cog:
because that’s not what...
They
are drinking themselves; one smokes a cigarette.
cog
(inhaling): No that’s, well I know he
doesn’t, he certainly doesn’t think
he’s an alcoholic, but
cog:
Oh come on. Who does? Who even, surely that’s the whole point of stuff like
Alcoholics Anonymous and all these, you know, self-help books you can get. Nobody thinks they’re, that they’ve got
their particular disease, unless they’re just royally fucked up.
cog
(laughing): Or hypochondriacs.
cog:
Yeah but see you say that, but it’s
like you’re forgetting that hypochondria is a disease in itself. People forget
that. It’s like the word genius or something, it’s just something people say,
without even thinking about what it means anymore, but hypochondria is a mental
disease.
cog:
Well, yeah, but I’d like to see you telling them
that.
Laughter,
and a silence settling upon their thoughts, holding them while the cigarette’s
breath rises visible from the ashtray.
cog:
He told me he gets this
sighs
cog:
some kind of taste in his mouth, and then it’s only Jack Daniel’s that’ll,
that’s strong enough to over-ride it and get rid of it for him.
cog
(shaking her head): Oh you believe
that? That’s just Skunk, that’s his sobriety allowing him a a a, some kind of
measure of body-consciousness that he doesn’t get when he’s piss-drunk. You
know, if he’s piss-drunk, he’s not gonna notice that. You know that um, I mean,
he told me that if he doesn’t drink for a few days, he ends up
hmm, well, this is, he said that
cog:
Fuck, what?
cog:
Well, he says he, because all the alcohol is just turning his guts to mush, but
if he doesn’t drink, he ends up
wiping just, he said that if he goes for a shit it’ll just be blood he’s
wiping.
cog
(appalled): That is disgusting.
Because, oh my God, how can he
cog:
You don’t know, you don’t know. Try thinking about
cog:
What was he wearing when you were there?
cog:
Hm?
cog:
What was he wearing, do you remember?
cog:
What was he wearing, just all that Levi’s stuff, I mean, he’s still, you know
all of it, the
cog:
No no, but, his, was he wearing a t-shirt, or a, like a long-sleeved one?
cog:
Right. Right.
as
this filters through, as she lights another cigarette from the lit coal of the
one still burning there between her fingers.
