mana

An old man sits on the bus and next to him, well, there I sit. Hello me, I wave in my dream. On the old man's lap a paper bag holding a six-pack of beer. It's Monday. I think a two-word thought: drunken bum.

I come home and the hours pass. I feel normal all along. I'm boring and not special at all. Closing in on midnight, I become my alter-ego. I smoke a joint and I listen to the appropriate music too. I'm all up there right now and I say I am half a million words from one day to the next because it doesn't make sense and because I'm way up there! And it hits me like a heroin shot in the vein, this three-word thought won't kill me: dope head bum.

I tell my friend I'm that old man. He tells me I'm younger. I ask him what he means by that. And then he says it, easy, simple, like it was the most evident thing in the world: It's ok to be the drunken bum when you're young. It's not ok to still be doing it half a decade later.

I smile and we kind of hug, but shush, don't tell anyone.