5-AM Shadow

I can’t open my eyes, but I’m sure that it’s about four in the morning because the dog that lives across the street has started to bark because Fred’s sprinklers are programmed to turn on at exactly the same time every single morning to avoid his newly installed Kentucky Blue grass from (god-forbid) dying in the morning and he fucked up when installing the water spouts because they always hit the living room window of my neighbors house who own the shih tzu who is currently waking up the entire neighborhood and thankfully I can tune it out because I can’t feel my right leg due to my blood-alcohol concentration levels and the fact that a hundred and thirty pound brunette woman is couching my good leg, using it as support while looming over my pink, heat-infested face and my eyes are still closed and I wonder if she cares like the other women if I look at her while I touch her, but her silken hair spills over me and it reminds me of my wife’s over-priced shampoo she insisted on always buying with my paycheck because she loved the smell of lavender and honey and I shouldn’t care which shampoo she bought and maybe she was right because I too enjoy the smells of lavender and honey and youth and whiskey and I made sure my mouth was closed because I didn’t know if the brunette girl enjoyed the smell of whiskey emanating from my stale breath, but I lost concentration when the cold metal from her layers of rings touched my cheek and I can feel the warmth of her smile so close to my five-o-clock shadow and then her hair suddenly skims over my closed lips, cascading past my jawline and onto my worn-out, sweat-drenched, white collar, button down and I hope she doesn’t notice that my tie is a clip-on that I resorted to because I am a man who has lived to the age of fifty six without the innate masculine knowledge of tying my own tie and so I made sure to keep my eyes closed to avoid looking at the plausible disappointment in the brunette girl’s face and I think that now she is getting worried or self-conscious that I will not open my eyes and she places her weighted, silver fingers against my chest to lean back from my cowardice and asks if I’m okay and I still don’t open my eyes, but I say that I’m fine, that I’m just drunk and that her hair smells really nice and she laughs a little too hard at my mediocre compliment and continues to put all her weight on my right leg and now I am trying to concentrate on the shit shih tzu across the street in order to avoid moving the brunette girl from my good knee because like her, I too am afraid of growing old and maybe that’s what happens when you join a gentleman’s club and call one of their “favors” and end up in an old, leather chair with a brunette girl straddling your leg and an empty house that was never filled with children from the woman you first fell in love with, but couldn’t get over the fact that she bought expensive hair products, so she left you with nothing but wealth and clip-on ties and then the sprinklers retracted, the dog stopped barking, indicating that it was now five am and I try to open my eyes, but I am possessed by the effects of the whisky so I give in, hoping that by the time I open my eyes, the brunette woman would be back home and I would hear the sprinklers and shih tzu again and the rising sun will paint my body in stripes and I’d wake up as if the last hours were never seen.