It’s cold on a friend's couch. Techno blasts from Zomo’s room and there’s no point trying to sleep anymore. Maybe there never was, besides that sleep is delicious.
Ken, who used to play guitar and lives in the back room sits in a folding chair across from me. His beer sits on an upturned speaker. I ask him for one and he says ok. We drink for a while and and smoke meaty weed bowls and cackle.
Root beer and whipped vodka, ecstasy, Wisconsin Dells, raves, frozen pizzas, popsicles, watered down drinks and darts - we talked about some other things then Peter Morris “human thesaurus” walks into the living room in his boxers.
“Hey Dirty” He said to me. He pulls on the crumpled shirt I used as a pillow.
I thought about going home. I wasn't in the mood.
“Are we hungry?” Peter Morris said. We were.
Grain silos rust like hell in the winter and we drive on a roundabout built off a useless bypass. Bypassing Milton to get to Janesville is like jumping over nothing to get to nowhere. Plainly though, it was the best option for happy hour.
You joke as much as you can in times like these. By “times like these” I mean whenever.
Janesville has a real town. That’s not where we go. We drive down a main drag with battling frontage rows and Red Lobsters and Olive Gardens and other shitty places to bring a date.
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I was in the down town years back, the old town. Me and a girl I was dating were going to an antique store and we kept getting lost trying to leave. She was driving because I was only fifteen.
You feel like a real dumbshit dating when you can’t drive. Like at that age you need anything extra to feel stupid about.
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And we sit down and I start in on the whisky. The are 241 after all. Ken and Morris get these gigantic Spotted Cows in frosted mug and I know I’ve made the wrong decision. I should be a viking swilling mammoth mugs of ale, not some bohemian jazz flutist sipping on Powers and crying that my mother never loved me. You are what you are though - and you can fight that if you’re bored but it won’t do any good.
Slider burgers, Mozzarella sticks and mini corn dogs = 5 total. and we joke some more and watch a muted TV. Someone is interviewing Leanne Rhymes and I wonder out loud who gives a shit about Leanne Rhymes, someone obviously.
Two school teachers sit across the bar from us and chat about this and that. I catch one staring at me and stare back. It takes a while for her to break and the whole interaction is exhausting. She looks down and I do too. I need to fix this staring problem.
I get a batch of 25 cent wings and another drink and we are into it.
We stay till happy hour ends and drive back half drunk, full on miniature versions of things.
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