I love drunk writing because I say things I’d never say sober. I go home early from work because I feel like hell, nothing contagious, don’t worry, you won’t get sick . . . it’s just that monthly woman thing that makes me tired and cranky and pathetic, but beer and tequila makes everything feel alright. Have you ever tried Patron chased by a Blue Moon or two, yea . . . all my worries have faded into a blur of numbness, yet . . . I feel haunted, and I know why.

Alison.

Alison lived on the river, like I do.

Alison slammed a Patron.

Alison was poor like I am.

Alison was awesome, alive, vibrantly wearing weird clothes, welding, riding trains illegally, drinking tequila, fucking old men, and living in her truck, sad, desperate . . . but ohhh so alive. More alive than . . . almost everyone.

Rick, the old . . . I’m searching for an adjective that usually pops into my mind when I think of Walt Whitman . . . lecherous . . . man . . . took Alison in when she was homeless, and he says I remind him of her. I shiver when he says this because he usually follows the statement with a sleazy caress . . . Alison was his sole heir.

I walked into Badger’s house. They rode trains together, fucked men on trains, did crazy things, slept under a boardwalk, under a 50 year-old McDonald's with 50 years of red coffee stirring straws carpeting the ground, in Philadelphia, which must be Gotham city for all its corruption, and Alison’s picture flew off the wall when I walked in. Badger looked at me.

“She’s telling me something.” Badger said. “You are like her.” I just felt awkward, being compared to a dead lady, that I've never met.

Brenda said, “I can see why people say you’re alike, there is an earthy quality about both of you . . . but she dressed, and you don’t.”

Badger said that she died in a fire on the water. Her boyfriend ran out and left her to burn.

“It was so sad because she had just got her life together. She had struggled so hard for so long, and had just got a job, and had just got her own place” said Brenda.

“I hate that bastard” said Badger about Alison's boyfriend.

Rick clenched his fist.

“Brenda, bring me a Patron.” I say.