Loathing in the key of C

I feel contempt for the façade he puts on. He knows he isn't shit, but wants everyone else to think he is nothing but success. He is the dark horse playing the cards of a winner while holding seven-deuce off suit slithering his way into another score. A broken spirit, he knows not what he does to those closest to him by wanting so much to be liked. He can't help it, he hates himself and he needs to be forgotten. We are one and the same and we barely know each other. If everyone knew I was just another asshole with nothing to offer, they wouldn't bother, at least I wouldn't. For the few that know him well enough you'd know he is exterminating me.

I am just a disconnected bastard watching myself through a foggy bar window with a flickering neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign faintly briefly illuminating that familiar drunken stranger. The reds and blues of the old sign's iridescent glow put an eerie luminosity to him as he tramps around in my body on the lookout for cars as he's pissing on a street corner. In brief moments of clarity I steal glimpses at him as I stumble past dark alleys of broken beer bottles, me completely out of my head. He's the bum sleeping on the weathered wood of a dirty park bench in a tattered olive drab Army issue sleeping bag circa 1971. At times he customarily appears out of the corner of my eye, a well dressed businessman with a designer suitcase standing, holding Amtrak handrail hammering at his Blackberry checking for his latest ever important email. He is the same slovenly dressed kid in his mid twenties with shaggy blond hair and ratty red beard sitting comfortably out of place in a business meeting filled with suits earnestly guaranteeing them he will have the job done by Friday. He is me and I am him, our paths cross from time to time, it's irrevocably evident during those long hard comedowns on Saturday mornings.

What are we to do in this situation? A girl once told me "I feel like I'm dating Tyler Durden." I ask myself, which side is better, the fun loving psychotic bent on destruction, or the gloomy corporate sellout? Faster than you can turn on turn on your windshield wipers on a rainy day, dark clouds looming like specters waiting to unleash their rage, we stumble into each other and depart divided. From time to time I follow myself, like an apparition, the blue eyes of a withdrawn presence looming above him as he destroys all that is good and all that is beautiful. I awake cognizant to the mayhem we've caused. With the help of some meds I call him up. He's easier to reach that way. He is my comfort zone, and I am his face. To our dismay, most people like him more than me, after all he has that charisma that will draw you in like dollar drafts on a Friday night. He can be everything to everyone. I am just the one left to pick up the tab, to fill the void.