All My Instincts, They Return

Boys came out of the woodwork last night, simultaneously from my past and present, both reasonably solid and metaphysically nebulous. My roommate and two very old friends, left over from a different time, standing on my balcony, smoking Marlboros and drinking cheep Mexican beer out of twist-top glass bottles. Nostalgia took over as alcohol paved the way, only to be swiftly brushed away like an insect on a shirt collar and replaced by superficial discussions of penises and guns and wine and the other people in our lives lucky enough to be picked apart behind closed doors by the likes of us. French toast, cheese omelets, grimy diner taco salad, french fries drowned in ranch dressing and hollandaise sauce--it all tastes better in the hours between deepest midnight and the first turns of dawn.

Fifteen beers, six thousand calories, ten YouTube videos, eight cups of coffee, and four games of dominoes (totaling 245 points) later, the two of us who remain--who did not surrender to the siren songs of sleep and daytime responsibility--sit in a coffee shop on 30th street while the grey of very early morning hangs over the closed shops and dark apartments. Steam escapes from orifices in the French press to mingle with waves of Peter Gabriel that drift vaguely above our heads, creating a fine haze near the ceiling. My eyes and limbs have given up on the prospect of sleep, but are nonetheless sore and carrying lead. We laugh as dots and points continue to accumulate, recorded by dashes and circles that I can't read, and which I suspect are arbitrary and are the attempt of my opponent to bypass the math of losing. It doesn't work.

By the time the sun is out completely, still hours before I would normally be awake on any normal day, my friend and I are walking out into the brightness of daylight toting a box of dominoes and a set of four espresso cups with matching saucers, purchased for nearly nothing. Both of us are promising our bodies sleep, but we know the emptiness of this. I have a laptop at home, waiting to be useful in housing my verbosity. I have DVDs of The West Wing, Season Four, hair dye, makings for spaghetti, a pitch pipe on hold at the music store down the street, and a need for groceries, all of which will be utilized somehow before I can capture sleep.