Of a Hat at the Drop

...maybe, just maybe, my life is one gigantic Moebius Strip. I think I’m traversing a straight path, determined not to stray into the same places that hurt me before, but the road will twist anyway, so subtly that I can’t possibly see it coming. The road looks straight and I can see the vanishing point on the horizon, but it’s illusory.

With each fall, I promise myself that this time will be the last, that I won’t open myself up to such ego-shaking disasters, ask God to stop toying with me, but the strip will coil in upon itself again and I’ll be caught anew, just when I thought I was safe.

Until then, I'd fuck a woman and forget her, leave her to uncoil her own issues, and then I'd fuck another, just as nameless, just as faceless, but fortunately not cuntless, not mouthless. It’s how I survive, commanding my heart to stay the hell out of it.

But eventually, the strip turns. Perhaps I’m walking down a crowded street during the holiday season, my overcoat pulled up to my chin, and a gust of wind plucks a woolen beret from a stranger’s head. Not thinking, I bend to retrieve it before it skitters past me into a slushy puddle.

As I straighten, she’s there, her brown eyes moist, logically from the icy winds, but emotionally, I tell myself otherwise. And just like that, I’m in love again.

My mind says run, flee, escape, tells my lips to utter nothing more than a hasty you’re welcome, but my tongue betrays me and says would you like some hot chocolate? My cock and my heart are in cahoots against the rest of my body and use me as their ventriloquist's dummy.

And she says yes. And we have hot chocolate, maybe with some peppermint Schnapps. And that’s it. I’m done for. For the next month, six months, seven years, it doesn’t matter, God rapes me with his assertion that He is Love and I’m going to be saved in spite of myself through this doe-eyed creature.

Until something goes slowly awry as the strip straightens out the twist and I swear off women for good this time, I mean it. Or at least I swear off love. And I think I have my addiction to falling in love licked this time, I really do, but still I wonder if...

Dave Clapper lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two sons. He is the Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly and has had work published in InkPot, 3AM Magazine, and Pindeldyboz, among others.

You can email Dave at dave@daveclapper.com.