The Fuck Up

iii.

The next time I came back to the bar was sooner than I usually did. I was in the worst of bad moods and not even cigarettes could simmer it down like they normally did.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked a few moments after I sat down. God, I hated that fucking question. He asked it every time I came in, like I was some fucking stranger or something. He and I both knew he damn well knew who I was and what the hell he could get me, so I don’t know why he fucking asked every damn time.

And I voiced just that. “You know what you fucking can get me, so just get me it before I fucking drown you in your own alcohol.”

His eyes widened and he hurried away to get me my shit. I chuckled bitterly under my breath.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get arrested for verbal harassment one day?” A voice from beside me asked curiously, causing me to groan. I hit my fist on the bar counter.

“Can’t a person fucking drink until he’s brain dead in peace?”

I turned to look at the fucktard and sneer at his studying expression. He sat down sideways, facing me as he rested his elbow on the counter and his cheek on his palm. “Do you care about anything?”

I blinked, taken aback by the question. Did this…this shit think that because he already crossed the line he could keep doing it? “No,” I answered despite myself, eyeing him warily.

“Nothing? Not even a girlfriend? Friends? Family?”

I clenched my jaw. “Girls are whiny and manipulative and clingy and a waste of fucking time. So are friends. I don’t want that shit.”

“Family?”

“Don’t ask about my family,” I said in a lifeless voice, grabbing the beer as soon as it was set in front of me.

He was silent, praise any fucking higher power for that. But lo-and-behold it didn’t last long. “Do you live alone?”

“As alone as the day I was born.”

“No one’s alone the day they’re born,” he laughed, causing me to roll my eyes.

“Aren’t we? We’re alone in the womb, we’re alone through the damn tunnel, and we’re alone as this innocent clean slate. We’re alone because we didn’t choose to be there, and we didn’t choose who would fuck us up and taint our innocence. We’re alone because we’re the only ones who didn’t get to fucking choose.”

 Why the fuck was I preaching philosophies to some nosy dickwad?

He didn’t say anything and I didn’t look at him.

“But don’t we get to choose later on? I mean, you have the choice now. You can always surround yourself with people that don’t make you feel alone.”

I shook my head, laughing humorlessly. “I still have no choice. In this world, if someone can’t fucking stand you they avoid you. Everyone avoids me.”

Even to my own ears my words sounded miserable, though my tone sounded anything but. In fact, I sounded content—which I believed I was.

“Would you want to constantly be around me?” I asked him jokingly, sipping my beer. I didn’t notice that sipping was not normal for me, and that I was subconsciously slowing down my drinking just to talk to him.

“I’m still figuring that out,” he stated, much to my shock and surprise. Someone needed to create a word for this because unnerved and disconcerted just didn’t fucking cut it.