Here it comes.

"…Listen; it’s getting closer…"
-Hope, "Tree Frog"

"The only way out is down…the only way out is down…"
-Everything But the Girl, "Five fathoms (SNK)"

The bill collectors keep calling, and writing. I’ve had no money to send them. It’s too hard here. It’s too hot. I can barely make rent.

____ is disappearing, gradually. We rarely talk and make no attempt to sleep in the same bed. I am beyond the situation. I think on it now as a third party. What’s to be done? How can I help me? Well, how?

For the most part, I’m numb constantly. I go out; he goes out. Sometimes we see each other. Sometimes not. I don’t want to feel anything.
But if I don’t feel numb, it’s real easy to get that way. Hell, I live in Key West. I can stay numb all I want.

I’ve got friends. Friends to go out with. Friends to dance with. To drink with. To slide with. Yeah, I’ve got plenty of friends.

My friends are good people. The really are. They just handle their problems with drugs more often than the average (or above average in consumption) individual. Good people can have bad drug problems. Sad, but true. It seems obvious to me now, but there was a time when I did not realize that contradictions like this exist with great frequency.

And we all slide together. Night after night of late nights, drunken and ultimately forgotten come-ons, cigarettes smoked one after the other, joints and alcohol, cocaine (for them), sexual encounters here and there, the awful cycle of repetition…sometimes beautiful or hot or tragic…it’s all worthless, really. The truths you seek could dance right by, you could look right at them, and still you’d never see.

I am with a friend at the Copa, two or three weeks before I left, before I even know I’m leaving. We are smoking and drinking, stoned from earlier, he’s also tweaking, as we talk rather distractedly at the other. Is this all there is? Boredom and thoughts of "how long can this life last?" run opposite to the beat and the drunken European cadences of my friend. My life here must end. If I stay, I will die. I look into his eyes, the beautiful friend on a faster track to self-destruction than myself, and a decision forms. A vague finality really, that I will leave the island soon. When is soon? Soon will be long enough, I suppose.

A month, six months (maybe six would be too long)…the end here will come. I know this will happen. His eyes resonate sadness and desperation and questioning and realization. I’m filled with my own sadness about our nonverbal exchange, our self-destruction, our ways, knowing I’ll die, knowing he’ll die, if we stay here. I hope he figured it out.

Nothing works here anymore. I hope the end comes soon. I can’t keep trying. Sometimes I can’t get out of bed. It becomes more than I can bear. My friend says something I don’t quite hear and tries to smile. I try to smile back.
I get another beer, light a cigarette, excuse myself, and walk around the perimeter of the bar, still looking for an answer, any answer, in the faces of strangers, looking at the scenery in the darkness for how many more times.