Rathbone

A motorcycle is cresting inside the curve of your steering column. Loopty-loo. All on a Wednesday night (Here we go!). It usually sits idle, but tonight it's going round and round, like a hamster in its titular wheel. This room, also, is spinning. Blame it on the Tetons.

It's been two New Year's Eves in a row I've kissed you at midnight. Let's not make it a third, how's about? You're cute and everything (everything including your raven hair and big tits and sloe eyes and...), but I need my space. I neeeed my sanity. You can give me a lot of things -- blowjobs, health insurance, spaghetti and meatballs -- but, sorry, you can't give me the solitude I seek. No one can, perhaps.

See how I qualified that last sentence? I'm sure you did, you wily cobra, you! For while I'll admit that I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride, I'm

(sure, hopeful, positive, wishing)

never one to discount the next saddle. I'm flexible. All it takes is some time and some training. On my part and hers (mostly hers).

Giddy up.

I had a pair of bluejeans once that fit like no other, but a few years later I tried them on and they no longer fit. And it was then I realized: it wasn't me, it was the jeans. That may sound like bullshit coming from a child of the Blame Generation, but I truly believe it. Bluejeans change shape in the wash; they fade and wear down over time. Me? I'm still here, baby, exactly where I was the last time. Ain't a damn thing changed but the weather and tectonic plates.

It's 2 p.m. on a humid August afternoon. Last night, someone stole my bicycle. I can hear the wood of our mahogony kitchen table creaking in protest, and that's another cry of freedom.

I'll never see you again, God willing. Maybe I'm evil, and maybe you're pure, but I don't think so. It's not a matter of black-and-white. To me you're an old T-shirt, one that mistakenly got dyed from white to pink when you threw your red socks in with the laundry.

Mistakes happen. But that doesn't mean I can forgive. Or fix. Sometimes -- usually, perhaps -- love is more than that, and nothing can convert loathing to cherishing, or vice-versa.

Please never call me again, you cunt.