to drink a beer, but I can’t afford to buy one. So instead, I stare. At anyone that’s around me. Usually, this will end up getting me kicked out of a place. And in a small town such as this, you run out of places to get kicked out of pretty quick.

The brunette in the corner knows me. We worked together for a moment about a decade ago now. She saw me crumble at the feet of another woman. She knows my weak spot. Yet she has no chance and knows it.

She confided in me once in an online chat. She was thinking of cheating on her (second) husband. I told her it was a bad idea. No matter what. She didn’t get it. And tried to get me to fuck her.

I told her hell no. She asked why. I told her simply “If you ever cheat, you’ll always cheat. And that makes you nothing to me.”

It hurt her feelings, because she instantly told me she’d cheated before.

And you wonder why you can’t find love, I replied.

She got hurt some more.

Why are you mean to me, she asked.

I’m not mean. I’m just honest.

She stopped hitting on me then.

I don’t miss those conversations.

I look at her in the bar light. She’s chubby, but has actually lost about 50 pounds or so since the last time I saw her. She loves to show her tits. They’re big, but not really anything that should be hanging out. She drinks Michelob. That makes me think of another. And it makes me sad.

So, I stop looking at her.

A kid with a crew cut is at the other end of the bar. He’s nervous. I don’t know why. There isn’t anyone in the place. Except for me, the brunette, a toothless guy with a sweatband and the barkeep.

He gets up and starts to shake his hands. Really fast he does this. It’s interesting to watch. For a moment.

Then the doors open. A couple of women walk in. One looks like a girl I went to high school with. She has horse eyes and horse teeth. I thought she was pretty then, but I was a virgin and didn’t know any better. Now, she’s still got horse eyes and horse teeth. And saggy arm fat.

Me? I’m fat and bald and have gold teeth. Not the precious kind. Plus, my heart don’t work very well any more. And I’m not referring to heartbreak.

I don’t know if I can handle being heartbroken again. Too many times a woman has left me. Too many times I thought I’d be a dad. Too many times I didn’t do what was right.

“Guess it isn’t in the cards for you, just like me,” Smitty said to me on that ill-fated car trip with him and my dad back in 2009.

That made me sad. He thought I’d be like him.

Maybe he was right, though.

Maybe he was right.

I haven’t been on the beach for almost a month. I live two blocks away. I thought about going there today, but then a bunch of kids walked by – skipping school, I guess – and it spoiled my appetite for the sandy shores.