You ought to kick it to me and bite off my head
Last night, in the throes of inexplicable terribleness, I went to the liquor store and purchased a sizable bottle of red wine, which I then got home and proceeded to discover I had nothing to open it with. It seemed like some kind of hi-jinx performed by the gods above, who seem periodically bent on messing with my head. I turned the apartment over, looking for an opener, before giving up and sitting down, staring blankly at the bottle before me, as though by sheer will alone I could pop the top off. The very existence of the bottle, I conjectured, is the result of my ever crumbling girl situation, unraveling like a ball of twine that seems destined to just keep unraveling, forever. Small patterns disappear and are subsumed by bigger patterns, the singer sings. And that's the way it is with me. I remember when I was dating X., I became a particularly sordid brand of variety drunk, showing up to her house wrecked beyond belief. She would find me sitting on her porch, petting her cat, either too confused or apathetic to ring the bell, which may just pose the question, was it the drinking which crumbled the situation for me, or was it the situation itself which had me turning into a drunk? And further, if history repeats itself in the here and now, will I just continue to get worse, moving on to other balls of twine which will inevitably unravel? I was vacillating heavily on the larger implications when the sounds of the downstairs bell shook me from my reverie. Standing there, on the landing, was the downstairs neighbor's dude, stone-faced and hollowed out-looking, brandishing a plate of cookies. We were going through the greetings when the downstairs door flew open, where standing on the thershold was the ye old neighbor herself, with a face equally as grim. No sooner did this occur then I realized that I had found myself sandwiched in a particularly fiery brand of domestic dispute, and so I excused myself, promptly, and retreated back upstairs again. Poor guy, I thought: he had been experiencing his own brand of domestic dispute, probably, demonstrating any number of nervous tics which had presented--the kind which seemed innocuous and easily ignored at first but which over time sprouted into some ignoble bonsai of the nervous tic, and which, once discovered, could never be ignored fully and totally again, resulting in one thousand cold looks and sordid disputes and god knows what. Who could say what went wrong? It seemed like something, though, surely.

Romantic interpretation is a particularly sordid lot. Every once in a while two people will defy the odds in lieu of the urge to endlessly swap bodily fluids, working it all out in the end. And it is this triumph of the will which erroneously goads the rest of us on, resulting in the creation of one million romantic dramas of theatric proportions, both real and imagined. That's just my take on the subject matter. But you probably shouldn't listen to me; my record is not that great, and I can't even open a bottle of wine.

On my way out to buy an opener, I notice on the ground the batch of cookies sitting precariously by the door. The weight of this discovery crushes me. I look at the sad little pile of fresh baked goods, pathetically sitting there on the ground. Somewhere, out in the world, is this sorry sufferer and baker of homemade items. I feel like Sartre's narrator in Nausea, the only one able to sufficiently understand the Self-Taught Man. But ah, well: it's too late. He's probably already en route to the liquor store by now, in pursuit of the balm which will soothe his suffering soul. I stand there for one moment more, contemplating the cookies. It really does seem like such a waste, I think. And then, pulling back the cover, I reach inside and purloin one the sweet delicacies off of the plate, popping one in my mouth before striding off into the night. Not too bad, I think. Not too bad at all.