A gray Monday night in 2006 and a gray Wednesday afternoon in 1998

Keyword here is coping, it really is, because that’s what’s left for you to do once you enter the supermarket for some orange juice, deodorant, maybe some beers and what the hell, a few condoms that aren’t exactly buying themselves and that’s the only good bit of sharing a place with a half-dozen assh*les; you never get to buy your own condoms. Of course that was that time with K****’s, when he realized I’d borrowed one of his the morning after he caught me necking his cousin in the hammock on the balcony when he came back from a show that ended before it should have.
I was rather dismayed by the fact he never believed it to be a coincidence. Well, kinda. Geez, I barely got to kiss the girl that night, alright.

The beer I bought last night was that same one that no one seems to like, at least none of the kids, and it’s the very same beer I bought when I got drunk the first time after getting in College. I remember it to this day because Superman was on TV one afternoon, the first one, with Christopher Reeve. It was a gray Wednesday, mid-to-late 1998 and I had just returned from the supermarket with two six-packs and a few bags of nachos.
I don’t really remember why, but I was alone in the apartment and this other girl H****, who was a friend of K****’s, came over and we’d just spoken to each other a few times until that day. It was halfway through the movie, just before Luthor did his thing with the St. Andreas fault in California and I was a little dizzy. “You’re totally drunk,” she said as I opened the door.
“Hey H****,” I tilted the bag of nachos on her direction.
She came in anyway but never had any beers despite my pushing otherwise. We watched the tail-end of the movie, Superman turned back time or something (I never really understood that bit) and H**** left just as she’d come in, no good explanation whatsoever. That was a scene that would repeat itself many, many times during the following year and a half.
To be quite frank with you I was kind of into her and I think she was kind of into me too, but it was very clear to me that maybe K**** was also kind of into her and maybe she was kind of into him as well. To this day that’s the most pathetic love triangle I’ve ever seen because it never really amounted to anything special and I was such a dork back in ’98 anyway.

Of course that was all a few months after what happened with G**** back in our hometown and her boyfriend’s voice still echoed down the hallway during recess in my mind, saying he would beat the crap out of me. Since was in a better shape back then and could indeed afford to call in the right people when push came to shove, he never did anything.
Total wuss, you know?

By the way, did I ever tell you the day Marcus and his friends went after me because of you? It was so funny because it was one of those days in one of those years and I’d just flunked another class or something and I think it was D****, or the other D**** who was a fancy clothes salesman at the mall and was such a fag, and they came to me and started babbling something I never got to listen. I cut right in and said, “Look guys, this isn’t going to change anything alright?,” I told them. “So unless any of you has got a rabbit to pull out of your ass*s and actually make a difference on this, leave me alone.”
No rabbits left no ass*s that day.


I passed on the beers last night and stuck to the orange juice instead. When in Rome was on playing The Promise. I thought it was New Order then thought the better of it.
I sat back on the couch, with a book, and smiled at the coincidence.