The Slant

I went back through the old posts from the old site...and even now, even 2.5 years later...this still makes sense...

Maybe it’s the thrill of the hang over that keeps me coming back to this bottle. After all, now that I’ve grown past the era of vomiting and headaches, what better excuse is there to remain curled in bed until the afternoon sun hits the window? Seems it’s been my favorite way to spend a Sunday.

Waking up, on the opposite side of the bed, his dead arm thrown across my shoulders, pj’s askew after hastily being applied. There’s the first glimpse of sun, where the head is still clear; that is until the foreign situation is realized and how late the night ran, and the whirlwind state that we entered the house all comes rushing back and suddenly you realize that the only thing on the earth needed right now is a huge glass of water!

I throw myself out of bed and into the bathroom where every orifice is dry as a bone and the sight of my hair flattened to my head is enough to know that a shower is the only thing that will bring my pale complexion back to life. Then there’s the hunt for the Brita that was, of course, left empty on the counter after being drained a few hours earlier in a hope to ward off this dry bone feeling pervading my head. Searching the empty fridge for some sort of liquid while the filter slowly works it’s magic on the sulfur infused river water. Finally, siphoning enough to fill the large protein shake glass that is quickly halved and passed on to the bleary eyed man emerging from his coma hours earlier than he’d like.

This was our ritual. Our destructive cycle we followed when the weeks got too long. He was the first man who could hold his own standing next to me at a college bar with $3 bottles. We never saw anything wrong with how we played with our chemical makeup, poisoning ourselves as repayment for jobs done hard.

Surveying the morning-after damage of pants thrown on chairs, cell phones tossed on counters and spilled purses and pockets, signs of frantic searches for chap stick pots to fight off the dryness of wind blown lips from standing in frigid temperatures while one scampered off in search of new or old friends. One last goodbye always led to a new hello to someone entering the scene just when we should have been leaving. Good night is not a word we learn easily.

Then the phone calls, returning on the scattered promises to meet for breakfast, squished into tiny tables in a crowded bistro, rehashing the previous night’s events over omelets, potatoes, and hollandaise.

This has been how my life has run for 5 years now. The college towns change, the partners switch off, but it all smells like the same stale cigarette smoke and light beer of the last era. Yet the intrigue never dies. Perhaps it is an addiction to the aftermath. A forced comradeship formed clinging to each other while the crowd presses in, anxious to take our spots, claimed before the cover charge is implemented and the younger sect takes off into full party flight. It was these nights that have always made me feel loved, have always made me feel close, part of a group. And perhaps it’s the afterglow of a night spent under dim lights and surrounded by pulsing noise that’s the addiction. That feeling that a night was not wasted because it’s brought memories to share in the morning.