by Mike Patrick

Created on: November 16, 2009   Last Updated: November 20, 2009

Oh, hello there. I didn't see you come in. Please make yourself at home. I don't get many visitors here and everyone's welcome.

I'm sorry the place doesn't look like much, and it doesn't have many of the usual amenities, but I can truthfully say it's all mine. I built it entirely on my own out of the bricks I created with my life.

It wasn't easy to build because there's a big difference in the quality and size of the bricks I created over the years. Some of the early bricks are small and weak. They were made from the little lies I told during my school days to explain away bad grades and the days I skipped. Ah, but the bricks from my adult life: they are large and nearly indestructible. What a cell they built.

You probably noticed I have bars for a door. Those bars symbolize the bars where I spent so much of my time, and where I met all my friends - friends of a dark shadowy life that couldn't be shared with family. Mostly they were just drunks, but there were plenty of gamblers, bookies, drug dealers, thieves and hookers there too. Still, they were my friends. They taught me that partying was more important than having a job; more important than family.

Who needs family when there were plenty of lonely women there in those bars? They were flawed women who had pieces of their lives missing and lived on dreams that the next man might be the answer; women who were there for a night or a week, but always they moved on after they got to know me. There were plenty of them.

It took a long time to learn that my barroom friends weren't real friends. They were only there for me as long as I had money to spend for their booze, their love or their drugs.

Oh yes, they were quick to teach me how to use drugs and then supply them for all the money I had. Then they taught me to lie, gamble, cheat and steal to raise money for more of their drugs.

My friends kept me inside those bars every night until closing time, and now they keep me inside these bars all the time. That barred door isn't locked but it doesn't need to be. Even when it is standing open I can't leave this hell I built.

To go along with the bar door, I have four of the strongest walls you'll ever see. One of my walls is covered with custom wallpaper. That wallpaper was made of all the tattoo designs I looked at and rejected until I found the ones that were perfect to show the world what a rebel I was. And I was a rebel: a true rebel without a cause. There wasn't a cause because nothing was more important than

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