someone's got it worse (MR. T COMES HOME)

heavy thuds of boots or thick soled dress shoes climb the stairs. the sound of the stairs betray so much more to me than they intend to say. slow, awkward, clumsy thuds. the footsteps go into the bathroom. the footsteps' cell phone rings and he picks up. it's T.
i thought so.

he tells the listener hello, speech as slurred as his feet. he talks for a little while, very shortly actually, under a minute. then says, "I love you. you hurt my feelings many times." Then there are a few moments that pass, but no indication of finality to the conversation. hello? hello? i can tell by the banging and smashing sounds coming from his room that he has just been hung up on.

i lay in my bed and am the eyeless witness to this scene. i have just been having a dream in which i am living in a new house with some of my old room mates, some new ones. there is a new set of activities there, but the same things happen. my beers get stolen. eddie and tyree are friends. there was some very dark or criminal aspect to this dream, but i cannot recall what it is. my mom, also L., were in the dream. but i can't remember
what they were doing there.

the timing is incredible, incredible. though it only makes sense. it seems the angel of death has found my address. he seems to follow me and whoever i happen to be friends with at the moment, whoever i am around. ailing us with the same bad luck. they never know it's me that's cause. but it is me. didn't you know? every generation has a person in whom the universe places the battery that powers human drama, and it's me this time. not megalomania or narcissism, just true.

i once prayed in venice for the sun to come out, and it did. i keep telling myself this when i feel too satanic. i can do good things with my powers, i can.

but moments like these i wonder.

T and i, we are the same right now, weirdly enough. this prick who stole my shit. this poor, sad fuck i don't get along with, whose heart is broke all over his bed in a soggy mass, unpartitioned and nonlinear, disorganized. he will probably die alone. we can form a club, i'll tell him tomorrow.

i wanted to cry, i really did. earlier tonight, i was talking to someone about current hard stuff going down in life, and they asked me if i had
cried about it. i was so apprehensive when the question had been asked. but tonight, laying there with a cloud and a fog over me, i kind of wish i had cried, because they say if you don't cry, you just don't feel it deep... or something.

i don't know if i will cry, maybe i will. but i know the troubles aren't over like i want them to be. there is a lone wolf with his head hunched, skinny from starvation, circling my bed, waiting to pounce. he'll have his day soon enough.

then i hear a man's voice from down stairs. it's just loud shouts, testicular, but mumbled. i wonder if it's eddie, drunk. but the shouts come again and it sounds arabic. the man is somehow involved with T. he's yelling up at T, who replies with incoherent mumbling with lots of "she's" and "dawg's." the man doesn't understand because he keeps shouting back up.

who is this mystery speaker? is it T's girl's other lover? are they feuding over a woman? did T somehow get involved in a love triangle involving that girl i've seen over here and an arabic man?

i go down to see. my 230 am rude awakening leaves me with little rational thoughts but a lot of residual dream imagination. i'm afraid i'm going to accidentally get shot by a feuding lover. but the doors open and i see a taxi cab is parked in the front. T didn't pay the cab. no gunshots tonight.

his door is open when i go back upstairs. i tell him from outside his door theres a cab waiting.

yo come in, dog

in his room, there he is, lying halfway on the bed, face buried in the sea of sheets and pain and fuckups. this king of the hill on his mountain of mistakes. this dead body, this 38 year old body, surrounded by pot smoke and a hurricane of much too much but
probably just one thing.
i don't know exactly what was going through my head when i saw that. maybe something like,
someone else has always got it worse.
what i tell him is
the cabs still waiting, i know he's wasted, should i run some money down for him? i ask him and he's just lying there, mumbling, maybe to me, or not.

then he darts up.
oh shit, he's still waitin.
..... yeah
his eyes are open, crazy.
pupils dilated so big you could
fit a plank in there
or whatever jesus called it

he's standing now and assures me he'll take care of it after mumbling something about 20 bucks. i go back into my room and hear the boot clacks or dress shoe thumps, pacing irregularly on the hardwood creaks, and then i hear a body falling into bed, dead.

30 minutes later, i'm still up, writing and thinking, too stimulated to fall back asleep. i check the front and the cab is gone. maybe he gave up. maybe he's in the UAE mob if that exists, and T's on the list now.

either way, this morning before leaving for class, T's door was uncharacteristically still open. i didn't dare check. maybe the dead body was really dead.

two broken hearted beer thieves, living right next to each other. amazing. angel of death must have google now, or he's got a contact in the dmv.

we're both sad now,
i imagine,
T and me
we have dug ourselves into
holes
where stealing each other's food
is trivial and
there are much heavier issues
heavier than the
bitterest ale, the groggiest stout
than 40% or 50%
ABV
in a $12 liter of scotch whisky or
night marinating

he shouts as he walks in the door and gets
fucked up beyond imagination,
doesn't pay the cab,
skips work the next day

i fume, write resentfully
think a lot, plan on the new friends i will make
the places i will go
the places i will turn my back on
i feel quite
ingenuine
in that

at least my door is closed this morning

i drive away from the house,
look at it
my window,
T's window
someone else has always got it worse
sometimes he lives next door