F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote first you take a a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. Its wet hands lead you in & out of parties, to bars where you dance because everyone is dancing, then home where you sleep, because everyone else is gone. It holds you as you stagger through the night sewn together by gaps of memory. No, Officer, I haven't had anything to drink and the drink is hiding behind the passenger seat, hands over its mouth, to stop itself from giggling. Later, as you puke behind someone's car, it will say whew, that was a close one, then carry you, your new shoes clipping against the rock hard stairs, up to your apartment. It rolls its fingers through your hair. It puts you on your stomach. It's seen your kind before. And you'll wake up, afraid that you've missed Christmas, that all the presents have already been opened and no one saved you any ham. The fear grips you, like the time you were told that the world is running out of cork. The drink does its best. It promises its promises, but you've seen dead pine trees in the back of pick up trucks before. But how can you be expected to perform, to vote and succeed and love and be loved, when a world can just run out of something like cork?