“One breath at a time.” The most annoying advice my therapist gave me for when I feel myself losing control. What am I gonna do? Take two breaths? Three? No shit I take one breath at a time. I get it, I get it, its meant to relax me, take me away from whatevers bothering me, put me in a better state. But he also told me about justified anger. When something is crossing your boundaries, my “reasonable non-negotiables” he calls them. Sure, I’m prone to some bouts of anger, but this guy next to me, this fucking guy… he’s pushing all my buttons. I try my best to hold onto my reasonable non-negotiables. My therapist says my definition of reasonable is far beyond what a good baseline for reasonable should be, so I have to really think about whether my definition at every moment is correct. But this FUCKING guy next to me, he just licked my goddamn hand. I’m almost mad I’m so damn reasonable these days. If this happened a couple of years ago I wouldn’t have hesitated to throw this mongrel out the emergency exit. Imagining this guy flailing outside my window seats gives me a small sense of peace, but he keeps pushing my buttons. My therapist says I need to remove myself from the situation if I’m in any danger of losing it, but of course, I’m pushed in the one place I can’t remove myself from. OF COURSE. So I moved my hand from the arm rest, maybe now he’ll get the message: I’M NOT SOMEONE WHO YOU PLAY WITH. But no, NOPE, no. This sick puppy is relentless, as I was sitting there arms crossed, faced turned away, this fucking dog started sniffing me right in my ear.
I don’t get to have many things in this life anymore. The system takes away simple pleasures like that, because they know a simple pleasure can keep a man sane. The clothes I wear are borrowed. When I die, they’ll wash them, tear them apart, then sow it onto another man. The bed I sleep on is sown into the frame, which is bolted into the ground. Even a good meal, I’m not allowed to have. They’re all made by someone else, someone who either doesn’t think we deserve to eat or doesn’t care if we eat at all. Sometimes I fantasize about making a nice sandwich for myself, laying the bread on the plate, spreading some mayo, layering a couple slices of ham and cheese, then placing the bread on top. I don’t even eat it in my fantasies, sometimes I just sit there, admiring the thing I’ve created, the one thing I tell myself that I own.
My sweet treats will not be found by them. They are mine and only mine. I treat them very good, yes, very good. I give them food. I give them sunlight for one hour. I kiss them often. They are my sweet treats to eat and sweet treats need love and care and kisses and hugs BUT they cannot have too much or else I get sad when I eat them so only a few kisses and hugs and love, enough to make them nice and sweet to eat. Sometimes I think people know about my treats no I know they know because they all stare at me when I go to the store or when I go to work or I walk around the park. They stare because they see how strong my sweet treats have made me and they want to know how to get strong like me but they will never know because my treats are just for me. Sometimes I think sad things when I have to make my treats, I think about their soft fur, their funny sounds. I wish I didn’t have to eat them NO I don’t wish that I wish they didn’t make me feel so bad for eating them but I have to eat them that’s what they are for. Sometimes I think about how things use to be. I wish I lived in the world where sweet treats roamed free and sweet treats were at the store, I don’t really like the stuff that comes out of the treats and cleaning all the treats all the wet stuff I have to clean and clean and clean but “nothing is really clean” is what I say to myself when I clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and
“Pal, I won’t argue with ya. You seem like a man who stands for something. A man who sees what he wants, takes it, and doesn’t apologize. For that, I envy you. I may not look it, but deep down, I am a coward. Yessir, its true. If I was standing right where you’re standing, pointing the gun at me like how you’re doin’, and my victim started groveling, begging for life. I know I’d cave in a second. I mean, no man wants to watch another man that low, regardless of the power dynamic between the two. No, a man deserves a good death, and I think you might be the man to give me that. “But rack your mind around this… Isn’t it a bit… silly… to kill me at this point? I mean sure, kill me, I won’t stop you. It’s your right as a gun carrying American to put me down like a dog. But I don’t see you getting much pleasure out of it. You see I am man who has cultivated a odd sort of joy at the thought of dying. Now I don’t wanna say I’m downright depressed or suicidal, but I am, in a way, at peace with death. Not fully, of course, no sane man is. “You see a while back I realized how much the fear of death ruled my life. I looked behind my back, checked every corner, trusted no one. There wasn’t much of a possibility to live a fruitful life with that mentality, it wasn’t sustainable. So I really thought long and hard, why am I so scared of death? I wasn’t scared of birth, at least from what I recall, and death doesn’t seem much different from that, just going the opposite direction really. “I steeped myself in religious texts, prayed to whatever God was out there, hell, I’ll admit it, I even meditated. Nothing really worked. I felt destitute. How can I, a man, call myself that while still having such a simple fear. And.. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I hit a low. A low no man should ever reach. I climbed up on that rickety stool, and with a sense of odd equanimity, I fastened a makeshift noose with the belt I had on, stuck my head through the belt loop, and said a final prayer, then kicked myself off the stool… “But, just my luck, I was a hair too tall to actually complete the deed. So I hung there, ashamed at my ineptitude, no smarter, no wiser for having experienced such a shameful failure. Then the oddest thing occurred. A thing that you’d think would be the last thing on my mind, but being so near death, I have to assume something clicked in my synapses, some unconscious truth my body had realized before my mind could. Why I looked down, and I couldn’t believe it, the whole situation seemed to ignite a fire in my loins. “I was at full mast, not even as a young buck did I feel this sense of power in my nethers. It was only later I found out the name for such an act: “auto-erotic asphyxiation”. You see, achieving this feat meant that I could achieve an orgasm 1.5 times greater than-“
BANG
