I miss you, simply

your sallow complexion, the grim, gray-eyed baby of peer pressure and social obligation, revealed that you are a man of expectation, struggling to catch up with wealthier, worldlier, worthier "friends", who think of champain as they think of beautiful women bundled in fur: pleasurable, disposable, forgettable. That picture always gets me. I squint first, in disbelief that it is you: painfully thin, disintegrating, everything either pulling away, sinking in, sagging down, everything but your sterile white smile, a gash splitting open your face-- fooling yourself so that you can fool the world.