Indestructible

I’m sitting on the couch on a Monday evening with nothing on but my shorts, listening to the heavy rain as it pours down outside. I stay like that, quiet and still, for a long while. This hasn’t been the greatest of days, see.

What were the lines again? Party-boy thinks he’s indestructible. That has got to be a personal favorite, Lyla. That’s what they have been calling me now, you hear? Everyone, from Jimmy to Dee and Kay to Cybill and to god knows who else: Party-boy. Space cadet. The big kid. A screw-up. And true to form, I guess I’ve pretty much earned each one of those.
My mother came by the other day: She asked me how I was and I gave her the usual smirk and told her, “You know me ma, I go lightly”— pun intended and all that. She just looked at me disapprovingly and reminded me I’m over thirty years old. The emphasis was all hers.

It’s raining outside and this hasn’t been the greatest of years, see— and if you want me to be perfectly honest with you, these haven’t been the greatest last five or six years either and I guess in the end it all sort of boils down to my total and complete inability to adapt to life after College. I mean the joke has got to be on me on this one, right?
Textbook irony.

Then I stand up and walk away from the couch, into the kitchen. I open the freezer and I’m sort of bummed to find the bottle of Stoli I’d bought to play Monopoly on Saturday night with Billy and his wife almost empty. What were Billy’s words again? “Man, you drank more than half that bottle by yourself and you’re still standing!”
So I take the Stoli with me, and on a second thought I go back to the freezer and get the unopened Absolut as well.

Then I walk over to the bathroom, get the small unmarked plastic container behind the medicine cabinet and empty its contents in the palm of my hands, leaving discarded blisters behind and a tiny constellation of anxiolytics and tranquilizers plunging down into the toilet. The vodkas follow suit, oozing slowly, half-frozen. It takes me an eternity to empty everything, or so it seems.

The muscles on my back go taut, I clench my teeth: I’d like to tell you I’m doing this because I’m clean now, because I’m stronger than all of this but... Truth is, I fall down and fail all the time, repeatedly: If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year is that I’m not indestructible.

But I’m goddamn resilient, so I end up flushing everything down anyway.
Then I go back to the living room as the rain turns into a storm. There’s lightning now.

Then I look to my battered old Mizunos standing by the door, like twin stray puppies just begging to go outside. I put them on. I also pick up a dirty, smelly t-shirt from yesterday’s wash pile and put it on, too. Then I go to the park to sweat it out under the heavy Monday evening rain.