What a joyful, endless, white-knuckled struggle. In the thicker parts of that fog, the blistering heat of drunk lust can seem the only thing that carries any meaning. The cheap thrill of picking a useless fight. A full bladder of a man quickly approaching thirty, bewildered by life, filling his lungs with the sweaty stench of house parties and exhaling into dead streets at sunrise. I stack the years like Kowloon Walled City. A shack fortress built inward upon itself. Don't fuck with me. Winter hovers in the air a little longer, then dies. Lovers press against each other on a Queens-bound subway ride. Give me another love, another life to fuck up. With my inferior wisdom, unsolvable mess of a chest. Smoking, drinking, fidgeting with a deck of cards, like flash on the wall: don't gamble with love.

I bet a dollar.

The last two years introduced me to a new kind of loneliness. It began violently; attacking, stripping and imprisoning me. In the wake of such a massive love, such a magic drive to create, the longing stuffed me into its tight marsupial asshole and farted. The hood went up and my eyes sunk into little slits against the cold, stupid masses of New Yorkers. Life took shit after shit on me and I matched the donation almost every time. I got hard. Sometimes I got mean, stopped caring about myself and forgot your names. But human beings are resilient, and I'm too punk rock to die like this.

On Sunday, my old, dear friends in On The Might Of Princes put on one last show for a hot and dense crowd in Brooklyn, some of whom flew in from halfway around the world. Years collapsed in on themselves, the hopes and frustrations of a teenager, the precious memory of an old man. The pressure of pushing it all to the hilt formed around the radiant eyes of scattered remnants of the Long Island DIY crew. Sometimes we advertise our loyalty to deep, sincere and loving friendships a bit more than we live it, and it casts a soft, sad light over nights like this. But for the most part, it's pure fucking joy, and there is no shortage of love in any of our lives because of what we've all created, because of how we live. Because of, dare I say, very abstract ideals.

These aging kids are devastatingly brilliant and profoundly compassionate human beings. They will embarrass themselves with their sincerity, humble themselves to anything you can teach them, help you in any way they can, and never fail to bring the motherfuckin' ruckus.

After the show, after the bar, the night thinned to Lisa, Jason and I. Squatting in front of a bodega, eating pickle sandwiches, sick with feeling, terrorized by the quiet.

Then they went home and I was alone.

It was the good kind of alone.