The last time he thought of her, he thought of himself by Ryder Collins

Richboy’d strewn his path with the hearts of girls and boys he’d encountered. He was always always on the lookout for a tortured artist heart, tho. He thought maybe they could change him, those artists with the big tortured hearts; they could make him feel something for reals. He knew downdeep he was a cliché and this knowledge was what caused him to drink and piss himself and go drugging and snorting and smoking and pilling and coking and tripping through life. There was a voice in his head that was always always commenting; there was a voice in his head that sounded like Baudrillard; there was a voice in his head with a French accent and a craving for Nutella and big milky cups of coffee; there was a voice in his head that sometimes wore an ironic beret and propelled him to McDonald’s; there was a voice in his head that told him he was inauthentic – that everything he did and said and thought’d been constructed for him by someone else and he’d never ever escape this and it was his burden and maybe if he’d been born poor he could drink tallboys of Pibber gladly and if he’d been born poor he could read Bukowski freely and if he’d been born someone else he could be happy. He wanted to be someone else and it filled him with a self-loathing that made him only think about himself and how he wanted to be someone else.

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