I fucking love waking up with a broken nose, swollen eyes, hungover, cold, gutter-stench sallow in last night’s damp rags. The lace on my left shoe is missing for some reason. I’m covered head to toe in caked mud, or shit… it’s all over the floor, footprints stitching a path from the doorway to the bathroom to in front of the couch where I apparently fell and blacked out, leaving a sort of lurid black snow angel in my wake. Jake is still in the bathroom, face-down in the toilet where he passed out. He’s pissed his pants. Hope he’s not dead. Smells like it. Maybe it’s better if he is.

No, probably not.

There’s vomit in the sink. Two teeth, a canine and a lateral incisor, gagged up, dried to the sides. I kick Jake in the ribs and tell him to get the fuck up. He starts and blinks vacantly at the base of the bowl, breathing raggedly. Why’d you have to puss out on my like that? I could have died. Maybe that’s what you were trying for? Fuck you. I push down on his head so he gets a faceful of that water he’s been coughing into all night.
I only left you with more of what you wanted.
Fuck you.

I’m not really that mad. I sit on the edge of the tub and Jake doesn’t move. I pop my fingers and one snaps dully, incorrectly. I’m going to have to go to a different hospital now, one even further away. They all know my face at the ones in the surrounding counties, even the janitors. He comes in like this every week or so, they’ll say. I can hear them talking about it; they don’t even try to hide it, speaking normally right outside whatever room they throw me into with that degrading paper gown on, my ass showing to whoever cares to look for it. Jake is usually there with me too. He’s only missed one weekend in the past three months, and then only because he went and got his hand broke, slammed in a door, when he tried to get his guitar back from that bitch girlfriend of his. Ex-girlfriend. Well, no, she’s his girlfriend again. I think. I don’t care. Point is, Jake’s a good guy to be around if you’re in the business of getting a knife sunk deep between your ribs.
That’s actually close to how I see this all ending one day: getting utterly demolished by some dumber-than-shit body builder type, lying on the pavement in a pool of stagnant rainwater, his buddies watching from the front of the bar. Maybe my kneecaps will be blown out with a few steel-toed punts. I’ll probably try to smile or laugh or something else really arrogant and stupid and he’ll slowly back his truck over my head and send my brains skittering across the parking lot like a tomato on sandpaper. I really do hope Jake is there to see that happen. I’m pretty sure he does too.

Jake asked me one time why I go and try to get myself killed every weekend. I asked him why he follows me around when I do. He says he likes the exhilaration: the prospect of watching a friend die and having the power to prevent it but doing nothing anyway. I tell him he’s a real sick fuck and he counters that I'm no better. He’s right. I feel like I deserve all this. Maybe it’s because my little league coach told me real men know how to take a hit when I cried over scraped knees or because all my friends in high school liked to joke that I was a fragile momma’s boy or maybe it’s just because daddy never hugged me enough. Or maybe I’m just a terrible liar and none of that ever happened and I just like to have an excuse so someone will feel sorry for me down at the hospital.
But I didn’t lie to Jake. He’s incapable of feeling bad for anyone.
I just like the feeling of healing wounds. And how do you get a healing wound? Get a fresh wound. No Jake, I never hurt myself; it’s not the same. Not the same as earning that bruise, for calling out some dumb cunt for dressing like a whore with you beside me asking How much? and watching her boyfriend’s expression change from surprise to confusion to pure, balls-out fury. Jake just grins.
I hope I’ve been valuable to your cause.
Yeah, you have.

But now I don’t do it for the feeling of gashes scabbing over, those crusted brown merit badges. I just do it so I have an excuse to hang out with Jake. We’re far past the point of ever doing normal things together.

So now we are here in this filthy apartment and I can’t put hardly any weight on my left ankle and Jake’s ears are trailing dried blood like arterial headphone cords caked to his blistered jaw and I think he has a concussion but I toss him a beer anyway. Same time next week?
God. Whatever. He pops the can open and drinks deep without even opening his eyes.