What? It is. Needs a new battery. I digress.
Phony
JCD Kerwin
He quotes passages from Catcher in the Rye and calls himself Holden at midnights when he’s drunk his head too full of bourbon. He acts tough to hide his self-inflicted wounds, but he’s afraid the world sees right through him. His zealousness convinces him to hit on the older girls, but then he thinks of her and all the ways he hurt her. Sometimes he curses to himself because he doesn’t like remembering the mistakes he made.
He goes to the bar to find reasons for all the things he never did or shouldn’t have done. But the only things he finds are empty beer bottles and girls that will never be her.
He can’t smile when he spies himself in the mirror behind the bar; he can’t face his own reflection without cringing. He wants to gouge out his eyes so he doesn’t have to see, because the face in the mirror just can’t be his.
What he’d give to rewind time.
He’d take it all back and throw himself in the fire he started between them. He’d give up giving into the world and disappear with her. Now he tries to find that place to hide because he doesn’t want to be anywhere now that she’s gone. He can’t remember what it feels like to belong.
He scoffs as he wonders why he cares so much. No one cares this much. He’s not supposed to care. But he does, and it’s why he plays the same songs ten times in a row, hoping the eleventh is when he’ll have an epiphany. It’s why he drinks coffee in the park, wondering if drinking her favorite pick-me-up will call her back.
He tried to get her back, but he’s not a valiant knight; he’s just like the other ego-driven anti-heroes who call themselves “Caulfield” when they’re too full of self-pity to realize they’ve lost.
He might never find the answers he needs, and probably won’t find a way to be with or without her. If she came back, though, he knows they’d be all right. He’d say sorry and she’d forgive him. There’d be no more pretending and no more drinking in bars. There’d be no more Holden at midnights; she’d call him Brian at noon again.
(Dec., 2011)
J.C.D. KERWIN 