Cheapest Stuff You Got. By M. Nagle

Did I ask if I could post this? No. I just took it from his site. It's a couple of months old, plus I know him so I figured he wouldn't mind (My God complex).

http://everyoneisugly.blogspot.com/

Maybe there's something wrong with me. Did I ever tell you that I like the pain in my chest? The tightness that I sometimes feel, it feels good. Maybe it reminds me that I'm still alive. Or perhaps that I might be dying. Sometimes after the pain subsides, I breath different, trying to bring it back, trying to remember. Am I really too young to be having chest pains? Trying to remember why they are there. I've never asked a doctor about it, because it doesn't seem right. It feels private. My own reminder of a life lived. Still being lived. But the nights are getting shorter and the days seem to drag on.

"I'll have a scotch on the rocks, a double." The bartender looks at me carefully. Inspecting. Expecting.

"I'll need you're ID, buddy."

I want to tell him how old I am. I want to explain to him that, regardless of the years I've been alive, regardless of the lack of wisdom, lack of maturity, lack of everything that makes a person a grown-up, regardless. I pass him my ID. Regardless of the prematurely graying hair. The bald spot. The receding hair line. The wrinkles and dead eyes. Regardless of the chest pains. Just regardless.

"You want premium or just from the well?" An interesting question. I catch a look from a group of college age kids wearing Abercrombie and Fitch and smelling like high priced cat piss. Averting my eyes, I mutter, barely audible.

"Cheapest stuff you got."

He sets my ID on the bar and turns his back on me. Another cigarette crawls between my lips. The flame bends over backwards to help in my impending demise. Cancer. Emphysema. Birth defects. Who gives a shit anymore?

I cough as I inhale deeply, pleasingly. My eyes water up, I feel as though I am going to faint, but the feeling subsides. Someone drops a quarter in the juke box and Ray Davies begins to preach about what it takes to be a well respected man in this town. I feel goosebumps form beneath my tattered grey Carhart hoodie. It makes my skin crawl to listen to classic music when I am surrounded by people that can never understand what it means.

The bartender sets my drink down on the bar.

"Three seventy-five."

I reach into my pocket, retrieve a handful of crumpled one dollar bills, toss four on the table and wait for my change. I won't be leaving a tip, which probably means that I will die while waiting for a second drink.

While the color and aroma of the scotch is consistent, it taste like something that was wrung from the spoiled shorts of Johnnie Walker the morning after his private viewing of Braveheart. The first taste is spit back into the glass. Eyes closed, gearing myself up to drink, I stab my cigarette butt into the ashtray.

The bartender tosses my quarter on the counter. I down the acrid fluid in one gulp, and commence to fighting the urge to vomit. It takes only a couple of seconds for the feeling to pass.

I grab my quarter and give the frat boys a nod. It's time to go home. The empty house awaits. I haven't seen anyone I love in well over a year. I am too young to be divorced. Too young to have estranged kids, to be on the run from child support. Too young to have chest pains.