This is my stop, kid. You've a long way to go.

"Sometimes, you have to trade in your pride into something more wearable. Something like comfort and stability. It won't mean you lost fight in whatever you believe in, it just means you grew wiser and was handed a bigger pair of balls. You sweat for the right things, no matter how much you pride yourself in something that can't bring food to the table or a smile in your workplace. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Learning to step down from your own pedestal will be one of the least noticed lessons in life."

The old man gave him a pat on the back before he alighted the bus.

"Everything will get better. Remember, you're still young. You have a long list of fuck-ups to do."

...

mutti

There is something that irks me.

 “We are a line of men raised by women. Suckled in softness and indecisiveness. They wear the pants in the relationship. Most of us don’t even know how to use a necktie. I think it’s better if we use it as a noose, around the neck and pushed off a ledge fashioned from our deficiencies. We are scared shitless in the face of confrontation. The more reason that our necks deserve the hangman’s touch. The gallows wait.”

...

“I’m in the dark, and it obviously suits me to stay in the dark.” – Frederick Seidel

Sneak peek

"My dad crushes the last of the temporary cage he bought with the last bills from his pawned watch – it was a gift from a daughter outside of his second wedlock. He put the crystalline serving on a roughly used sliver of tin foil, deliberate amount to taste. The eyeballs roll back into the back of his head like a billiard ball in a counter-revolution. It hits with a wick thud as it sinks into the corner pocket. Well-sighted and carefully positioned. He wakes up only to discover he slept like homeless person on the concrete. The bed was just a few steps away. His greatest success is that his children never saw him do that. This is just a dramatization. He lives a highlight reel written for him by his frustrations and disgust. It was the perfect script. He could have been a far better writer than I – he’d have had a ton of material to work on. I write this in good faith that my imagination may chip his reality even with just a slight tink. I hate myself for judging his apparent “weak character.” 

 ...