So it’s late and I’m just chillin’ out and I look down. There’s my muse. I smile because he is so goofy. He’s just past my knee in height. And pudgy. His whiskers look like ashes from cigars smoked when drunk and he might be. His open shirt shows his faded wife-beater and is smeared with what looks like A-1 Sauce.

“What’s up?”  he asks then he calls me Nigger. He’s being ridiculous. First, I am white. Second, he is trying to be as offensive as possible so that I will pay him some mind. He’s been a bit scarce lately though he was always by my side after my last girlfriend left me.

“Got any pot?” he asks.

I do, it’s left over, it’s not bad, we smoke some, I like this song, that pattern looks cool, we laugh at politics, I fart, we laugh. Then he gets quiet. Fuck.

 I pretend to contemplate my beer can and wait for him to go there.

“So… you gonna’ write that crap you been kickin’ around in your head?” He went there.

“What crap?” I’m stalling.

“That shit about the ring.” He grabs his nuts and yawns.

 I blow out a hit of dread I’ve been holding like a toke. “No. Not yet.”

“Nyo-nyot-nyet!” he mocks.

“Fuck you; I don’t feel like it. I don’t feel it anymore. I don’t care. I’m not into it. I'm done with her.” I pepper him with reasons I’ve not written my idea, the same excuses I’ve been using on myself, only now they seem lame. I sound like a kid.

 I carpet-bomb him with mortar-babble, “Look, I still like the idea about a ring that’s Lauren, like I found it in the spring and it was magic and it lit up my face so I could see how ugly I was and I was like the Golem but now someone else has it and he can use the magic ‘cause he’s not corrupt,but I'm over her now. I can’t write it. ”

 His one word reply of, “Why,” makes my long wind seem silly but I can’t stop.

 “Because I don’t FEEL it anymore." I'm puking rationalizations as if they were week-old Taco Bell, "I don’t have the passion. I don’t hurt anymore and it’s like giving too much credence to something I’m coming to terms with. If I write it, it will seem like I’m still this pathetic guy pining away for her. I need to write stuff like that when I’m FEELING it."

“You have a lot of rules.” He’s such a fuck.

 “You look like John Belushi,” I tell him.

 “You look like a nigger,” he says.

I’m taking a dump and think of writing that crap and I just can’t see it. “It insists upon itself,” I think. I’m not going to write it. It seemed cool at the time but now it’s trite. Sometimes what seems broken is only bruised. Besides, it’s just more paper.

When I’m out of the bathroom my muse is gone. He took one of my beers. Didn't rinse his other can or put it in the recycle.

I should write this down.