It’s dark as we get off the 101, and slither along LA’s thin hills packed wall-to-wall with traffic and apathetic confusion. It’s still hot as fuck. I don’t have the air on, so the heat seeps into my car, rising to give us our own little private desert like the one we just came from.

We pull up in front of the house in front of my place, and I see a whole family in the windows sitting together on a couch, the dim light of TV catching the lower half of all their faces, making them look like a pack of brain-dead ghosts.

“What now?” I ask Jolene. It’s the first either of us have said in quite some time.

“Now I go to school. And you go to work. And I figure out what I’m doing. And you keep yourself alive. And we’re secret best friends. And we share things. And we help each other. And if we ever do have sex…”

“Jolene!” My dick skips a beat in my pants as if it’s pulsating.

“If we have sex,” she powers through, “then we don’t feel ashamed about it.”

“Ok,” I say. My eyes fall to regions of her body I can now picture sans clothes.

“Are you going to stay alive?” Her voice cracks, but she does her damndest to keep it together and smooth.

“Yes,” I lie. “I’ll keep going.”

Something very . . . bad . . . happens. It’s like my mind flashes ahead to ten/twenty minutes from now, and foresees something of a darkness I might have been scared of as a youth, then sort of wished to find again as a man, and now see as the sort of curse that almost loves to be outrun so it can catch up and fuck me up in ways impossible to ever make peace with, plan for, integrate… Such is the nature of curses, I guess.

Anyway, Jolene circles her stick-like fingers around my wrist, and her pussy calls me to lower my face across and take her pants off with my teeth just so I can feel the warmth of her closeby. 

But, of course, I don’t. I just sit awkwardly, and glance down at my arm in her hand, which I can barely see anymore because it’s night.

“Uncle X,” she says, and it's the sweetest sound in my ears now. She doesn’t say any more, but leans in, and every hair on my body stands on end. She brings her lips to mine, and I feel their delicate softness as they open and I bring my left hand up to gently hold the back of her head. I disappear in that moment again to my fantasy of our life that can never be. I see Jolene and I on a moonlit bridge, our passion drawing on the very forces that hold the whole world together. 

I don’t want the kiss to stop, ever. I think, Fuck me! What the fuck was I thinking? Why would I stay in a shitty life when the best life I could ever fucking have is right here with me in this car? Fuck me!

But that’s a fantasy. And this is real. My life with Jolene is just a dumb dream. It could never really happen, and never should. 

Our mouths part, and we stare into what we can see of each other’s eyes in the shadows. It’s like we’re merged, and I’m sure we can read each other’s thoughts. 

She says nothing, but opens her door and heads into my home ahead of me, about to face my wife, her aunt, with such confidence and poise, knowing she just made out with the lady’s husband. I can see it happening, because I know Jolene now. I feel like I know her completely.

As I amble up the spotty path, dodging fallen bits of fruit, thorny branches, and patches of uneven ground, Jolene steps out of the house and paces toward me. She must have said her hellos and goodbyes already, and be headed home. We say nothing as we pass. We don’t even look at each other. It doesn’t matter, though. Nothing and no one can take away what happened between us today.

I don’t call out or anything as I carefully make my way around the door and upstairs. I’m sure my wife will be up soon enough to run through her programmed-robot list of superficial questions, all cheerful and shit, like we’re the happiest couple in the world (who just happen not to even sleep in the same fucking room, and live totally seperate lives, and never fuck, and are sort of disgusted with each other). 

And now I’m fucked, back in this same shit-box room, with nothing around me, and nothing to do but fap and not dream of a doomed fantasy future with sweet, stunning Jolene. Maybe I’ll fap to Dee just to fuck with the whole notion for good, and sabattage any part of me that might still hold a candle of hope for better things to come. 

So, yeah, I bring my tired cock out like its a prisoner I’m about to torture the truth from. I start to go about my business, but my mind (back in this hellish room, after what happened today) feels so foggy and all over the place, I can only seem to concentrate on the usual mental snapshots of Dee’s ridiculous ass surrounding my face for a couple seconds at a time . . . not nearly enough for an old, life-worn fuck like me to get hard and come anywhere near that finish line of cumming.

After about my fifth failed attempt, I stop, and just sit in the corner with my flaccid dick in my hand, unable to place how I even got here.

It’s not the same as it was last night, and before. Nothing is.

I feel again Jolene’s lips on mine . . . and now I’m definitely on the way to being hard . . . but the last thing I want to do is grind out semen like some kinda over-determined oil driller who just won’t fucking give up on a certain dead-seeming spot.

I see us on that bridge again, the wind in her hair. I’m standing all straight and tall, strong, and she melts into my side where she’s safe, and where she knows I’d do anything for her in the world.

It’s bullshit. I’m done. Fuck it all. I’m out. 

I pull up my phone and search for: best way for quick suicide that looks like accident.