things you only learn by reading Freud in a dark corner

 

epub or mobi, with thanks to the original sharer

Merry Christmas! Maybe I should get a present for Janet. Yeah, that would be a scorcher. I’d get a gun, or a rope, and I’d put a great big card on it. One edged in black. And I’d write something on the card, like “Baby, swing yourself over a limb in a high wind,” or “Give yourself another hole in the head.” I laughed and the bartender’s look didn’t bother me a bit.

Merry Christmas, you stupid jerk. I drove down the street, wondering what I ought to do. There were plenty of places outside of town where a guy could have fun. This time of the year there’d only be the loose ones floating around, the guys and dolls who wanted to whoop it up, the unhappy creatures who either didn’t have a home or didn’t want to go there. Like me.

There’s something about the end of the year, the phony forgiveness that a lot of people like to hand out, that sort of gets you. You get to thinking about that night your first sergeant shot himself because he was sick and tired of it all. You think of the little blonde who lifted the twenty off the bar and did a Houdini through the girl’s room. You remember how it had been for you when you were a kid and you sat in the dark and cried because there wasn’t anything at all. You keep thinking like that and drinking and the whole world suddenly seems sort of small and sad.