"Everything will be okay". I read this on a bumper sticker inside a van at this local legend pizza place. It has an icon of an old computer and makes me think of Radiohead. I want it tattooed on my arm as reassurance, or hope to get into a car accident and have my left arm leave my body like a Woody Allen divorce. This other tattoo idea has come to me more recently. An ourosboros encasing a lightning bolt. "You must come full circle to find the truth", the X-Files taught me. Plus lightning bolts make me think of Harry Potter, Amy Winehouse and Tennessee Williams. You have to rep your culture icons these days.
These are my thought as I stare into the bonfire. For whatever reason, bonfires are big in this town even though the weather eradicates any notion of practicality. But a fire is a nice place for thought and a myriad of potential accidents with drunken youths. I think about the personality economy; how the truth isn't a part of that stock exchange. You need a translator but the dialect is region specific, changing hourly in some cases.
He has been cradling his Jameson all night, a grotesque but appropriate teddy bear. It's going to be a long night. But now that he has a job, Nathan is eager to pay off his friendship taxes one drink or dollar menu item at a time. I come up on him talking to a girl from his high school. I am older than him and this girl is younger still. "Is that water in your bottle?" I ask her, hoping to find a mixer that isn't insecurity at this point in the evening. My earlier venture lead me to find the "hostess" and her foot soldiers doing blow in the guest bathroom. I am not impressed. "Vodka" she replies with the aplomb of a mid-nineties Janeane Garafolo. "Would you like some?" Is this fucking child challenging me to drink, nay, mix vodka she probably stole from her naive and terrible parents? "No thank you. Vodka is not a mixer and I'm drinking whiskey (out a plastic solo cup I might add)". She proceeds to rattle off her past sexual partners and their various shortcomings while flirting with our friend Jake. Jake has social anxiety and a car. He says, somewhat bashfully, he will take what he can get, even it is an under age carrier of disease and desperation in equal parts, served chilled. Nathan manages to have some fun with her, as she is a blast in the face from his illustrious past. He asks her if she would like some Jameson, to which she enthusiastically and unsurprisingly responds with a "fuck yeah". He asks her if she knows what Jameson is during this exchange. She does not.
It is in this evening I find cynicism exhausting and end up in the ever growing line to get McDonald's and pilot a spaceship, as the least drunk person in this group gets to be crowned D.D. I drive Jake's silver Asian podmobile because he is now indisposed and the drive-thru is the last call for tonight. Nathan's drunken conversation goes back to that girl, inappropriately named Lily, for she was not anything one would associate with a flower, Venus Flytrap notwithstanding, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend. "She's fucked to the moon and back" he asserts with comic seriousness as we assemble into this line while My Bloody Valentine plays in the background. "Are you concerned her number of partners is irresponsible or she wont find what she is looking for?" I ask him in mock concern. Justification is the post-9/11 yearbook entry and I cant wait for Nathan's Jameson induced logic to spring forth. It turns out he doesn't care about the number, he cares about her method, which feeds her teenage insecurity and entitlement with five inches of fury and vodka soaked sheets.
After Nathan screams "bullshit" at the closed McDonald's window for failing to sell ice cream after 2am and blames the recession on why he is being charged a quarter for Sweet N' Sour sauce, I decide that sleep is the cure for the disease known as Friday night life. I take him back home and walk the block to my own house. I am filled with whiskey, Sweet N' Sour soaked fries and the thoughts that maybe everything will be okay, just probably not today.
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