I don't like him, this Mike Case character. Which is good, really. I like that I don't like him. Not liking characters is sometimes the best inspiration to writing them. Of course, there's the underlying issue here—the fact that this one's actually real. I guess. I mean, he's a real person, but now he's also something I've made into words. And that creation—that rendering—might not be entirely accurate. Or even somewhat so. But he feels right. Today. Today, he feels right.

And so right now, it's good. This thing I'm doing. Or rather, I'm good with it. Because it never changes. It is the constant. It is always either bad or good. Forever. There is no "right now it is bad" and "tomorrow it is good." The writing. The characters. This shit doesn't change. They are just words on a page. That is all.

Time for another vodka and oj.

It's me. It's me who changes. My attitude towards the words. My feelings about them. They ebb and flow. I'm going to explain it now, because I can. There was a time when I couldn't. I didn't used to be this rational about it. I used to think it was the stuff around me that kept changing. People. Situations. But that wasn't it at all.

Now I've spoken to people. People who have degrees next to their names. People I've made appointments to go see. And I sit in a chair opposite them, and speak into their faces.

And I hear them say these words. Words like "hypomania." Or "manic." I hear them say "bi-polar." They say, Do you feel hopeless one moment and invincible the next? They ask, Do you have bouts of crying which you can't control? They say, Do you sometimes have trouble making decisions and other times do you make impulsive or risky sexual decisions? (Shrinks love to talk about sex.) And I think about how the day before I had been crying into my hardwoods, scratching at the floor and thinking of the best way to die. And how the night before that, some twelve hours prior, I held that bartender down on the dirty floor of the supply closet at the Main Street Tavern (I'm stronger than I look) and I rode that drink-slinger's Salty Dog until it wept. And how I left finger bruises on his arms and neck which I could see later as he served me my beer—even in the low light of the bar—and how seeing that pain I'd inflicted on him made me wet, sitting there on that barstool, my elbows on the bar, my finger playing with some slick, syrupy mess left on the dark wood from some other person's fruity cocktail.

And I look at these people who ask me these questions and I say with my sincerest expression, No I don't think so. And they look at me skeptically. And they say, Rita...

And I say, What?

And they write in their pads.

They aren't the only ones, you know. All my friends have taken to looking at me skeptically.

Category: Fallout