Life is not a gomer's "box of chocolates." Life is not merry. Life is not like a river. It does not flow. There is no circle of life. There is no enriching spiritual cycle. What life is, considering what little meaning a life has, is a line with a beginning and an end. Some lines terminate sooner than others.

These lines all have a unique twist somewhere along the way. Most however are almost the same, as if they were sewn from a single pattern, and merely tailored to fit at the hem and at the waist.

At what point do I give up on myself, abandon my own specialness, and accept that my petty existence isn't unique? I have to admit that my line is the same as all others, except at the hem and at the waist.

For a few weeks after the funeral I moved around in the world in a state of mindless incoherence. I did not feel, I did not think, and I did not hurt. Neither did I cry for those weeks. Then all at once I was snapped back into reality. It was a stinging slap across the face, and suddenly I was hit with the burden of feelings.

I managed to survive this emotional bombardment by making television my melancholic indulgence – it was like some kind of drug fix that went straight to the brain. Escapist science fiction like Star Trek managed to lessen the impact by taking me to worlds and conflicts so much beyond my own that I could not help but be swept away. Observant shows like Seinfeld somehow did not help. They only made me question my own sanity, for thirty minutes, every Thursday night – an unpleasant sort of mental enema.

The soothing blue radiance of television notwithstanding, I felt increasingly burdened by my own mind. I turned to creative outlets like drawing, writing, and poetry with little results. Every drawing was warped, because I cannot draw. Every piece of prose was self-indulgent. Every poem was self-pitying. For example:

"Disenchantment"

Where should I go, when I have no hope?
What should I do, when my spirit has sullen
like a blue sky cast-over by cloud?
What is it called – that which the world has replaced
in the hearth of soul? - Disenchantment.
I have not seen its face,
nor have I heard its cry,
but like a haggard banshee
it follows me constantly.

Reading it now just makes me want to puke. I could only write so many of these woe-is-me bits of poetry before my brain exploded inside my skull. I still remember how those squished clumps of oozing grey cells spilled out of my ears and washed down my shoulders and splattered onto my desk. I gave up on poetry after that happened. Thank God.

Poetry ceased, drawings became ineffective, and Star Trek had worn thin. So I lived in a perpetual state of moping. On one sullen afternoon I was at home alone – Mom was out a lot – when I decided to clean the kitchen as a sort of make-work project. It was the same kitchen that I had cleaned seven years earlier to gain my mom's favor. I sorted through the dust-caked pots and pans, and it seemed to me that nobody else had bothered to clean it in all that time.

Under the counter, hidden well out of sight and probably long forgotten, I found a few bottles of alcohol. There was a half-empty bottle of rum and some unopened peach brandy. It's obvious what I did next. I had myself a little bit of rum, and poured it into my mouth happily.

It went down horribly, like jagged stones or razor blades, and as soon as it went down it came back up in vapors. My nose turned red, my eyes burned, and my entire head felt inflamed. You know how horses fire steam out of their nostrils on a cool morning? I did that. You know how whales blow jets of water twenty feet into the air? I did that.

So I finished cleaning the kitchen, but with less steady feet. I took note of where the bottles were kept, in case I needed them again. It wasn't long until I did. The next day, in fact, I enjoyed them once more. It was difficult to swallow and I had to hold my head to keep it from exploding. But I felt relaxed.

The day after that I needed to drink once more. This time I didn't have to hold my head on, although I did feel some tremors and rumblings. And I felt relaxed enough to not be too sad. At four in the afternoon I watched Oprah, and I actually enjoyed listening to her talk about reducing stress and dealing with loss, or whatever it was. After that I watched a soap opera. There was some old Italian man named Stefano who was keeping beautiful young heroines hostage in his dungeon. I don't know if they ever escaped because I went to sleep.

The day after that, I discovered that my rum was all gone. So I pulled out the unopened peach brandy. I popped off the top and wiped away some crust encircling the inside rim. I smelled its sweet, fruity aroma. What is it that the professional drinkers call it? The bouquet? Yeah, I smelled the bouquet, and I admired the vintage brandy.

"Bottles up," I said to myself. I took a sampling. I could feel the sweet nectar coating my throat softly. It was soothing to drink, almost as soothing as Jen's breasts. It was too comforting, I think, because I absolutely suckled that bottle until I could barely sit up. I must have finally realized that I should stop when my vision was the same color as the peach brandy. I put the remainder back under the counter in its well hidden place. Slowly, slowly, I made it on all fours to my bedroom.

I slept like a baby, and like a baby I vomited as soon as I woke up: all over my sheets, and then all over the bathroom floor. My shirt was soaked with yellow and white bile. My throat burned. I threw up five or six more times. I kept on retching, even after my stomach was emptied. I sat on the floor, clinging tightly to the toilet. My knuckles were white, and my skin was grey. For an hour or more I sat writhing and spewing like a rabid animal. My mother, tired and disheveled, wandered out of her room in search of the sounds that disturbed her sleep.

"Oh my God," she said when she found me in the bathroom. "What happened?"

I looked up at her weakly, sheepishly.

Mom's mouth opened slightly, and she sort of gasped silently. "You've been drinking," she said quietly.

I nodded and the movement of my head caused waves of pain throughout my body. I hunched over the toilet and spat up my spleen. Mom sighed and looked at me sympathetically. She patted my head, which made be bring up some more.

"What was it?" she asked.

I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. I faintly said, "Brandy."

She shook her head, made a few 'tisk tisk' sounds, and rubbed my back. I threw up my pancreas.

Mom asked me if I knew what time it was.

"No," I said between shallow breaths.

"It's three in the morning," she said. "When were you drinking?"

"In the afternoon."

"When I was gone?"

"Yes."

"Where did you get it?" Mom asked between 'tisk tisk' sounds.

"Under the cupboard."

"What? We have brandy? You don't know how old it is. I don't even remember ever buying it."

Mom sat on the floor beside me. "Why did you drink it?"

I licked my lips to moisten them, but it just made them burn.

"Because I'm sad."

"You shouldn't drink."

"I know."

"I know you're sad because Jen is gone," Mom said softly, so softly that to me she sounded like wind rustling through a tall grass meadow.

Mom sat with me in the bathroom, patting my back and helping me to eject my organs one by one, until the sun came up and I went to bed.

I think I slept through an entire day, because it was morning when I woke up. My mouth was dry and I felt weak. My legs felt heavy, and I willed them over the side of my bed and tenuously stood up like a newly born calf. But I was not a new-born, though maybe reborn. Reborn into the adult world of the drowning of the senses with liquid vitriol.

It felt like I dropped my kidneys and bowels into the toilet when I purged the final remains of the alcohol. With an increased feeling of weakness I went into the kitchen to look for some easily digestible food. There was a note from mom, taped to the refrigerator: 'Hope you're feeling better. Breakfast in the fridge. See you tonight. XOXO'. She had left a nicely prepared plate of toast, eggs, and bacon. I ate as much as I could, considering my condition. I sat on the couch to rest, until I was sure that the food would stay down.

Brooding throughout most of the morning and evening, I entertained myself by thinking of Jen's body and pleasuring myself often. When night fell I felt compelled by the strange sensation that I should go out.

It was a cool night: cool with a sickly fog descending from the sky. The dealers were out sitting at their usual benches in the parks, and the crazies were busy wandering the streets. I walked south into the fog that was blowing in from the lake. I made my way down Parliament Street, passing those high-rise sardine cans which each held thousands of the city's poorest. I passed by the low-rise tenements, where room upon room of hopeless, perpetually drunken souls took their nightly respite from their daily suffering. I passed by the renovated homes of the wealthy people who lived just across the street from the poor. Each home had a historical plaque on it denoting the year of construction of the mansion, and each table had fine wine and meats in place of cheap beer and scraps.

I was really wandering aimlessly, just walking south, down into the fog, without thinking about a particular destination. I got lost in my own daydreams as I walked. It seemed like Jen's face kept popping up in the fog whenever my attention began to drift from my surroundings. Ahead of me the fog glowed softly and flickered red, like the comforting, beckoning light of a fireplace. As I got nearer I could see that it was the garish neon sign of a bar. The sign was shaped into the outlines of beer bottles, and the word 'bar' flashed above them.

It looked like a nice enough place, so I stepped inside. When I took a look around I noticed that the patrons of the bar were bums or losers. I somehow felt that these were fitting companions for me, so I took a seat at the bar.

To my left sat an old man who was maybe in his seventies. He was hunched up against the bar, clinging tightly to his drink. To my right was a younger man in his thirties. He sat nursing a beer and watching the baseball game on television. The bartender came in my direction and glanced at me and asked me what I wanted. I told him that I wanted beer. The bartender laughed at me like I was an idiot, then asked me what kind of beer I wanted. I said Carlsberg because it was the only one that I could think of. He pulled a bottle out from somewhere under the counter and dropped it in front of me. The bartender walked away, stained apron and all.

I sipped the beer. It tasted stale and dirty, as if it had been made from stagnant water pulled from a hundred-year old lead sewer pipe. I managed to swallow it, and even took another sip, despite its unappealing character. I imitated the guy to my right and tried to nurse it while watching the game. Somehow I finished the entire bottle before that guy had even drunk half of his.

I waited for the bartender to bring me another. I casually looked around at the place. I leaned on my elbow and looked here and there, acting nonchalant and carefree. I noticed that this bar didn't have any pictures on the wall. There was nothing plush either. Everything was darkly coloured and worn looking. There was no glass and no metal. The walls bore the scars of years of neglect. They were almost falling in on themselves. Paint hung from the ceiling in the places where there were water marks from decades old leaks.

"What you doing here boy?" asked the old man to my left. "Aren't you a little young to be drinkin'?"

"What?" I said, startled when I heard his voice. He sounded like there was an entire gravel-mining operation going on in his throat.

"I said ain't you a little young?"

I looked at the man. He was feebly bent over the bar at almost a ninety-degree angle.

"Oh, well I'm nineteen."

The old man made a toothless smile and attempted to pat me on the head, though he couldn't quite reach.

"You're just a kid. Why are you here on a weeknight? Shouldn't you be matriculating?"

"Masturbating?"

"No, no," chortled the grandfatherly figure. He laughed and I turned red. "Matriculating. Studying in university."

"The boy obviously has something on his mind," said the man to my right, who had just leaned over in my direction. "Right?"

"Well sort of," I said.

"That's right," said the man in his thirties. I noticed he was wearing a suit, as if he were a stock broker or something. "So leave the boy alone, Pops," he said over my shoulder.

Pops guffawed: "Ha! Ha ha! You know about problems, eh? What are you, a banker?"

"I'm in Bonds. What are you, a geriatric?" asked Bond.

"Oh you think because I'm old I don't know an insult?" Pops puffed up his chest as best as he could, which was not very impressive considering his extremely warped posture. "I think you should buy me a drink!"

Bond raised an eyebrow, smiled, and said, "Sure, Pops, here you go." He slid three dollars across the bar.

Pops snatched up the cash with his gnarled fingers, and with his gravel-pit voice, said, "Yeah, it's a good thing you know the safe thing to do." He waved for the bartender and ordered another drink. I took advantage of the bartender's arrival and ordered a beer for myself.

The three of us got to talking. It turned out that Pops and Bond had actually known each other for a while, though they didn't always get along. Pops was a regular to the place. A widower for the last ten years, he lived in a bachelor apartment across the street in Regent Park. He came here almost every night, except for those nights when his disfiguring rheumatism was too painful for him to move.

Bond worked on Bay Street for one of the large financial services firms. He would come in after a particularly hard day at the office, especially on those days when he would lose money on the bond market and get berated by his bosses. The bachelor's life seemed to be the perpetual state for Bond. He was chronically single, unable to maintain a relationship because of the demands of his profession.

Bond was lonely and very stressed. Pops was lonely and extremely diseased. In a way, these two kept each other company. They were brought together by the social graces of alcohol.

I probably drank up to five or six beers by the time I felt relaxed enough to tell these strangers about my own problems.

"Oh, my poor boy," said Pops solemnly, "when my wife died I was crushed. But you get through it." Pops smiled, then put his head down for a second. "But you never forget the feeling." Bond gripped his beer bottle a little tighter, but he didn't say anything.

While I at first felt happy to be sharing my pain, a different feeling began to creep up within me as I had another beer: I began to become annoyed with my newfound companions. It seems that along with the loosening of the mind, alcohol also breeds arrogance and a quick temper.

I snapped at them suddenly. "You two are full of shit!"

"Boy, are you okay?" Pops asked.

"I can't believe I'm telling you two my problems!"

"Hey, relax," Bond said.

"Relax?" I turned red with anger. "Look at you, telling me to relax. Mister can't-get-laid, mister going-bald, mister hypertension!"

Pops put his hand on my shoulder. "What's wrong boy? Be nice."

"Don't touch me you old shit!" I threw his arm off my shoulder. "Look at yourself, you're so bent over that you're always staring at your dick!"

I got so agitated and loud that the bartender ran over from the other end of the bar.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"The problem," I said, "is these two losers!"

"I think you've had enough to drink," the bartender said calmly. "You want some water?"

"Hey, fuck off, okay?"

The bartender leaned toward me, and said, "Go home, get some sleep."

"Yeah whatever dickhead," I said, turning away from him.

Suddenly a large man appeared in front of me. With a very imposing voice and a very big hand on my arm, he said, "Let's go."

He threw me out the door, and I stumbled along the sidewalk until a streetlamp got in front of me and pushed me to the ground.

I picked myself up off the pavement and I began to wander around senselessly. My legs felt like they were filled with liquid, and they were unsteady. I didn't really know where I was going.

I was staggering along the street when a police car pulled up beside me.

"Hey kid, you need a ride home?"

"Leave me alone, man," I said without looking at them.

"Listen kid," said the cop in the passenger side, "you shouldn't be out here by yourself."

"Oh fuck off, leave me alone!" I yelled.

The officer turned to his partner and said, "This kid's a smartass." The car stopped and one cop got out and grabbed me by my shirt.

"Get in!" he commanded as he pushed me into the back seat.

"What the fuck!" I yelled. "What's your problem?"

"You're the one with the problem. Where do you live?" asked the officer.

"Fuck you!" I hollered. "Fuckin' leave me alone!"

"Okay, be that way," said the cop. "We'll take care of you." The car quickly drove south, toward the lake.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked. They didn't answer.

The car stopped at the foot of Cherry Street, in the middle of a dilapidated industrial area on the shore of Lake Ontario.

"Get out," ordered the officer, grabbing me and throwing me onto the sand. He gave me a kick. I rolled down the beach and landed part way into the water. I puked up my beer.

"Loser," said the cop as he got back into the car. They drove away and left me there, drunk and vomiting.

I crawled up out of the water, but only a little bit. The water still lapped against my feet. I was chilled almost to the bone, but I just laid there for a while waiting to gather the strength to make it home.

I eventually made the long walk to Sherbourne Street, where I caught a bus. I tripped up the steps of the bus, dropped some change in the fare box, and sat down. The driver looked at me cautiously, but he didn't say anything even though I was soaked, covered in sand, and smelled of alcohol. It was after three when I finally got home. I was as quiet as possible. Luckily this time my mom didn't wake up to interrogate me.

Mom was already gone when I woke up the next afternoon. It wasn't until I got to the bathroom mirror that I realized I had a lump on my forehead and a boot-sized bruise on my stomach.

Next chapter should be online Sunday November 22/2015.