Ain't No Rest for the Wicked

Love, who are you fooling? There's been ones like you before. You're not the first playing this role. I'm over you, you bore me with your ridiculous antics. I'm not going to dinner with you, I'm not going to meet your mother. I'm not going to see you at all. Don't ask me for anything. You disgust me, pathetic sir. Talking to me brings you back to a time when you felt free. That time has gone, and it isn't coming back. What makes you this unbelievable? You can have all the expensive cars you choose, the suits that cost more than I make in a month, the resume that fits a manuscript, and it doesn't amount to a paperboy's salary.

Unlike your foolish girls, I don't come at a price. They break too easily.

I wonder if C and J all fall for your nonsense? You go to your parties on the rooftop. You drink your drinks, you let your staff feed us at your extravagant expense, my friends danced at your club - it's in all the news, you insist- the envy of all those girls in heels they starved for. They don't know who they're dealing with. Nor do you. Give it up, chief. You reek of the drugstore and the gym, you tan in the Almalfi until you are the color of a finely polished shoe, you sit in the sun smoking your cigarette and offering all the girls whatever you think will do the trick. Do you think you're something new?

Even L has, quite possibly, jumped on the bandwagon. You'd be perfect, she says. She doesn't know; I've no desire to be near you. At all.

Your persona shines with the undeniable sheen of polyester. You slip around the room like a greased eel. Seeing you brings to mind the yogurt I let rot in my fridge. I didn't even like the stuff when it was fresh.

I will never date you, the girls can protest as they rightfully so may, perhaps pitying me into falling for your slippery kindness. I will have nothing to do with any of you. There's a society of men like yourself, you know. You ought to see it. You are no different than all the gold-toothed figures of my childhood, hawking their pills at kids with blue hair. Dad said to watch those men; stay away because they get you nowhere. You're nothing new. Just like them.

I'll smile at you, perhaps even laugh at your jokes. You know, it's the same game we're playing here, you just don't know how to hide your hand. Sitting in your gold-guilded bathroom, I thought it was so tacky you sleep in a place with lilies in the yard and a shower littered with Jameson. There are Stargazers in the dining room, you say.

My favorite flowers.

Wasn't it you who sent me the roses with the odd little note: "To melt the heart of my Ice Queen, and if these die, I'll get you shoes."

You even left an emoticon.

Don't you see? You barely know me. But I know you.

(I'm not, and never will be, or was, your anything. I'm not frigid, you just overwhelm me with your irrepressible heat. It's so ubiquitous. You picked me because, you say, I like your face. It makes you look good. In reality, you picked me because you can't understand me.)

I'm not walking in anything from you. I'm not going anywhere where you may be. You remind me of everything I hate about this place.

I'm not interested in your cheap ploys. I don't care about your watch. Tell me something that matters, tell me something I can think about.I shook your hand before I left, I didn't want an air-kiss, and you frowned. Vapid.

I look at you and know I don't care about what makes your world turn. It's too tangible.