It's Hard Being (So Gonzo, So Gangster, So Gringo)

The urge to flee is imminent. Swelled up from within, like the gurgling in your colon after a long night of Great Lakes and Taco Bell. Camel Lights have begun to taste like chocolate stout. The street lamps along Coventry glisten with vague ideas of autumn. A steely Cleveland chill clamps its cancer-ridden jaws around the evening sky, and the sun cowers at the prospect of being cold-cocked by the moon. Two anorexic would-be whores hoof past. Herpes spills out from the Panini's patio and flirts with a couple pigs in full uniform. There is no escape. Popped collars and gelled hair in every direction. A muddied sense of responsibility in the back of your mind. No choice but to take one last drag and head in. At the very least, have a few drinks and chase some pink. Why not? Self-respect went out of style and out the window decades ago. Character and fitness cannot be far behind. You have survived up to this point. Insufferable bastards like you are cursed with the irony of long life all the time.

Play it cool. Nothing amiss here. You are an O.G. Your pockets run deep. Your connections, deeper. It is not a front, if you can back it up. Bitches mean nothing; just politics as usual. Meat regulating meat... a public meat option. Shots of Patron on you. A Tanqueray and tonic, please, barkeep. Sam Adams seasonal, Dortmunder, Number 9. Meet up with the Egg Mane, fry up some omelettes. 4:30 in the morning, freestyle from your Juliet balcony. Anything worthwhile dies in the bricks and pavement. The Heights are asleep. All the better: you are wide awake. There is no rest for fiends, nor hustlers. At this hour, you lie somewhere in the middle.

Black out, if you can. There is business to tend to tomorrow. The week is bound to be indecisive, and the outlook for the month is especially grim. Wall Street is trading defualted sub-prime Soul mortgages for guns and cocaine. Be sure to make September's payment by the due date, or yours is next to go. Skip town, and they will find you. You failed to make your bed this afternoon, now you have to lay there thinking about just what in the fuck you have gotten yourself into. This is your existence, for the next three years. Welcome to law school, fuck who you used to be.