Boiled Peanuts

The keys jingle in his hand as the twenty one year old remembers once again how far he is from being a man
The door shuts behind him and as the cowboy boots click down the hall
Coming down from period of drunkenness stretching from the trivial, most classes fell in this category in his eyes, accounting class that morning into deep night; he crosses the parking deck and begins scanning for the midnight blue car he so desperately wants to abandon all the while holding onto the thriving carcass of insecurities and present baggage that the dust ridden BMW from a repressed decade drags behind it. A decade repressed due years violent abuse and degradation carved into him by woman that at one point in time he had referred to as his mother.
He thinks of how the car, if nothing else, is below his family’s means.
He thinks of how the stubbornness and unnecessary frugality of his father.
He thinks of how he will know the bitterness that bleeds from his father’s past as his own one day.
He thinks of how soon that day will be.
The car starts and the intimidating, frightened, young man lets the clutch out at a familiar moment. As the car rolls out of the parking garage he searches for an exit from the volatility that is his happiness. He searches for a newly familiar set of eyes that will ceaselessly free him from the prison of his mental state.
He searches for a love, a real love; a love seconded only by the honesty within its confines. Honesty was something he had strived for in one life; But now believed the only way to achieve full confidentiality was death.
The next chain of thoughts is the usual blur of self-blame and pleading of as to why he hasn’t broken the shackles of both his and his current companion’s. He thinks of how he cares for her and how frequent the lie he feeds himself in order to care for her changes. As the car exits the parking garage his mind tantalizes as to why he can’t muster the gall to explain to the sheltered and passionately near-sighted girl how insidiously forsaken their relationship was.
The self-torment seeps away as he drives the familiar mile to the familiar gas station down the street from his apartment complex, or rather compound. He turns the music of his father and voices of forgotten rock stars fill the air under the seldom used convertible top. The college town that he resided in was home to one of many hideously satisfying state universities scattered through America. The streets were clean from 5:30am to 8pm when the students traveled downtown to bars in an ever failing pursuit at the synthetic happiness manufactured by the ever growing alumni.
He walks into the gas station and begins filling an empty cup with Cajun boiled peanuts that will be one of recurring purges that hold power in his life. Struggling to feign sobriety, and thinking of the suspicions of the cashier he confidently meanders up to the register. As he checks out, he makes augmented small talk that slowly chips away at the condescending jealousy of the twenty-eight year old man behind the counter.
Hold on Loosely by .38 Special blares as the car rolls down the road and into the parking garage. The BMW climbs up to the fifth floor while the second scan for a beautiful woman with imperfections similar to his own begins. These kinds of women are dangerous to him and he knows it. His fifth affair on the girl who sees him through a jaded background seemed increasingly tantalizing as every day hobbled on.
He walks back into his apartment and lays his bed after double checking the lock on his door. The TV plays a previously viewed episode of a show that will inevitably serve as background noise to the series of denials that hauntingly echo through his head.
He gets out of bed and walks into the bathroom. Placing empty vessel of his disorder next to a sink that had seen many before it, he crouches next to the toilet.  
After washing his hands he opens a can of tobacco snuff. As he places the friendly crutch in his mouth as he climbs into bed, and an abrupt few minutes of relief set in. Once the tobacco’s effects begin to fade he wonders how alike he was to his grandfather, whose life was claimed by the same addiction. He wonders if his grandfather had similar struggles to his life. He wanders if those struggles sparked the judgmental tendencies of his father.
He leans over and sets many alarms that will be ignored before he arises for another day that will end with Boiled Peanuts.