I remember when Friday night used to mean something special. The air would be full of bright expectation as we exited our last lecture before the weekend, availability for drinks and adventures with friends. The stories worth sharing when you are old. They are formed here. These holy evenings of full potential and alcoholic delirium. The myriad new experiences and everyone has a philosophical idea and an agenda. Daylight spent mildly relaxing or preparing for the conquest of night. The keg stands and the anguish. The shots and shock collars, under the skybridge at the church, or in the parking lot of the supermarket, all of that clean pavement and the kids with no destinations. Then in the future, the wonder drug with a love, and the effects lasting longer than the life of a flower after being pulled out of the ground, the baby turtles dying in tiny bags, sold as trinkets in warped Chinese markets...
Used to mean something of a release. An ability to relish in the young and stupid aristocratic present. The polarized decisions but every option is wonderful so one side will relent or the crew will split and rejoin. Everything open and intentional. We live and love outside the boxes. This is the hype for the glorious weekend. We were warriors and we smoked all kinds of things out of hookahs just to say we did. Packed tight with sticky tobacco scented like candles and playing tricks with smoke and the exhale is grander than the inhale for the vocal cords. There were no concerns. No obligations. This represented the one night of the week you could get away with pretty much anything. You could stay out drinking and sleep off the hangover through a dazed lazy saturday. Taking uppers in order to execute your homework at a manageable level. The coffee stained eyes and the spills on the carpet. We were not invincible but we felt it. Even as black eyes swell and lungs develop dark lumps of phlegm, we were not harmed, our emotions sky rocketed, prone to tears or beautiful laughter, the music always important, perhaps a decent amount of time is spent on the playlist prior to the party in order to keep things lively and moving until drunk asses take over the stereo and play the music they want to hear without asking the host, whose glorious party playlist of new rock tunes and grooves that many recognize, is silenced in a crowd of booze, they throw beer cans out of windows at cars and stagger numbly onto trains to get crazy drunk toward the unknown light at the end of the tunnel, alcoholic relationships were formed and the weekend meant so god damn much.
It was a mental release.
Now it's nothing. I am alone. There is no evident night life for the poor 21 year old. The night life is not for me here. Only the waitresses at these places are close to my age. Six dollar beers do not sound appetizing in a hostile environment where no hats are allowed and the soccer games are blaring and drunk fools are clapping off time. Oh lord oh lord. There is nothing of consequence here. I might have to go down to the convenience store and pick up a can of something intoxicating. I might just do that. That is a dead and diluted version of what it used to mean. There used to be so much promise! The unexpected was always present. There were like minded people who wished to experience the same sense of urgency in their diminishing youth! So many of us loved and hated on these weekends. I loved you all and the best memories with black light jam sessions and jazz chords and cat toys and drives around lakes and kegs in cabins on the ocean and sharpie art all over passed out faces and the bathroom tiles serving as a bedspread and the porcelain pillows and our friends making fools of themselves without reservation and the toxicity of the social relationships vanished into thin air like mist on a morning lake and all of those standoffish girls with their spoiled countenance gravitate toward the boys with nicer cars, ones with automatic locks and neon glow underneath and the hot tub covers that served as chairs and the car seats that we strapped ourselves into to get high and the stars looked like eyes, majestically watching over our foolishness.
I miss everything.
