thru hiker #3

"i'm not really into camping"
she revealed.
I watched her fill her canteen
at the spring
just feet from where i urinated moments ago
then why would you attempt to hike 2,000 miles?
i wondered to myself
i hope you like piss water
more than you like camping.
when you're done hydrating
do us all a favor
and
please go home.

14

What do you love when your love isn't moving you anywhere? Say I've been drinking for 22 years, playing computer games for 33, is it permissible to accept this now and that the other more interesting things I have done were just a way to facilitate these two?

What's a better way of imagining the rug slowly being pulled from beneath me? Or is it more amusing to imagine someone trying to do this surreptitiously, with care, and me keeling and too vain to realise, in pantomime to the throng that I have imagined scooped together. 

The title goes to the most interesting man in the world

In case there was any confusion, the smartest guy in the room is not the most interesting man in the world. The smartest guy in the room is high-waisted, slim-calved, his lower body built like an ambiguously attractive model who doesn't know what to do with her beauty, so young, and not so bright. The most interesting man in the world, is lioned-maned, skin weathered by purple sand dunes, eyes like blue olives, believes that we should stay thirsty, not just literally but metaphorically. The smartest guy in the room laughs (nervously?)(happily?) at dogs falling off fast-moving trucks on Ugandan dirt roads, the half-inflated wheels roiling the dust into an already polluted air, searing the nostrils of those around, he considers this experience, integrating it into his carefully curated stories, that of a well-travelled man, he will share when he gets back home. He thinks the bigger the mountain that he climbs, the less people will notice the sweat that wet his socks, not from exertion.  The most interesting man in the world, puts the dogs back to pieces using a travel sewing kit, a sprinkle of witch hazel and the warmth of his own hands, his own body, while reciting a Native American prayer. The hyenas gather round in sacred silence. The smartest guy in the room wants to sleep with every woman in his zip code, even the homely ones, but he can’t bring himself to admit it, say it out-loud. He jerks off before his girlfriend arrives home, thinking about the apple bottomed cashier at the Garden of Eatin deli, shamefully swipes the cum off with a towel his Catholic mother gifted him, and then cooks dinner (Taco Tuesdays) without a second thought. The most interesting man in the world knows that with love, actually comes freedom and with freedom, comes a password-protected secret, only revealed to the truly deserving. It shouldn’t be so easy.