In The Air Tonight.

I’ve always considered myself a fairly jaded person, but the longer I’m around all these old fags, the more I realize how much optimism I actually have.  And despite the fact that I’m sitting here with a $7 bottle of White Zinfandel wine and a very large amount of food from Pizza Hut, I still have hope that my life will turn out just fine.

So many of my customers (and close friends, actually) seem to have given up on love, and I don’t understand why.  I don’t usually call myself a romantic (I spend too much money on lube and too much time on sexual fantasies for that to be the case), but the world seems like a pretty sad place when you’ve given up on love.  Success, money, power, fame, a large penis—all seem futile if you don’t have love and joy and passion to go along with it. 

And, granted, most of my customers have years upon years of failure and disappointment that I have yet to attain—after all, my heart has only been broken a couple times, and my prostate is still healthy and I can still maintain an erection.  Hell, one of my co-workers has been bartending longer than I have been alive.  So, obviously I’m still young in comparison, and have many STD tests and prostate exams ahead of me before I become bitter and cold (just how I like my tequila). 

Still, it’d be pretty interesting to take a poll of everyone I talk to, and see if they could pin point the exact moment that they gave up and caved into the cynicism and ennui of the world.  When they stopped believing in love, and hope, and kindness. 

I may not know what love is (although I think I have a pretty good idea), but I’m going to try my hardest to never give up on it.  It’s simultaneously the most painful and most rewarding thing in the world.  It takes a lot of bravery, and one thing I am not is a coward.  Everything seems hollow without it some kind of love, without some kind of magic. 

I overheard one of my customers say “I don’t believe in miracles anymore,” which made me want to cry.  I didn’t, because I prefer to do that in the shower, alone, listening to Sarah McLachlan, like any other respectable homo.  Still, I know I’m young, but given the job I have, I’ve seen a whole lot of horrible shit go down—and I still believe, that if I put enough energy and magic into myself, that maybe one day I’ll be able to fly like Peter Pan.

Maybe it’s just that time of the year (you know the time, when you get horrible stomach cramps from all the eggnog you drink, and you have to resist strangling those people from Salvation Army that won’t stop ringing their bells at the entrance to every store you go into).  Christmas.  Nevertheless, I turned to my oh-so-jaded customer, puffed up my chest like there was some authority behind what I was about to say, and said “the world is an awfully boring (and scary) place if you don’t believe in at least a little magic.” 

Never stop believing in miracles, in love, in fairy tales.  I see magic everyday—sometimes it’s just a little hard to find. 

But it’s there.  You just have to look, and believe. 

Lord, I need a drink.