America breaks into a millon little pieces: an excerpt

An American is an American. It doesn't matter whether the American is white, black, rich or poor, celebrity or middle-of-nowhere rube. An American's life is consumed by an overwhelming obsession, all-encompassing, overwhelming, smothering, can't-breathe-from-it's-fumes obsession. No light, no happiness, just madness, all the time, and for me, American, it was oil. This is the truth about obsession. The truth is what matters. My truth is what matters.

When I went to oil detox, they had this former auto company exec come and talk to us about how much money he earned back in the day, and how he used to keep a barrel of oil in his backyard, just to admire it, and how women would always ask about that oil, and his cars, and he started sleeping at the office and not talking to his wife, because he was working eighty hours a week and I keep thinking this is all bullshit this is all bullshit I want to throw up...

Three months later (a month after Betsy, my lover, had run away, and I wanted to find her so bad but I had to stay and be strong and beat oil now so I could save her later) and then I walked into that gas station, next to the SUV showroom, because I knew Betsy was there, back on the smack, just gunning her engine over and over and over again and working the stick shift with her hand back and forth and back and forth like she could never let go until it became part of her hand and sunk into her skin like another appendage because she just needed that high of burning fuel inside her and I wanted to jump in that Escalade with her so badly but I knew she couldn't love me if she still loved oil, so I bombed the gas station and dragged her onto my rickshaw to get her away from that madness...

To be continued...