Big Boy Pants

(Caravaggio)

I quit drinking when the shit hit the fan.  It is a good thing, perhaps, for I would be drunk every night dealing with "the shit."  Literally.  The smell of sewage. . . a broken pipe--rotted, rather--in place since 1926.  More money.  Much more money.  The walls are open, everything torn up inside and out.  But I. . . I am dealing.  Surely it will all be finished and done someday.

Meanwhile, I remember my dreams.  I don't when I drink.  But they are vivid now, and plentiful.  Ghosts, really, things from the past in situations that make little sense.

But as I write, the workers arrive.  I am not even allowed to tell you a thing.  I must go and be "a man."  I have no big boy pants.  I must pretend.