Davy was once an especially bright boy who grew into a sad, disillusioned young man when he realized life was not a game of grades and awards, as his primary schooling had so earnestly taught him. It wasn't an immediate realization that his life sucked, but he suspected something wasn't going quite right when at age 38 he still didn't have his life in order. He was looking at his bills one day, hunched over the jagged envelopes pretending to be a man of purpose and intent, and noticed a recurring pattern: he had no money. He lived alone and had a few friends, but he didn’t like them at all even though he always wanted to hang out with them. Which is what he was doing right now. Anything to avoid the loud reality of a silent phone.

Early afternoon bars were sad affairs, like a crypt with an identity crisis. There was no life in this dingy tavern, only the ghosts of the spirited night before, clinging to the heady temporary sensations that filled the city's night life. Moments from an expired fantasy. Davy was depressed but that hadn't sunk in yet. It would after this conversation though. Let's watch:

“Yeah, going pretty well,” Davy lied straight to the face of his unblinking friend Mikey. Mikey owned a strip club and did drugs when he wasn’t talking about drugs. Davy had met him accidentally, in a car accident a few years ago and they stayed in touch for some reason.

“Ah that’s just fuckin’ great,” Mikey replied, hearing the lie and not letting it get to him. Everybody lied to Mikey because Mikey was a liar. He wasn't even listening to Davy anyway. “Anybody on your ass yet about that weed?”

“Jesus fuck.” Davy twitched and looked around the artificial dark in paranoid glances that had haunted his countenance for as long he could remember. Davy didn’t smoke but he bought some weed from Mikey last week just to say he’d lived a little. He was 38 after all. Time to live an alternate version of his 20s. He didn’t know how to smoke it so he threw it on a candle and hovered over the smoke, huffing like an Olympic runner. Didn’t do anything. Weed was for losers. “Keep it down ya asshole.”

Mikey chuckled, then hacked into a gnarled tree root of a fist. “Oh please what’s it to you. Everyone knows me here.” He gestured to the empty bar. Bars were empty at 1pm. The bad ones were anyway.

Davy was unable to pinpoint the moment his life had turned out this way. He knew others much younger than him had made far better decisions and had no seedy fucks like Mikey meeting him at bars in the afternoon for no reason. What was the secret? What had he done wrong? He’d considered therapy once but he had no money for it, plus who paid someone $250/hour to listen to your problems? Fuckin’ suckers did, that’s who. Davy was no sucker and he laughed at those who thought they could fart their money away and solve their made up problems. Maybe he could turn to religi— JUST KIDDING. Davy wasn’t that stupid.

“Anyway,” Davy muttered, desperate to retrieve his god damn thoughts from the wilderness, “she texted me yesterday and canceled again. Third time in a row. I dunno why I’m putting myself through this.” He ran his hands through his hair and squeezed with the force of a vicegrip. The pain felt good. “We made out once and now she's all I think about. She’s in my dreams. Every night. I wake up yelling like a felon in the wrong prison. Don’t know what to do. Do I, do I just, what, can—"

“Settle down there, slummy.” Mikey had a way with words sometimes but not now evidently. “Women’ll fuck you around, hey? Look here’s what I do.” He pulled some weed out of his pocket and started rolling it with the attention of a carpenter hard at work.

“Fuck this.” Davy shot up from the drab booth and stormed out. Mikey didn't call after him. Davy gripped his phone in his pocket and like a righteous god willed it to ring. It never did but one of these days it would happen, he knew it would. Until then he would have to wait. Or text her again. It had been a whole day. He wasn’t overdoing it, right? Just a little reminder that hey, he was thinking of her. Share some inside joke. DiCaprio made the cover of Wow Today! Magazine again this week. “Your boy made the cover!” Something like that. He knew she liked him. Something light and innocent, but gotta let her know she’s in his mind. Insert himself into her day and control what she thinks. That's how you do it. Plant the hooks and she'll come back. Jeez what was his problem? This isn't how you manage anxiety. Or was it? He didn't know. Fuck this world. TEXT ME YOU BITCH, he shrieked to himself.