The Stood I Found Rocking

The stood I found rocking I held out like a fist full of glory, a magnificent display I ran now for the pleasant sensation of post-life glow.  How hard we should all try!  Not to put it in the wrong light, it’s simply beyond my ability to capture it any other way.  And the ways, the ways move away like rays from the sun.  It being so preposterous that we were cluttered around a small table in this dingy, overcrowded bar, the seven of us huddled like football players before taking the line of scrimmage, our beers in hand, yelling at cross channels and abusing the acoustics that our wall of faces had created. 

“Goiters! French!” yelled Stephen, his face beaming red from drunkenness.  Alex slapped him across the cheek, screaming “Off with thee!” and everyone laughed because no one had a clue what was going on.  I leaned back, breaking the circle and laughing so hard that my rib cage felt like it had incarcerated a monkey on PCP and I realized I needed to piss. 

The line to use the urinals stretched five persons long and I moved onto its tail to make it six.  There was a flush and a moment later our line became one person shorter.  The walls were breathing, palpitating in and out of focus.  Two new people arrived behind me and our line became seven-people long.  I was jittery and having a conversation with the guy standing in front me.  “I don’t agree with the one man rule,” I explained, slurring the syllables, “Should be the four men and five women rule, but no children.  Over-breeding, arghhh, passé!”  I was swaying, holding my groin.  The man replied in French and the words passed over me without me understanding any of their content.  I nodded politely.  Another flush and the line momentarily shrunk.

Walking out of the bathroom, I was accosted by a pair of disembodied hands that literally dragged me over to the bar, where I was met by Jacqueline’s eyes, lusterless and dumb drunk, her pleading for me to take a shot of tequila with her.  Two shots materialized on the mahogany bar as if by magic and, before I knew it, we were toasting to autocratic turtles.  I tried to figure out if chance or design had the tequila running down my throat.  Then I choked, trying to hold down vomit and desperately searching for a chaser.  I grabbed some man’s beer and took two long gulps.  I handed his cup back with apologies while reaching into my pocket for cash because, even in my stupor, I knew this man wanted to start a fight over me taking his beer like that.  Jacqueline had disappeared and I wasn’t finding any money in my pockets and the man was standing in my face and yelling in French so that his beer-breath flooded over my nostrils.  I felt a crisp something between my fingers and knew it was money.  I handed a red note to the man and he smiled and handed me the rest of his beer.

I felt like falling over and was vaguely aware that I was swaying.  I drained the beer in a single gulp.  The faces in the bar were blurring together and the din was a raging storm and I was stumbling around when I stopped remembering.  Dark ran this last act, who could rework the happenings of fourteen while it grew fantastically?  Here the filth turned to the sublime, the vomit glittering with diamonds, canned bile and canned memories stocked along a shelf stretching off through eternity.  Obliterated.