Shy

    "You never drink wine from the bottle" said the man next to me. "It should be the same with beer."
    I sat at the end of the bar alone. I was trying to be more extroverted about my thoughts instead of simply writing them down. Yet, there I was quietly taking notes. Quietly drinking. Once again I had no one to impress.
    Dating. I was immune to it, which meant I should have been doing it. A strange conundrum.
    Kate walked into the bar and made her way to the end of the counter. I attempted to smile at her, but she passed me without recognition. She had lost interest in me. My fault.
    I felt the clouds lifting in the dark room. I silently thanked caffeine. I believed I might finally act on instinct. With confidence. Maybe. It was then I became aware of how I must have looked to anyone in the bar who happen to be paying attention to me. With confidence?
    On paper I began to write a new list of notes:
1. What am I doing here?
2. Why have I forced myself to express  through words what comes so unnaturally to me?
3. I do it, but still no results.
4. What a novelty I am. I can can express myself through vision, words, and voice, but it seems to amount to nothing.
5. I maybe the most introverted extrovert which has ever existed.
6. What the fuck is up with this place?
7. Has standard operating procedure become to ignore all suffering which exists outside of oneself?
8. Have we fucked ourselves up in the name of comfort and not caring?
9. When we do care, do we care about whether people are wrong instead of human?
10. What a piece of shit of a species we have become!
11. We are garbage which creates more garbage on an exponential level.
12. Not only that, we use propaganda to make that garbage sparkle like gold.
13. Why do you make nihilism so difficult to avoid, reality?
    "What are you writing?" Gwyne asked me.
    "Huh?" I spouted. I had not seen her walk in.
    "Sorry. What are you writing?" she smiled. I could have told her that I was yelling in my mind with pen and paper.
    "I'm...uh...working on a story." Idiot. I'd known her since we were naive high school students. Once we laughed and chatted as we drew pictures in the art room. It was lovely.
     I began a new list of notes:
1. Where has she been?
2. What is she doing?
3. How large is our gap in time?
    "Have a great night! I have to get up early tomorrow." I announced as I closed my notebook and walked towards the door.
    "Uh. Okay? Bye." She responded.
     It was a full moon. It was not my night. It was someone else.

Aaron C. Molden