& this is why & this why you can’t sleep by Ryder Collins

If you’re living in ——— and almost thirty and haven’t succeeded/moved away, you’re screwed. You’ll be drinking til three, four, in the morning, even if you have a someone. & if you’re single, don’t try looking. There’s too many young things ready and waiting for someone to come tell them what to do, some man to wear little things for. If you’re a woman and living in ——— you probably can’t wear mini-skirts anymore cos the city diet, if you’re almost thirty and alone and working food service or whatever, is some cheesy goodnesses washed down with eight-nine beers; then, for dessert, a couple, three, ten lines of coke so you can drink more beer or move on to bourbon and stay out past bartime in a bar where you know or are or own the bartender, drinking more beer or doing shots of Maker’s or, if you’ve been doing this for ten years plus, you’ve switched to some pussy shot, like schnapps, pepperminting to masquerade unclean, coke-tightened enamel. Although who knows why you care what your breath smells like or teeth feel like at four in the morning in ———–, especially in wintertime. When four in the afternoon feels like four in the morning anyways and nothing ever changes. Except the girls get younger, your skirts get longer, your jaw throbs from clenching and you no longer smoke Marb Reds but some other brand of light cigarette. Cos, no matter what anyone says, Marlboro Lights taste like shit.