Chocolate Milk
 Renato Teroy

Today.  This morning.  I woke up with a stranger, the only question that numbs my head is, “who will I wake up with tomorrow?”  Heroin chic rolls me out of bed, the hair on my head a lop-sided swirl, all to answer the phone call of an acquaintance I met last night o’er a line of cocaine and empty shot glasses.  This is no love hangover.  He asks for a rendezvous at the Corner Café, neighboring the phone booth he’s calling from.  I leave the nameless body in my bed alone with the piece of myself I gave last night.  Put on my pea coat and the façade of the older boy I made myself.

Step outside into this loveless sea; these city streets, cold like the people you meet…bump into.  Turn up the collar on my jacket and proceed south on 9th towards Grand.

I have this thing, where I stare people in the eyes as we approach to cross existence, almost as a reassurance of dominance to myself, and sadist to say this, my cruel intentions rise from the ground, to move in this crowd.  I want to soil their innocence.  I can overflow desireless drama to make them believe they’re only dreaming.  The taste of their tears can be so sweet, and I leave after they receive their loveless, tasteless treat.

In for the kill to slaughter the lamb, my prey, I say, to leave the carrion there to decay. I hunt for the sport.

The sleeping around doesn’t bother me, I live carefree and clean, caged in this dirty prison they call a body, but I carry a case of a nameless disease that renders me consequence free…or so I think.  These faces that flow, I’ve slept with before, “What’s the difference if you bury the gold?”  They all hold a piece of me which I gave too easily.

Yesterday.  I rediscovered the joy of chocolate milk.  Its’ taste not obliged to change with the times; it’s the same since I was a kid.

Instead of indulging in my chocolate milk childhood, I meet up with this guy.  Bleached tips of hair, tall, skinny, thick lops, piercing eyes.  He calls the waitress o’er and orders for us, to share a drink we call loneliness…it’s better than drinking alone.  He sits across the table from me, healing appendages from constellation needle tracks.  Notice, I don’t want to, but it’s a look in the mirror.  And though we don’t know each other all too well, it’s understood without a word that we do what we have to…to escape.

His hand rises from his waist and fondles an old Powerball ticket with his middle finger.  His lips part to say, “there’s no point to the life we live.”  He laughs gingerly.  The waitress returns with our drink.  Powerball tickets become coasters and water ring stains become barriers.  I know what he means all too well.

“Sorry.”  I apologize and rise to my feet to excuse myself from the table, moreover my thoughts.  Sit in the bathroom stall and cry.  I can search the world by sleeping with everyone; but I’ll never find myself.  Perhaps to start again…

I come back to him and push the loneliness to his side of the table.  My lips part to say “I wish it wasn’t this.  And I thought that it would stay this way…until today.”  Call the waitress o’er, and request…

“I’ll have an order of chocolate milk instead.”