Romper Stomper

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He stomped space with a drunken toe, suddenly tired from the taste of the melancholy found at the bottom of a bottle.

“No need to worry,” he slurred at the contents, as he swished and swirled them around, before slurping them down. Apparently, he hadn’t had his fill of the same bland taste from the same bland existence of nine-to-five followed by a six-pack in front of the TV every night. Everything he consumed had the same consistency as a cloudy day, with a sharp aftertaste that made him want to die.

He watched the news while smiling sarcastically as some soon-to-be-forgotten celebrity bragged about the things he wished he’d done. But he’d learned to accept the rectangles he’d drawn around himself, because he was smart enough to know that life wasn’t about what we choose, but what we accept.

Everything he had accepted was out of desperation. Certainly that’s how he ended up married to the grey-faced specter who sat across the room in flickering shadows hovering. Few meaningful words had ever passed between their petrified and passionless tongues. He’d called an old girlfriend in search of new flavors for his senses to savor, but their intercourse tasted like the telephone, and their conversation was perfumed in plastic-coated pleasantries.

Sex had become redundant. Even lusty kisses between strangers in strange places were no longer filled with myriad sweet sensations that pulverized him into sweet submission. Joy awaited at the bottom of the bottle amid the essence of his own decaying distress.

He looked at his wife and she glanced through him. There was nothing to say, not even “goodnight,” as he stumbled to the refrigerator for another brew.