Potion of Resolve The drink tasted oh so sweet, it was almost intoxicating, that taste. The alcohol helped of course. She was on the other side of the room, dazzling and so out of my league. Courage flowed from bottles and glasses, bolstering my resolve. I'll go for it. I'll try. Between her and me was the dance floor, my first trial. I could almost hear my thoughts, but figured they'd be jumbled anyway. Around me people jumped, sang along, headbanged and breakdanced. One fellow played the guitar and the walz was all around me. In a corner a praying mantis played the world's smallest violin and it made me want to cry. Or maybe that was the noise from the karaoke stage. Man, I hate so hate techno. I reach the bar stumbling, picking up a Potion of Resolve. It makes my throat burn and my shoulders to relax. The world gets brighter. The world gets darker. Next, avoiding people mingling, I do it like a man of the world, stepping between them with a glass of champagne, looking every bit like James Bond in my tuxedo. The powerslide gets me through the headbanger's ball. And there she is, gorgeous. Smiling at me, saying something but I can't hear her, not at all. The melody of her voice is divine and I feel so alive, so distant, so among the clouds, in the Heavens. We are carried away on a sea of worshipers, put down gently on a bed of flowers. Around us people are reveling, paying tribute to our love, our oh so beautiful love. It is larger than #life, more than everything. But the sidewalk tastes like dirt and blood. But my pants are wet with urine. But she has thrown up on me, and the doorman tells us to fuck off. But what a party.

Palace Hotel Palace Hotel is a place so far from the real world I equally want to run away and stay here forever. It is beautiful and utterly untrue, it is dangerous and mundane, and it is the only place I will ever call home. I awoke here one morning and came to the obvious conclusion that this would be the last day of my #life. God only knows why it would last this long, but who am I to argue with the bearded man in the Heavens? You see, I have a price on my head, and I surely won’t give that amount of money to some trigger happy stranger that just want to cash in. There is just no way out for someone like me, a drunkard and a loser who just happened to stumble into the wrong company and then fuck everything up. So I have to die, and I have to do it today to make sure no one else will take care of that for me. All for her. My girl, she’ll get it all. The only thing I regret is that she probably doesn’t know I exist. Not that it was my choice, not that I think that I would’ve made a difference in her #life, I just regret not being able to, you know. Well, of course you don't know. If you did, you wouldn't feel sorry for me. I'm not really either, I'm just sentimental, on this day, the day of my demise. I feel I should be writing or perhaps recording something for my daughter's eighteenth birthday before I kill myself, but I have nothing to say, no advice to give, and nothing to pass on. But money, oh that money. I can leave that behind, at least. But the barrel of a shotgun looks so cold, so impersonal. Just like the pills on my table, or the long oh so long drop to the pavement. Dying is hard. Dying is perhaps made easier when it knocks on my door, as it no doubt does right now. Sure, it could be room service, as they're calling from outside, but I didn't order anything. Or did I, I do seem to recall something about a shrimp cocktail, Palace Hotel is famous for them after all, and what better way to go than with style? Yes, something bubbly with that, and I'll be ready to go. Perhaps a smoke. But the door. The door opens now. The guns scream out their agony. And I fall, stumbling over the shotgun, the table flips over and sends the pills all over the place, bullets piercing my skin, my body, spraying my blood all over this glorious room fit for a king. It is my time and it is not mine of chosing. I hate that. The lack of control, the only thing I wanted. So I throw myself through the glass and fall to my death. Or so I thought. Fucking safety glass. Sorry girl, you're not getting anything. I'm not even good for dying. But at least I'm going out in Palace Hotel. That has to count for something, right?

Flying Penises Cathy awoke with a start, one of those unpleasant ones with her heart throbbing almost too hard for her chest to handle. She was tense, aroused and wet, but also scared and confused. The dream, she thought with tears in her eyes that she really didn't know why they squeezed out of her head, that dream again. Of flying penises. She got out of bed and got dressed, suddenly completely uninterested in her body’s urges. She dialed the emergency number to Margaret, her psychic, but was yet again greeted by the “I am on vacation enjoying drinks with tiny umbrellas” voice mail message, so she hung up. “I have to figure this one out myself”, she thought, but also knew that she possessed no psychic powers of any kind, and was really pretty mundane overall. Despite the fact that she was stinking rich and raised in a walled garden high above the lesser rabble, of course. Those were not thoughts she entertained this night, nor any other for that matter. Cathy was short for Catherine, a name she had loathed since her teens. Ignoring the name's proper form was the only rebellion she’d had a chance to exact upon her absent parents. Anyway, Cathy-that-was-actually-Catherine snuck outside without anyone noticing. She went to the circus, just in time to see the late night show, it was before midnight still after all. Perhaps all those flying penises meant that she would fall head over heels in love with one of those fellows who swung around in swings high in the air, the trapeze artists. Cathy entertained such romantic notions, sometimes well aware of what nonsense it was, but still, here she was. But, even from her vantage point from the audience, she could clearly see that there were no penises swinging about at the circus. It was an all-women show. She left, but immediately felt foolish. What if one of the women were a man? She had read of such a thing, and her friend Kendra had IM’d her photos of something called a shemale. Cathy had no idea how that was even possible, but photos don't lie, so she went back again, trying to find the trapeze artists' trailer behind the circus tent. Security thought otherwise, and firmly escorted her off the premesis. She started to explain her errand, and almost got annoyed, but caught herself and decided that the whole thing might sound a wee bit crazy. And after all, where would the artists hide their penises during the show, wearing snug bodysuits and all? Cathy felt foolish for a while, but then it hit her: Perhaps she was looking for a sailor? The flying penises were throbbing, and freakishly large, after all. What throbbed more than a ship’s engine? Oh wait, a train, an old train, she thought! But no, that didn’t feel right and Margaret the Psychic always told her to go with her feelings. Cathy went to a biker bar to ask the bikers, they were a manly lot after all, where she might find throbbing penises. She got quite the attention there, mostly from overly painted and scantily clad women who sneered and spat at her, one even scratched her while grabbing her arm. The aggressive woman promised to "do her", which could only mean her hair but Cathy didn’t think it sounded very friendly. Would she do it poorly, color it in such a way that it would make her a carrot top, or perhaps even cut it? Cathy surely didn’t want to find out, and neither did the barkeep apparently, because he basically threw her out. She started to explain to him about the flying penises, but the only thing he suggested was that maybe she should fly home. An airfield then. She tried to hail a cab but she wasn't carrying any money and now she was starting to get a bit suspicious as to what people would think about her quest for flying penises. Better play it safe and walk, despite it being quite a walk to boot, out of town and all. The airfield was deserted. It was the middle of the night after all. Cathy started to look for clues that would point her to whatever the flying penises would mean, and although she did find what must have been some sort of penis protection contraption made of rubber thrown in the bushes, there was nothing else. Tired and heartbroken Cathy started to walk home. As she looked to the sky she saw a star fall, and beyond it a myriad of flying penises, coming straight for her. Again she felt that tingling feeling, she felt aroused and wet, and she wanted to take off her clothes and welcome them all, as the penises grew nearer. They are here! I found them! Flying penises! She sat up in bed. The alarm clock went tick tock, tick tock. There were no flying penises there. “I hate this dream”, Cathy said aloud. And then I awoke, and I sorely agree with that Cathy girl. I hate this dream too.

Real Love Oh how I love the smell of her skin, her hair so lush and black. How the curves of her body, naked under a thin white sheet, look in the dim dying lights of the street light. I love how she lies there, on her side of the bed, oblivious to me in the night. I stroke her and everything feels right. We make love in the night, and I fall asleep. She is as perfect as can be. Next I’ll order one with red hair, after I’ve aired out the remaining smell of silicone on this one. It smells pleasant, but it reminds me too much of reality. What a wonderful age we live on.

The Mirror The lights slipping through the half closed blinds illuminated my body, playing over my skin in an almost sensual way. Not to me obviously, but I would like to think that it would be to someone else. Perhaps not the woman in the bed and bedroom that I just left, but to someone out there in the cold city. Someone lying alone, I like to think, in my naive arrogance. I know of it, that naive arrogance, so I'm allowed to at least think it out loud, if there is such a thing. I cross the small living room, more remembering than seeing the worn out and slightly stained leather couch and the sideboard with the huge flower that I think will be dead in a week or so. Something about it makes me think it is a recent purchase from a supermarket or something similiar, and that usually means one of two things: Either the owner doesn't care for plants and need to buy new ones frequently, or it is just recently bought and doomed from the beginning. Of course I could be completely wrong, in which case the flower will live a long and happy #life, and I couldn't care less. The woman then, or girl really. College, pretty but far from exceptional, probably bright in her field of expertise, which I think was some sort of theology focusing on the Middle East, but that's about it. She fucked me, that says something I like to think. Although it is not a positive thought, more of a self-berating thing where I remember that I don't keep in shape and shit like that. I don't think nor care much about that, nor my host who are sleeping rather soundly in her bed. The stuffed animals in the bedroom freak me out a bit, until I remember they are dead things and not a sign of innocence. It was good enough, I won't call and she won't care. We are animals. I'm not sure if that turns me on or makes me sick. I don't love myself. The bathroom mirror stares back at me, bearing a strange resamblance. Only fatter, I need to exercise and my stomach betrays my fondness of beer all too well, and I need to shape up when it comes to my diet. I know this, I care about it, just not enough. I know I should, but for some reason I'm not capable of it. The hair should have a solid color, not this pseudo-brown thing that a third of the world's population carries without any pride. My arms should be beefier, because although I'm by no means weak I look like a dork who can't lift, well, anything particularly heavy. That one has its advantages though, I rarely have to help anyone move. Then again, I won't get tipped for my arms when serving at a restaurant. Not that I work with that, but anyway - the knowledge is there. The only thing I've got is my smile and my brains. The former works on the mothers of the bitches I'd like to fuck, the latter on no one. I'm bitter and brutal, a bastard. I think I'm pleased with that. Allt that is a long way from the thinly built yet beer-bellied person in the mirror. That guy has poor posture, needs a haircut, looks haggard and worn out. Perhaps that isn't too surprising, it has been a long evening and night, and a hard #life full of disappointment, pain, and the ever present search for happiness. But still, the visage is not pretty, impressive, or even sexy. It does not inspire confidence or need, lust nor greed. But it is there, bleak and harsh, a snapshot of reality. I make it eternal with my mobile phone. "Smile you douche," I say to my phone, and return to bed.