Like maybe one day I'll rise with my daily temporary prostrating chemical Alzheimer's and my backache and she will be gone. Oh sure, I'll remember slowly that we had a gin fight, some musty tavern somewhere, arguing over holistic massage therapy, will it help or won't it. There are varying opinions on holistic therapies, and she doesn't think anything will help me but her and booze. Then it'll come back to me that she left with some lecherous guy, which might hurt for a second, nah, & then I'll finally be left alone with my hangover in peace, or at least in non-bitching silent pieces. Ah well, there she sleeps, regardless of my wishes, oblivious to misery as always, unless she's the one causing it. But I can't even blame her for my back pain. I broke it in three places. Two operations, four years later, pain, pain, pain.

POUND.....POUND.....POUND....POUND......THUMPTHUMPTHUMP......

Here it comes, racing onward as pounding jackhammer at base of skull with pain filled beats. I am under permanent construction, remodeling my existence with hard liquor, and whatever else I can find to erase the words that fill the essay my parents wrote thirty-five years ago in the back seat of some car outside some dark bar.

What a way to start a life?

What a way to start a day...

POUND...POUND...POUND....

One day my back will just crack in two and fall apart. The only thing worse than the pounding in my back is the bitter taste of the nausea that permeates in the back of my throat and the god awful dryness that consumes my tongue. I hate cottonmouth. I slowly rise to my feet, swaying to the breeze of gravity. I'd like to know how it is that if you go to sea for a few days, you develop sea legs and get used to the sways. I've been drinking for twenty-some odd years, taking pills for four, and I still don't have hangover legs. I feel weak and small and old. I am weak and small. Maybe holistic massage therapy wouldn't help either.

I walk to the fridge, open the door, using it as a crutch, and slam a soda....Ahhhhhhhh....

No food today, unless I intend to decorate the walls of my office with whatever I eat, If I even make it that far. In fact, the smell of cold fried chicken is giving me second thoughts about existing. I take 1000 Mg of B12, because, god love the little red devils, they try to help, and not much else in the world does that. Speaking of god, where is he every morning? It's not like I asked to be here. Off to the bathroom.

I watch a roach crawl up the wall and behind the medicine cabinet. He is not oblivious to me, just unafraid. He stops and looks at me before disappearing, winking at me with wiggling antennae. He thinks that I am one of his kind and maybe I am. I swing the door open and rifle through the medicine cabinet, getting frantic with worry until I notice the little brown bottle with the angelic halo glowing white lid on top of the toilet. She must've gotten them out during the night to take a couple. No wonder she sleeps so well. I take two with some rusty old tap water. Mmmmmmmmm.....True love is bliss....

If I can't have holistic massage therapy, a couple pain pills will have to do. Anymore of holistic massage therapy?