Lemme run something past you...

I stare at the paper plate full of rubbery Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. It is the sauce kind, not the skinny powder stuff. Nothing but the best for me! I am a little surprised to find myself eating. Usually I drink my lunch. I feel a little sick.

Typical. The sick part anyway.  The food -- not so much.

The clock on the wall ticks an even staccato but the hands do not move. The battery has just enough juice to drive the little motor: tick, tick, tick, but not enough power to move the hands from a perpetual 9:23. AM, PM it does not really matter. Eventually it will tell the correct time.

I don't remember fixing the food. I have eaten some of it. An unnatural yellow smear marks the spot I scooped the pasta with my fork. The fork is clenched tightly in my right fist. Kraft cheese sauce coats my tongue. I give a little shudder and bile backs up in my mouth. I swallow it back down.

Real men don't puke. Even I have standards.

I see a bottle of beer on the table. There is also a glass of water and a bottle of Tylenol next to it. I am more than a little confused. Alcohol weeds choke my brain.

I lift my chin from my chest. I must have blacked out for a minute. The fork is in my lap. The macaroni mocks me. The light is dim. Four of the six bulbs in the light over the table are burned out. The blinds are firmly closed.  I do not know if it is day or night. I feel like I am swaying in my chair. I reach for the beer, but it is just beyond my grasp.

"Not until you eat". I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and then search for the body that goes with the voice. I don't want beer anyway. I know that voice.

I am in that half-drunk half hungover state I deplore. Dee- plore. The word rattles around my throbbing skull. I try it out loud. "Deplore". I screw my eyebrows into what my mind thinks is a haughty sneer. I imagine my nose is a thin blade above an Errol Flynn mustache.  I purse my lips and try it again. "Deplore". The effort hurts.

"What did you say, Daddy?"

My little girl is here. I don't want her to see me like this. I gag and and dry heave a little trying to stifle it. I really do not want her to see me like this. Little girls should not see their parents all weak and helpless and pathetic. I am so ashamed.

Of course she is not a little girl anymore. She has a house and family of her own. Me, I just have my place and a collection of empty liquor bottles thrown at the general direction of the trash can. I push the joystick on my chair.  Nothing happens.

"I unhooked the battery." she says.

 I tell her I need a real drink. She just stares me down. I tell her I have to piss. She tells me to eat.

I try to take one more bite of the Kraft Dinner. I throw it up down the front of my faded gray Cubs T-shirt. I want to cuss and swear.

Instead I cry.

I close my eyes to stifle the tears. I see an image in my brain.  A tall cool glass with fruit and an umbrella. A beach drink. I breath deeply. I can almost taste the rum and juice and froth. I wish I had one in my hand now, only without the umbrella and fruit and juice and rum. A tall glass of sweet whiskey screams my name. I want it. I need it. Desire. I try that word out loud too.

 "Dee-zire".

Desire and deplore.  The cycle of my life.