I was going to go all night without drinking but at 11:00 p.m. I broke down and walked to the liquor store. Hey, all I had was two beers yesterday. When I got back from the liquor store I realized how bad I stank, and finally took a shower. At the liquor store the old Korean man who owns it stank like the end of a long day, and I thought, "That's disgusting," and then realized that I must stink ten times worse. The past few days I've had to put on deodorant at night because the smell of my armpits keeps me awake. I paid for my six pints of Budweiser with change, quarters and dimes. There I was, in filthy clothes, my hair a mess, a stench hanging about my body, buying the beer that could only make things worse--buying it with change, no less, because I'm low on money. I realized it when I got out of the shower at home, sitting there on my easy chair, my first pint of Budweiser, my ashtray & my cigarettes spread out on the carpet in front of me: yes, I realized it: I'm hard. I am one of those urban roughnecks who will explode on somebody someday, someone to take care not to offend, someone whose face is slowly turning to leather. Yes: I'm hard, cynical, nihilistic even; I have no job, no college degree, no friends, no life; my only comforts are alcohol & nicotine; I don't care where I'll end up in twenty years, whether homeless or whatever: I'm hard. And there I go down the street--did you see me out there?--struggling to keep my balance on cumbersome legs, a six-pack of beer in a bag at my side, a plastic bag of change in my pocket, wearing a corduroy jacket stained beyond repair, my hair brushed back and needing grooming, my mouth moving spastically in some strange sort of palsy, my eyes saying to me constantly, "You are not here: you are somewhere else." Oh I am a filthy thing; when I was a child, did I ever suspect what I would become? When the teachers had us calculate how old each of us would be by the Millenium, and I found I would be 28, did I ever suspect what sort of person I would be by then, shy, sensitive child that I was? Did I think I would be 5 years out of work, living off the stingy graces of Uncle Sam, unemployable, not yet a college graduate, stinking worse than the Korean clerk I pay for beer with a bag of quarters and dimes? Oh be careful, children, which roads you choose in life; the wrong turn early on may send you a thousand miles too late in the wrong direction.