Arthur Graham’s Reviews > The Mustache He's Always Wanted but Could Never Grow: And Other Stories > Status Update

“You’d really rather sleep in this smelly cave than come hang out with me and my friends?”
Fred thinks about it. “I’d rather sleep,” he says.
“Dick! Come on, get dressed, we’re going out!”
“No! Sleep!”
“You can do that when you are dead.”
“I know that. I know I can sleep when I’m dead. That’s the problem. I’m too much of a coward to die. So I’ll just have to snooze off life until then.”

The sun is up and I don’t recall having slept. Paige has got coffee going. She brings it to me in, for whatever reason, a wine glass. It’s hot, but I manage to get it all down while smoking one of Paige’s roommate’s cigarettes. Then I really feel like garbage.
Paige is a nice girl. She is young and carefree. We talk about many things. What we don’t talk about is Delia.

A famous painter (I believe Dalí, though I lack confidence in such matters) once said that a work of art is never completed.
Think about it.
In death, one leaves behind things: bad credit, expired food, unpaid parking tickets, dirty socks, creations, unrequited loves, and so on.
Life, as far as we know, lacks any veritable closure. So why should thought or art or anything spawned out of impulse be any different?

“Your grandma,” said Gabriella. “She’s so tiny. Brittle.”
“Yeah,” said Frankie, “it’s like handling glass sometimes. Imagine, God forbid, if she ever fell down. Sweeping her up off the floor with a broom would be the best I could do.”
“This is too much,” said Gabriella. “I need a raise.”
“A raise? I just gave you one.”
“¿Que? What raise?”
“The one in my pants. Now hush!”
“Ave Ma—”

Sitting between two expensive-looking cars, he watches, fascinated, as his spit dissolves into a murky puddle. This reminds him he has to pee. But he doesn’t bother standing. He whips it out, from the curb, and begins spraying the hood of one of the expensive-looking cars. He watches proudly as his piss bounces off headlights and tires and a chrome fender—a quality carwash, he feels.
Footsteps approach.

We are kamikaze lovers. We spend the night drinking red wine from the bottle, shoving pills down each other’s throat. We take turns vomiting into the toilet during our cloudy attempts at lovemaking. We are, if anything, a train wreck of suicidal passion. Something cliché.
Somehow I am able to steady her to her room. “No more,” I announce as we fall into bed. “Please, God, no more…”
She slurs loudly, “Many more!”

there’s nothing left to suck, Harry—you’ve devoured every positive feeling I’ve ever had for you!”
“But—”
“But still you feed… like a hungry, begging animal. You feed off the crumbs, Harry… the crumbs of this… the crumbs—the crumbs of love. How’s that, Harry? The crumbs of love. Pretty good, huh?” Lucille smacked him in the face with his poems before letting them scatter. “Put that in your next goddamn masterpiece!