Free Destroy by Jason Myers

head against the window and rub my eyes and notice that the fog is beginning to clear up.
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    Back at my apartment, I cannot unlock the front gate again. It still won’t fucking work. Shit! So I stand there, contemplating what to do, when this guy from my floor walks outside.
    â€œThank you so much,” I tell him.
    â€œLose your keys?” he asks.
    â€œNo. They just don’t work, and I’m pissed off about it. My keys don’t work.”
    â€œLet me see them,” he says.
    I hand them over and he goes, “I think I know the problem.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œLook,” he tells me, pointing at the front gate key.
    The thing is absolutely covered in cocaine.
    And the guy goes, “That’s most likely your problem,” handing the keys back to me.
    â€œYou’re probably right,” I say, and walk inside after digging the residue out with my finger and rubbing it over my gums.
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    Sitting at my computer desk, smoking another cigarette, drinking a glass of scotch, I flip through my many crates of records really contemplating hard about what I should play.
    I grab a Sinatra record. No. Then I grab the Replacements’ Tim record. Not that, either. I put that one back and keep flipping—the Del-Vikings—Mark Olson and the Creekdippers—ElliottSmith—when my eyes feast themselves on the Z album by My Morning Jacket. I pull that one out and put it on.
    My favorite sound of all time is the soothing scratching sound that records make.
    Beside my pile of records are even more crates. Crates full of magazines with something about me in all of them. I move one of them closer and start flipping through it. The Playboy issue. The adult movie zine that praised me for openly writing about stars like Jill Kelly and Sydnee Steele and Gwen Summers in my book. I glance over the Maxim with a write-up about me inside, and there’s the MOJO , the People , and I finally end up on my favorite one, Interview , the issue right after the one Jim Carroll interviewed me in, the one where I got to interview Jay-Z.
    I light another cigarette and weave a finger through the haze of smoke lingering in front of my face, trying to understand what’s behind my current writing failures. Is it the drugs? The expectations? The fear of actually sitting back down and really doing it? Probably a bit of all that and some more.
    And even though I pinned two sets of black sheets tightly over the windows, bits of sunlight have managed to pass through, a harsh reminder that things are coming to an end. But I’m still wide awake. My body is tired but my mind is at work. Every time I breathe, a drip runs down my throat. I’m exhausted and I’m jacked. Thrashed but excited.
    The record twirls its beautiful way into song two, “It Beats 4 U.”
    Damn. What a song.
    It reminds me of this girl Savannah I used to really like. I mean, I had a huge thing for her, but she would never give me the time of day for the longest time. But I was so persistent back then, and she was so beautiful. She really was. Man, she was so fucking beautiful. She had thislong, golden-brown hair that smelled like apples and cinnamon. Her eyes were bright blue and she had this Marilyn Monroe beauty mark above her upper lip, and her lips themselves were thin and licorice red and she always wore the cutest sundresses. I mean, damn, I had the biggest thing ever for her.
    So one day a couple of years ago, I’m at Golden Gate Park for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Me and a few close friends bouncing from stage to stage all day, drinking the beers we brought in, eating corn on the cob and pork burgers and funnel cakes. Watching the Heartless Bastards and Gillian Welch and the Steep Canyon Rangers and Los Lobos kill it. It was so nice and warm and everyone there, hell, everyone in the city seemed to be wrapped in this universal box of optimism