The in between

He is half a world away; I'm laying on my living room floor, which is as cluttered and thick with "shit" as his vocabulary at this late hour.
"I mean look at your myspace page. It's like you think you're omnipotent or something."
If I were sitting, if I even had a chair in my apartment to fall off of, I would have. Omnipotent. No, not me. Not anymore. Death, or near-death, takes that away from you, takes away youthful wrecklessness and assumptions of invincibility.
So I tell him.
"Yeah, well, you know after my stroke I didn't know who I was, if I'd ever be ok again, if I still had it. Once I knew that I did, to some degree, I could come to Chicago and make it here. But I had to maybe... put on pretense? Re-invent myself? Fake it, to get it back?"
"Fake it? No, you're not faking it."
"So do I come off like my shit don't stink?"
Laughter.
"No, no, not that either."
"Arrogance."
"No, just... your voice. And as a writer, as long as you get the facts straight, that's the best voice to have."
"Yeah, thanks. Sometimes I feel like I am faking it, like it's still just a show because I don't know if I've got it, if I can make it."
"You can.. You're the most driven friend I have. You've always had it."
Sarcasm. And laughter. But proximity.