10.25.17

a guide to ruining your life in a good and proper way

first. sit in a chair and drink until your body surrenders. have lots of ammunition. simply raise a drink to your lips, finish it, and reach for another. do this until you black out.

second. sleep until at least noon. preferably later.

third. wear the same clothes until you yourself cannot handle the smell and are forced to change, or, even better, wear no shirt at all.

fourth. hunt your neighborhood for an attractive neighbor. stalk him or her. learn when they take a shower and stake a place outside their bathroom window and watch them dry themselves off. if there is no accessible bathroom window, find their bedroom window and watch them dress or sleep.

fifth. contact your ex girlfriend or boyfriend. if they are with someone new call that new person terrible and offensive names and threaten to beat them to death.

sixth. return to the house of the attractive neighbor. knock on their window and tell them you’ve been watching them and that they are the most beautiful thing within a ten mile radius, more beautiful, even, than the sun or the mountains whose tips are constantly kissed by the sun and reddened as the sun dies at dusk.

seventh. run.

eighth. find a respectable place to hide that is dry and comfortable and a safe place to sleep.

ninth. beat someone unconscious and take their shoes.

tenth. live out the rest of your days in a private cycle of extreme shame. accept that you are scum. be dirty and hungry and disease ridden. imagine you are a mutt, beat by the hand of its owner, made gimp legged and forced to hobble the streets in cold weather. you are now a stray animal. act like one. roam the neighborhoods of those you still love and who once loved you, and pray to some nameless and imbecile god that one of them will recognize who you are, and that in the empty cavity of their chests they will feel something akin to warmth for you.

Written at 4:33 in the afternoon, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA.