An Inhuman Condition

I want to sleep in someone’s arms tonight. I don’t want to have sex or any of the complications that it brings; I just want to be in bed next to another person making physical contact so that I might feel like I am alive and connected somewhere in this matted wad of dead hair we call humanity. I want this so badly that I wish I knew someone I could beckon to humor me: someone warm and real and tangible and tactile. This night is made of bastard scissors that cut away my links to the world little by little as the hours pass until I am in my own desolate desert of isolated insecurity. I want to know that someone can smell my pot-of-coffee breath, the nicotine of thirty-some cigarettes on my nubby fingers, my shampoo and the remnants of deodorized underarms. I want to feel the clutch of fabric on some garment, any garment that isn’t my own solitary sleepwear. I want to feel the stitches in my dry, cracking hands and snag a bit on my wild fingernail with the sharp corner. I want to feel freezing toes against mine as they pop back under the safety of cover. I want hair in my face and a light breathing tickling my ears. I want to be wrapped in an intimate cocoon writhing against the nexus of another: any other. I want to feel something real.

The whiskey is calling my name: beckoning with siren song. I can imagine the soft caress of sipped scotch soothing its smoky way slowly down to my stomach. I taste the cool touch on the tongue contrasted with woody warmth. The olfactory ecstasy of its auburn scent sends tickles wafting through my nostrils. Its subtle caramel color has captivated my gaze, and it takes every iota of effort in me to deny the bottle her loving kiss. I scorn her for another that will not come. As I type clicks and clacks into bits and pixels, the clock continues to betray me. There will be no contrition, no absolution on this gnarled night. Not haze nor grace nor mechanized gods will arise to save or service my slumber. And I will sleep alone.