No Good.

As I was cleaning the stainless steel just behind the counter at work on Tuesday (I think), a rather tall and large kid who I often refer to as Yeti-Man asked me, “You all right?” I’ve gotten that a lot lately. My face must be betraying the vast array of negative emotions I’ve been striving to overcome, as this wasn’t two hours into my shift and he was the second person to say generally the same thing.

I’m also not inclined to lie. Everyone does it sometimes. Hell, sometimes it’s even the right thing to do, but I do my very damndest to avoid it. So upon hearing his question, I immediately turned my head and said, “Generally-speaking, no. How are you?”

As I said that, I caught, out of the corner of my eye, a gray-haired woman with a pleasant face standing at the counter, waiting for her order. I thought I caught a laugh and something in her eye that was almost appreciative. A few seconds later, she expressed how much she liked my honesty, and how she responds the same way when people ask her, and we had a short exchange about it. I told her that it was nice to see some people actually appreciated the honesty, no matter how negative it could be.

It’s been a long time since someone has asked me how I was and I’ve been able to honestly respond with, “Good.” If I’m honest, the last time I could honestly respond that way, I believe, was just shy of a decade and a half ago, when I was in my last relationship. Or it might have been the last time I got laid. That realization bothers me, because I don’t like the idea that I can’t be happy without a woman by my side, or at least without a female of the species with whom I’m engaging in genital-mashing. At the core of this is the deep need to not need. Without need, after all, I could only want, and want is an act of freedom. Need? Need is certain slavery.

And the need has been driving me insane as of late.