Patch Brennan's Reports

Been a while since I wrote in this...
I broke my one fucking cardinal, covenant, commandment rule today.

Woke up with a hang-over that would make Cerebus blush. Would make Dylan Thomas curl up under his barstool. I wasn’t alone. And I mean that on most every level you can mean those words. She’s gone, now—I was going to fry her an egg or something, but last night was just too much for us to process right now, I think. And so I’m here popping Aleve like Chiclets. Can you go to the hospital over a hangover? I mean, I don’t recall eating carpet samples. ~~Insert crude joke here~~. And my right eye… it feels like…

( Today's comics lesson. )

Corrupted… Purified… Nnn.

The day started off poorly. I was thinking about ‘Lex. The biggest example of my number one rule: "We do not shit where we eat." Which I broke last night. And before that I was thinking about 'Lex again. Because I am typically a fucking moron who can’t stop picking at his scabs. This new life, this new job, this new home… it hasn’t buried any of it, big surprise. This song reminds me of my sadly infamous string of women…

( Sometimes I do listen to new stuff. )

Working at Alpha Marketing, thinking about ‘Lex. Having my broken head. These are bad combinations when you’re working door-to-door. I sold shit all day, I got laughed out of places more than usual, and I almost got hit by two trucks and a moped while crossing streets. So I was in a pissy mood and I didn’t want to go to any damned party. Because I don’t think office parties are cool. I think they’re a chance to suck up to your boss or pretend you like your co-workers so that it’ll be easier to fuck them over later in the week over a report, or other soap opera bullshit.

All I’d been wanting to do (besides write, which I’ve been shit about lately as per usual) was to check up on Patchwork Earth. I’d been wondering if anyone still used the old MUD, or if it was just this graveyard, where the dreams and ideas I’d had a lifetime ago were rotting where they were buried. Did anyone care? I’d downloaded a good client earlier, but hadn’t had a chance to log on an explore like the old days. That probably sounds like a really pathetic evening, but I also figured I’d get drunk and maybe have Chinese food.

Okay, not helping.

But somehow I wound up at the damned party anyway. I think Monty tried to bribe me or something, but I also think I wound up sticking around because I knew she’d be there.

( Sounds so dramatic. )

So yeah, she was at the party. And Al foists her off on me, says “she’s weird like you.” Fuck you, too, Al. Fuck you too. But she is, of course. She’s weird just like me.

I said something like “Don’t I know you?” which was so contrived and forced and lame, but… I really had to know what the fuck, who the fuck she was. It didn’t feel real. It was all like something I’d written, which is so goddamned typical. But we wound up seeing that look in each other, and we snuck off to the office with some bottles to talk… and wow, talk we did. For… forever, it felt like. And it all came pouring out, or a lot of it… and things are just so similar. Broken mirrors.

I showed her what was under my sleeve. We were really drunk by then, but… I mean, I don’t know exactly if it was out of desire, or just relief, or desperation, but… the sofa pulls out, and…

We were two sideshow freaks who didn’t want to be alone anymore—I was the merman pulling the snake-dancer underwater with him—pressing her against the wall of my giant fishbowl and watching the bubbles from each of her gasps dance around each other, diagramming the molecular structure of some strange new world. Only that’s not quite right either, is it? Not a fishbowl—fisheye lens—ichor runs down my cheek when I close my eyes—maybe a snow globe. Everything’s all shaken up now. I can see the tattered bits of our chronologies kicked up into the air, suspended—forming mythic constellations.

It seemed to last for hours, it seemed like the cosmos died while we were busy. Like the gods came down and watched and left, and we kept at it. And then not even people like us could fight off sleep any longer, and everything sorta blinked out like an unplugged television.

( Then came the dream. )

And I wake up. Boy do I ever. It’s physically impossible to bolt upright from a dream—that’s a movie thing, your body just doesn’t work that way. But I definitely jumped, and it took me a moment to realize what had me trapped against the bed was another person. I was rock hard, and caked in sweat. My head felt—feels—worse than when I banged it before the show. Thought I might throw up.

She was all tangled up with me—she woke then, too, and saw that I’d been crying. I hadn’t even realized that I had been. We shared a look, and she just… she just got it, without my having to voice it. She just put one arm around me… and slid the other beneath the sheet. It wasn’t long before she dove in after it. Soon the dream didn’t seem to matter so much anymore.

I don’t know what happens now. It’s Saturday, and for once enough people made quota that the office is going to be closed. So it’s just me… and if she comes back. I’m going to take the longest shower in history so that I can wander across the street for cigarettes, and then I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t remember being this dizzy in a long time.

But Patchwork Earth seems much less important this morning, I’ll tell you that.

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