Now, I wake up with a beautiful woman, and then share the mutual agony of waking up. Gotta go to work.  Or, worse, the consuming need to make a day off and weekends useful in some way.  Can't lie here all day because, firstly, I'm getting a strange sort of hospital bed headache and, secondly, these are the only two days where we can do anything because we both work 29 hours a day and, on Sunday, I want to be alone so I can cut my thighs and swallow fistfuls of xanax.

Maybe we could still be youthful if it wasn't for our jobs.  Even on Saturday, if somebody mentions working the next week, I sort of have a quick cut-my-thighs moment.  Next week?!  Oh god, you're right.  There will be a next week. 

That said, there's always something amazing about waking up next to a woman.  I continually worry that it'll disrupt my sleep patterns, but it never does.  Therefore, I extend my manic Woody Allen-esque worry and convince myself that I'm disrupting her sleep patterns and, therefore, imposing in some way.  Any imposition is, of course, grounds for dissolving the relationship and sending me back to my treehouse where, once again, I have to cry myself to sleep and clutch My Little Pony's to my chest.  There's no calming me on fears like this because, apparently, I'm insane. 

I'm very comfortable sharing my bed.  I should relax and go with that.  I should relax and go with lots of things, actually.  There's a caveman sort of warmth I get from women.  Skin on skin, hair in my hands, the tangle of bodies at 3am when I wake up with the fear that I've lost my arm and, screaming because I dreamed it had been cut off, I rip it out from under her head and tearfully work the blood back into it while she stares at me with a mixture of deep hatred and horror.  Then, pulling myself together, assuming I'm still welcome in the bed, I love that early hour's reconfiguration.  Half waking, pulling bodies together, kissing in our sleep.  I always liked the scissored legs, because I can think about her pussy with the 97% of my brain that stopped ageing on my 14^th birthday.  Overall, falling asleep with someone else's body rhythm is more relaxing than the white noise of my cousin's hamsters multiplying at an alarming rate in the house walls. 

In the mornings, I'm always pleased with breakfast girls.  I think the liberated woman's dark secret is that they like cooking breakfast and making coffee on a lazy Saturday.  There's a certain sort of nostalgic charm.  You can always trust a breakfast girl, but don't be misled by continental breakfast girls.  Here are some pastries!  Here's some thin, weak Folgers instant coffee!  That was a great night.

While breakfast isn't a requirement, of course, because all I expect is cereal, coffee does define a woman.  Heavy, rich, imported, snooty coffee.  Not yuppie coffee.  Upper class coffee.  There's a difference.  There's the coffee that the coffee houses serve and then there's the Nacho-standard, illegally imported Cuban coffee religiously brewed with purified water and a dash of spleen-burning love.  Angry coffee.  Confusing.  Sophisticated.  Atomic.  Slightly beyond reality on a hot day and brutally violent on a cold day.  A woman is her coffee.  

The coffee test may well be why I'm still living alone.  That and the 97% of my mind that stopped maturing.  And the homicidal schizophrenia, yes.

A girl once served me coffee so weak, you could see the bottom of the mug.  She whipped it together like it was a painful favor, using a filthy drip machine that had ancient coffee skin floating around in it.  You know what that says?  Get out for good.  And I did.  I have no hesitation leaving a woman because of her coffee.  I will tolerate bad habits, but I cannot tolerate weakness.  

I'm never very active in the mornings, unless I'm on the road.  At home, I take about four hours to finally put on clothes and do something.  On the road, I set the alarm for six and I'm out by seven.  For some reason, I can't bring the two together.  Some women don't understand this and become frustrated, I've found, when I sit there drinking coffee and refresh the Greatsociety Forums while darkly sneering out the window at all the happy people.  The trick is, of course, to just drag me out to an event.  I'll complain and scream like a child but, once we hit the road, things get into the groove.  This fault has ruined many relationships, oddly enough.  Darling, if you want to do something, get proactive.

Disagreements, bad coffee, lies and pain.  Love seems marked by these things.  I leave them, they leave me, and I think about all the lost time.  A year gone for someone who hates me now.  But I never regret the shared bed. The power that I seem to absorb.  There, after the long night, each of us wrapped together, sharing breath and space and dreams, a woman is at her weakest.  A strange sort of expectation seems to wash over her.  Perhaps waiting for me to say the right thing?  That, of course, is wasted effort because I have no idea what to say besides "Oh, god, it's morning again."