The Whiskey Monologues

the pebbles cut diamonds into my knees through cotton stockings as I part flowers and bushes in search of the bottle of winter’s woes. my memory of losing it is hazy, compromised, and wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but you remember, don’t you? disposing the evidence of our drunken debauchery on the sidewalk before you carried me down the long driveway and into your bed. five months later, I crawl through leaves and insects, hoping that the residents and their gardeners haven’t already beaten me to it, the last fossil from that eveningmorning (the hours all blend together, don’t they?). you’re not home, and I’m with people are desperate enough for this liquid courage to wade through nearly 150 days of foliage to accomplish this. but the ground is ugly, the pavement is cold, and our tequila is gone.

midnight doesn’t have the same poetry without you.

Submitted by W.

Vodka makes me slippery. Loose. More than disjointed— disconnected. My mind from my body and my limbs from each other, muscles and bones and ligaments become so much primordial ooze formed into a vaguely female shape. I slip into a lower level of consciousness, sub-aware rather than hyper-aware of the buzzing, spinning world around me. Words slip from my mouth, syllables and logic muddled into a sloppy, slurred mess. I slip into the groove, into the beat, swinging and swaying to music that touches the beast inside. And I never dance when sober. I slip into your arms, fingers brazenly sliding through your hair and and across your cheekbones and chest. I hang like a rag doll in your arms— but only for a moment, because there are people watching us, and because the music is still playing.

A mutual friend told me he got married after I left him.

“Well, good for him,” I said, to no one, stumbling down the sidewalk in a pea coat. “Good. For. Him.” I’m replying to the memory of the conversation. During the actual conversation, though, I laughed, told our mutual friend I had to go back home for an early flight, stopped by a liquor store, and drank my weight in alcohol.

It was 4 in the morning when I decided to drive by his apartment, a two-hour drive from the city. For what, I don’t know. I parked across the street from his window. There was a light on, and my breathe hung on any silhouette that may pass by. But none did. I imagined walking up to his door, soaked from the rain outside and begging him to take me back. He’ll stand at the doorway in his boxer briefs and five o’clock shadow, alone. His wife won’t be there because by then he’ll have found he made a mistake in marrying her. He’ll pull me in passionately, kiss me the way he used to, and we’d make love in the hallway just behind the door. But that’s not realistic because it’s not even raining, and I’m a coward, and I stumble my drunk ass to a nearby park and pass out.

Submitted by M.

PROCRASTINATION

I shouldn’t put it off any longer. Not when I’ve known for so long.

That it’s not going to work. That although we look right together there is something totally missing inside.

I already feel like I’ve betrayed her. When I’ve done nothing but been the perfect boyfriend.

The perfect boyfriend that knows it is going to end.

That’s why I can be perfect.

I know I’m on a time limit.

Maybe I’ll tell her over dinner on Friday.

Will that make it worse or better? A full stomach and a glass of wine to round the sharp edges?

Or maybe before dinner? Then if there’s a scene we can both save face and walk away majestically from our favourite bar.

After dinner we usually go back to her flat and make love.

Neutral ground would be better.

Maybe first thing in the morning. Maybe that will give her the day to adjust. Work off a bit of steam at the gym and forget me by lunch time.

Or maybe now.

Maybe I should just call her and arrange to meet.

And get the job done.

No more delay.

Or maybe I’ll just put a load of washing on, pour a brandy and think about it.

One more day of betrayal won’t make any difference.

Submitted by The Universe Speaks.

AN EXTRACT FROM “THE INVISIBLE THREAD”

The last time Fionn, Matthew and I were together before the plan reached its climax, we sat drinking in my kitchen until the wee small hours. There was a bottle of eighteen-year Talisker whisky being saved for a special occasion like this. Matthew didn’t know this was a special occasion, but it was a watershed in our relationship.

A drink like that is something to be enjoyed amongst the most intimate of groups you see, ones who know already the thoughts swirling in each other’s heads. But I alone knew what they were thinking, asleep and awake their thoughts trawled through me. Fionn thought he knew my mind, but I knew he was slipping. Matthew knew nothing. In my trance I was the one in control. I was in control of it all. It was me who I poured the drink. Just with ice, mind; you have two options: ice or neat. Anything fancier than that and you don’t deserve a whisky.

I was silent for most of the night, listening to the babble that Fionn had perfected which kept Matthew onside. Fionn was the honeypot, the football trivia, the vapid jokes. He was overly familiar and slipping. Matthew was the sycophant, the easy-to-amuse petty scheme-boy. I cut in, brash.

“Is there anything you regret?”

They both lost their place in whatever conversation was simmering along. Fionn stared deliberately at me while I avoided his eyes; Matthew was still whisky-hearted, mouth halfway through some inane story. For the first time that night the only sound was the dull dunts of ice on ice in our glasses. It’s good to cut into small talk, silence like this is better than fucking small talk. And you know what he says?

“Well, I’ll regret this in the mornin’, eh?”

Matthew was being fucking funny again. His whiny fucking screech was hilarious as per. I hope you’re bright enough to stay away from the whine of petty men. And stay away from people who confuse small talk for conversation.

Aye, well, I don’t move a muscle, just keep my eyes on Matthew across the wee table, and I see Fionn’s moved his suspicion from me to the cunt too. Matthew fades a bit, maybe is thinking that when I’m drunk I get a bit faux-serious so he clunks towards a diplomatic response. Crinkles his eyes a wee smidge like a smarmy bastard and bites his bottom lip. I come within a hair’s breadth of flipping the table when he finally speaks.

“I don’t believe… in regret” this wee worm says. “What we should dae is just dae what we want. And you shoulnae be dain it if yer the sort of cunt that regrets stuff. Regret’s fir cunts who dinnae enjoy their life, and Catholics.”

And I say to him “Is it not guilt that’s for Catholics?” and he goes “Well a dinnae have guilt either, dae a? A’ve made aw ma decisions masel. A’ve done them aw cause I wanted tae. Nothin to be guilty about if it wis you that chose tae dae them, eh?”

Wee guy will never know he nailed the nails into his own coffin. I drained my glass and left them the bottle.

Submitted by Cal McDonald.

“I’m not drunk.”

“You know that by just pointing out that you are not drunk it means that you are definitely drunk.”

She sighed.

“Damn vodka.” She put the half empty bottle of crystalline obsession on the coffee table to her right, where she would be picking it up and putting it down in the one-hour lapse.

“You have now more Russian in your system than I do,” he chuckled.

“Oh damn, Tommy,” she giggled while tousling her dirty blond hair. “The only way I will have more Russian in my system is if I fuck a Russian guy and have his pale babies.”

“What about me?” Tom asked and at that exact second he expected her drunkenness made her deaf.

She smirked and got closer as if the sofa had shrunk and the only option was to get skin against skin, breast against arm. Vodka against whiskey.

“You may be Russian honey, but you still are Tommy to me,” she smiled apologetically to burst out laughing three seconds later. Tom put his arms around her, pretending to laugh too.  Then there was silence, cutting sharp as her gardenia perfume. “You are just too good for me,” she whispered. “Too good you’re like… like poison.”

Pause. Maybe there is hope.

“So far I haven’t killed you yet.”

“Oh, but you will.”

Somehow he knew that was the absolute truth.

“It’s not that soon I’ll be walking down the street and poof! I’m dead,” she said before chugging down her throat some more good ol’ Russian venom. “You are that amazing that you are killing me gradually.”

He sat up straight. She was making less and less sense.

“Maybe you’re drinking too much.”

She looked at him in the eye, which wandered from time to time. No, the bottle was not half empty but half full.

“Maybe you’re not drinking enough.”

He sighed.

She left the bottle again on the coffee table and went back to her original position. He became marble and still couldn’t find the strength to push her away and tell her to leave.

“I tell you: you’re killing me,” she whispered and kissed him on the cheek before getting up and disappearing as fast as she had arrived.

“You’re killing me, too.”

Submitted by Linda Eguiluz.

SUMMER

The single drop of water slid down his the flat universe of his cheek like an autumnal leaf falling from an aged oak, or a ballerina in a terribly sad ballet. It clung desperately to his chin before plummeting gracefully to the floor, where it shattered, glass-like, and sparkled as if it had become a thousand something diamonds. The droplet sunk into the cold grey concrete only to remind him of the cruel, evanescent nature of life.

“It’s raining”, he declared, to the gathering crowds of air and dust. He choked. “It’s-s rai-ning”.

The wind brushed his hair and he tilted his bitter grimace towards the desolate sun, which shone mockingly in the clear blue abyss of a fine summer’s day.

“It’s definitely raining”, he whispered, as another gentle tear fell feebly from his despondent eye onto the destitute universe of his cheek.

Submitted by earth is not a cold, dead place.

FOR NOW

WHISKEY DREAMS

I’ve had men look at me like that, but never quite the way you do. I wear my tall boots and raglan shirts and sway around at some shitty dive with whiskey in one hand and a beer in the other. You follow me with your eyes, one hand hooked under my hemline, fingertips like a whisper across my skin. I smile and lick the last bits from the shot glass rim, stubbornly claiming that Uncle Jack is my best friend and tastes like candy. It reminds you of the tootsie rolls you always keep in your jacket pocket for your sweet tooth, just like my late great-grandfather. And I like that about you.

I like that about us: that we’re simple people with classic vices that prefer to paint our perspectives in hues of nostalgia. Because we live our city lives with our college degrees, but we both prefer to discuss the possibility of fucking in the bathroom. And how it’s too cold to try the alley. We’re respectable people but we were born in the wrong time: we’ve got these white trash roots and a weakness for folk tunes. You tell me you want to take me in a field beneath river birch trees, so I wear sundresses to the show despite the winter weather just so I can watch you struggle to keep your distance. It’s lust that glazes your eyes, but they smolder like that because when you look at me you can see your dreams of farmhouses in North Carolina and springtime spent on front porches. And I see the same scenes when I look at you.

You want me, but you want all of me.

Submitted by Amateur Cartography.

WHISKEY SOUR, PLEASE.

We talked about troubles over cocktails and doubles. Ongoing in her case, long past in mine. Poor kid thought the bastard in question was some diamond in the rough, as if good intentions and ample compromise was enough to make any asshole change their stripes. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that, no, sorry, you’re best off without him.

I did, however, buy her another drink.  

Submitted by McKinney Can’t Write.