King of the Forgotten Land

It'll fuck you up, but it'll make you king of the forgotten land. That fucking bottle, the financial cost was at an all time low of three dollars. I don't know who told you that red wine was for the finer folk in society, but they were wrong. Sure, I mean believe it or not I've paid more than twenty dollars for the odd bottle of grape juice, the taste is phenomenal when you throw an extra buck on it, but the feelings all the same. Once, maybe twice I drank it in moderation, what an absolute bore it was. Sipping away like a happy little chap with a ticket to the chocolate factory, pretending I'm a superior human being, spitting on the bums with their disgusting clothes who perched next to garbage among the vermin. No no, not me. I knew what I was when I drank red wine. I was the vermin who lurked in the rotten alleyways and peered through blind eyes at the golden glow above, the golden glow filled with frocks and frills that caused me to shake with fury. How dare you have more than I, how dare you dress so clean so fresh and never have lived a life as I. You don't know what it's all about. You've not the slightest idea of what it means to be alive, to be human. See when I drank red wine, it wasn't to be used as a numbing agent to suppress the horror story that is life; it was to encourage that feeling, to put a heavy emphasis on the depressive nature of existing; to feel the beautiful, relentless truth of our society. Everything would come rushing in, and with tears streaming down my face I'd drift away to the songs of the other lost souls; Social Distortion, Days n Daze, Johnny Cash.

I pictured the bottle in my mind after finally finding peace beyond the storm of a horrific craving. The bottle appeared luminous and spun up an iridescent web of contradictive thoughts. Oh what wisdom you have, my dear friend. Oh how I miss you. Of course it would only be the same this time around, as it had been the last, for just three dollars I could throw away my hard earned progress, along with every truth I've spoken becoming an apparently blatant lie. It would also be like clockwork, the old routine, not the new. It would be an unhindered satisfaction at first, I would ride the ultimate high of escaping those dreaded emotions, then strap in for the rollercoaster to come. It would be followed with tears; but not the kind that I like. The tears that I liked were the ones where you grieve about hardship, you grieve about lost loved ones and choke up telling their story, the tears of a long and painful struggle coming to a halt. I had a buddy who was good for those tears. We'd regularly buy a cheap bottle of bourbon and swig away until our heart strings were wrenched on. We'd tell stories of our past and the obstacles we have faced; conquered or unconquered. We'd cry about our own feelings and cry about the others story, we felt each others pain and ended it with a fist clenching hug and a kiss on the cheek, for we were brothers facing a problem together. But we're not talking about bourbon right now, are we? I was talking about the red wine tears, the kind that make you feel free and caged, the kind that I was chasing right now, for the anxiety had risen in my chest and had my heart stuck in position, so it felt. The tears from different alcohols were quite easily distinguishable for the keen alcoholic, for this is what he sought. I knew that bottle would open me up for the release of the century, and then swallow me back up again. I decided, after careful evaluation, that tonight was not the night for goodbyes. Sober, I would remain.