When I first began this blog, I loosely "promised" that I would eventually be including an occasional Featured Writer post. Well, that time has finally come. Hopefully there will be a couple more of these over the summer.
I first met Jake Oliver a couple of years ago in a poetry class. I was pretty much immediately drawn to his sick, fearless mind. This particular piece is what I would consider quite tame for Jake's standards, though still well-written. I think he was just scared to send me any of his psychosexual stuff.
Chicken.
Let the
Good Times Roll
It
started out as something like Leaving Las
Vegas without the theatrics or the bad haircut, and certainly no Elisabeth
Shue. I unwrapped a fifth of whiskey; I believe it was Penderyn, which is to my
knowledge the only Welsh whiskey, and with a shaking hand I poured a drink any
proper Englishman would deem ghastly—but I’m an expat, and here in this
closeted environ, a dingy motel room at thirty-six quid a night, there are no
noses to be looked down and surely a suicide, a drawn-out one or no, isn’t
concerned with English claims to undisputed gin superiority. I don’t believe
the English distill whiskey, and in this still we’re looking at, hand wrapped
around a smudged glass that must’ve gone a week since its last cleaning, the man
framed couldn’t give two shits.
The man in the still has come to
Hammersmith to drink himself to death.
Bio:
Jake Oliver is a righteous dude from Maine who also happens to have a morbid fascination with Nicolas Cage and believes Deadfall may be the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. He attends San Diego State University and is closing in on completion of an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry).
