Sometimes I preach, and sometimes I’m too bored to do anything other than scratch my balls watching TV while smoking rolled cigarettes that stain the fingers of my right hand the colour of those fields Van Gogh used to paint. Sometimes, when I’m feeling innocent, I write poetry and think of myself as a good man. All the rest of the time, I know exactly what sort of person I am, and so just shrug my shoulders at how pathetic it is while cracking open another beer. You could call me a writer, or maybe a loser. You could say this thing has a purpose, or that it’s an excuse. A cover for my obsessive and peculiar ways. For isn’t it true that I’ve been bordering on madness for years? Isn’t it true that I’ve been singing a different tune for much longer than I should’ve been? Once, my attention was drawn to the breast of my mother, and then it was that of a lover. Then it was the bottle, and for so many years now it keeps going back and forth between the latter two and my head hurts just thinking about it. Maybe I’ll have another bath to try and absolve myself of sin, or I’ll watch episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine on YouTube and pretend I’m four again. Maybe I’ll think of my nan, and all those afternoons of my childhood spent playing in her house with those teddy bears that once belonged to my uncle and those old board games with so many missing pieces you couldn’t play them properly. Then there are those memories of school, and how at lunch breaks a group of us would always visit this ice cream truck parked up a few minutes walk from the main entrance. It almost certainly contributed to some of my cavities, but what the fuck, nothing can take back those times, and nothing can convince me that past pleasures aren’t worth keeping alive.
Author S. K. Nicholas 
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