After a day spent attempting to impress
those good-looking girls who were not impressed
I would retreat into the company of boys
and drink,
and on one such night, sitting on a friend’s bed
blowing smoke at giant moths
driven mad with the light, I gulped down
a pint of cognac,
and by the fourth or fifth time that I fell off my bike
in the dark, I truly believed that I had, at last,
grasped the meaning of the word
sublimation.