Not since his twenties had he been such a dedicated drunk. He’d hardly touched anything other than a light beer throughout middle age, and it had done him good.

And yet now he stood in front of rows and rows of liquor bottles, having a hard time recalling the taste of tequila, and whether or not it would bite him. Harrison wanted something that he wouldn’t have to chase while driving his car. It was uncivilized for someone who had worked over 40 hours a week his entire adult life to drink from plastic, so he avoided the bottom shelf.

Ah, rum. That was the stuff had had been broken in on.

With a fifth under his arm and a pepsi in his right hand, he walked like any man who had lost himself. But by the time he reached the register, he almost felt good.

Outside, the sun was setting and Harrison noted the uneventful day with less anxiety than he might have a month prior. Perhaps time was working for him after all.

The road was musty, the evening holding dust like a magnet.

Driving without thinking, the neck of the rum bottle sweating in his fist, Harrison forgot to open the windows. The pepsi had run out but Harrison was beginning to like how each sip stung his throat and elicited a weakening recognition that this was poison.

He knew he was only drinking so that he would feel comfortable with a call girl. He could no longer stomach the task of masturbation, so he was forced to take different measures to achieve the relief he bitterly needed. The last time he’d slept with a whore was in Beirut, and then it had seemed different. She had been a beautiful, compassionate woman and they spent time together on a few occasions, before and after, just playing cards.

The town was getting dark one neon sign at a time, seeming to blink out just as Harris passed them. He was having many meaningless thoughts, and that was good. He wondered why he had never entertained the idea of suicide before, but it made him feel stupid to ask himself this now, to ask himself at all. As though the rhetoric why haven’t I always has a self-evident answer, one not worth sneaking up on from behind.

Finally, the gas was running low. This was what Harris had imagined as the moment when he would do something – anything he wanted. Rebellion was all he had left. He wished he’d thought of that earlier, but he had not been lucky enough to live a life of perpetual desperation.

He sat at home, alone, looking at his late wife’s shawl draped over the armchair beside the couch and her final pill bottles scattered on the coffee table. He sniffed the mold rising from the carpet without disgust and reopened his magazine. He had a cup of steaming green tea in front of him and a bottle of lotion between his legs.

Naked women on motorcycles, naked women on racecars. Naked women pumping gas and wiping the sweat from each other’s brows and chests. They were too skinny for Harrison’s taste, but it was better than nothing. He would make this happen before he went to bed.

With his bathrobe open, his right hand rested with instinctive protection over his average dick, which cowered as best it could between his thinning thighs.

When the magazines proved useless, he tried picturing Roseanne, but it was still too difficult. He could not overcome the image of her naked body, immediately after she was declared deceased, still warm, still laced with moist secretions, the blood still possessed of some momentum; the memory of the brain’s last request.

He feared he might never have another orgasm, and the thought was mightily depressing.

An angel of relief danced beside his head, cajoling him but without breaching his periphery to show him her inspired form, her luxurious shape.

He could get it up but no matter how long he stroked, there were only faint indications of triumph. Recalling how he had championed this sport in his youth did no good. She had been taken away while there was still something in her. Soon after, they drained her.

No release would visit him. He stank of pent-up mucus. He would never tower over her body again. And should  the memory of fear and aggression leak out of him, it would only mark the tedious arrival of mercy. He did not wish for his journey towards a more disciplined sense of self-worth.