The icy, cold wind aggressively smacks my pitiful, rejected, but immensely intoxicated face as I walk out of the restaurant.   As I exit the establishment  I can feel the eyes of every patron burning through my facade of dignity. 

"There he goes," they must be saying to each other, "that sick ****.  Trying to get off, offering that beautiful girl money to **** him.  How pathetic, how disgraceful.  People like that should just kill themselves. Sick ****."

That is exactly what I plan on doing- killing myself.  On the walk home I fantasize about each intricate detail that would take part in the way I will take myself from this merciless, vicious world.  I could go to the hotel room, light candles around the jacuzzi tub, fill it to the brim with hot water and slice the **** out of my wrists, leaving the warm water colored with the burgundy of my blood.  I could be like a sacrifice.  Santeria of the sexually rejected, heartbroken, worthless projection of man.

No, too dramatic. Too cliche.  Too done-before. I could be more creative than that.  Maybe poetic even, like Van Gogh.  I could cut my ear off, right at the scalp, and send it to Laney.  Or better yet my manhood, a symbol of how she cruelly rejected me, robbing me of my masculinity.  

No, it was not Laney to blame for my misery.  However envisioning Barry opening the meticulously gift wrapped package made the fantasy even more tempting.

I few more morbid and seriously deranged plots later, I find myself at the entrance of the hotel.  As I stand in the elevator, I analyze my previous suicide thoughts.  What has become of me?  When did I become so obsessed that I managed to pull a thick veil over a world I had once seen as a beautiful arrangement of fate and destiny?  Ever since I met Laney and our friendship had evolved I became so incredibly fixated on this delusion of ecstasy.  All of my other priorities had been snuffed.  My world had become her. Her essence.

"Seventh floor," the automated prompter informs me. I try to reassure myself that death is not the answer to my excruciating rejection, but every time I picture her delicate face I feel a sharp pain in my heart as if twelve thousand knives are being driven into my soul.  I slip my hand in my back pocket, fishing for the room key.  As I glance down I realize it was not the room key in the palm of my hand, but a condom.  Trojan.  Studded for her maximum pleasure.  How could I have been so stupid?  I sacrificed the only true, compassionate relationship I have ever had for the chance of a sexual escapade out of pure lust.  I could have, should have, respected her engagement, as a genuine friend would have, embraced her in compassion and took it as a sign from God to move on from my own selfishness.

I look around the room, at the rose petals on the bed, the champagne and flutes on the night table.  I stumble about, attempting to take off my shoes, falling over myself in a drunken stupor, then finally tumbling onto the satin sheets of my kind sized bed of failiure.  I bury my head in the mountain of pillows when there is a faint tapping on the door.  I dont even bother turning the lights on as I cautiously weave towards the door.  I glare  through the peep hole.  I come to realize that I am so wasted I cannot even see straight.  I see the silhouette of a person, but cannot make out much more than that.  Then there is the distinct sound of a familiar voice.

"It's me Laney."