I'd never really had anything epiphanic happen at a strip club before, so the unexpected surge of thought that set in right about the time I was ready to leave made me feel doubly pleased. There were people there, the air weighted down with smoke and apathy and simpler things to a point where I was too overcome by the energy of the people sitting around me to even enjoy the music, which was sixty percent of why I was there to begin with.
Viva had been dancing for the past few songs, casting me the same sidelong glances all strippers do, and I tried to think about anyone and found I couldn't, because it didn't matter. I was tired and ready to go home, having adjourned to the bar as a prelude to a night of confused dreams and exhausted limbs that awaited me in the empty bed I'd grown to hate calling mine, when I stood up and it hit me, the feeling of unexpected rightness.
It's fallen into place over the past few months, the blur of songs sung poorly or adequately, the lingering feel of smoke in my hair and on my skin and the rush of bodies clothed and not. It's seductive, for sure, a life more productive and gratifying than the eight hours behind the desk helping serve as the glue that keeps the life and dreams of people richer than I together, it's a purpose that still has no meaning. I've found connections in this darker place, stepped out of the sun into someplace I can actually fucking chase the dreams that taunt my eyes when I'm staring at the computer screen for the thousandth consecutive hour.
It feels almost like the station did. I can be real, or as real as I can be when I'm not in control, and the exhaustion and the ache and the loneliness and frustration and self-consciousness actually give my heart the pinprick shocks that keep it beating instead of weigh me down, as they do when the sun is up. That's the anchor that grips the soil I curse with my footfalls when the sun is out, the daytime is just a voice, disconnected and accommodating, the daytime is Darryl adorned with titles and notions of resposibility that avail me with more than I deserve but less than I can use, the daytime is Darryl hiding from Alfred Darryl, the Darryl on official documents that call for repayment of debts I wasted my time in accruing.
I love my name, truly, but it's always carried a weight of belief, an idea wrapped in each two-syllable cluster that I've always felt binds me to a definition I can never truly reach. Alfred Darryl is an ironic underachiever who struggles with guilt and doubt; Zero takes the guilt and doubt and makes it noise, beautiful and inescapable, ignorable to some but desirable to a small some, Zero is as dead as any of the rest of me but Zero makes it all functional.
Ironic and typical though it may be, Zero makes it real, either on stage or in these windows.
I wonder how long I can keep this up.
Viva had been dancing for the past few songs, casting me the same sidelong glances all strippers do, and I tried to think about anyone and found I couldn't, because it didn't matter. I was tired and ready to go home, having adjourned to the bar as a prelude to a night of confused dreams and exhausted limbs that awaited me in the empty bed I'd grown to hate calling mine, when I stood up and it hit me, the feeling of unexpected rightness.
It's fallen into place over the past few months, the blur of songs sung poorly or adequately, the lingering feel of smoke in my hair and on my skin and the rush of bodies clothed and not. It's seductive, for sure, a life more productive and gratifying than the eight hours behind the desk helping serve as the glue that keeps the life and dreams of people richer than I together, it's a purpose that still has no meaning. I've found connections in this darker place, stepped out of the sun into someplace I can actually fucking chase the dreams that taunt my eyes when I'm staring at the computer screen for the thousandth consecutive hour.
It feels almost like the station did. I can be real, or as real as I can be when I'm not in control, and the exhaustion and the ache and the loneliness and frustration and self-consciousness actually give my heart the pinprick shocks that keep it beating instead of weigh me down, as they do when the sun is up. That's the anchor that grips the soil I curse with my footfalls when the sun is out, the daytime is just a voice, disconnected and accommodating, the daytime is Darryl adorned with titles and notions of resposibility that avail me with more than I deserve but less than I can use, the daytime is Darryl hiding from Alfred Darryl, the Darryl on official documents that call for repayment of debts I wasted my time in accruing.
I love my name, truly, but it's always carried a weight of belief, an idea wrapped in each two-syllable cluster that I've always felt binds me to a definition I can never truly reach. Alfred Darryl is an ironic underachiever who struggles with guilt and doubt; Zero takes the guilt and doubt and makes it noise, beautiful and inescapable, ignorable to some but desirable to a small some, Zero is as dead as any of the rest of me but Zero makes it all functional.
Ironic and typical though it may be, Zero makes it real, either on stage or in these windows.
I wonder how long I can keep this up.