i am not your friend

i, the narrator of this little tale, am not your friend. i'm hardly even your ally.

or, who knows, maybe we are friends. are you my friend? you seem pleasant. let's get drinks. let's be pals.

but no. let's get serious. we're not friends. meetings at the mountebank club (for that is what the night shop is, before it gets dark) are not friendly. we are drunken, cynical little shits, and those of us who can't process alcohol manage to fake the mean drunk act well enough.

we compliment one another, sure, but if i were to read one of my many pseudo-philosophical ramblings about illusion and reality, they would praise me for my poem about the woods. if i were to read a short story about a man whose girlfriend is killed by a man with birds inside him, they would praise me for my exploration of survivor's guilt. (hmmm. i feel like i got that one from somewhere.)

my point is, you are not my friend, and i am not yours.