Regret Pt. 3

Make sure you first read part 1 and then part 2 before moving on to this one.

***

Before we finish this up, I think it would be helpful if you have an idea of what our apartment looks like. We live in the College Park apartment complex, which is a relatively new and swanky property on Park Street just North of Regent Street. Our apartment is a four bedroom, three floor kinda deal, and it looks like this, going from the 4th floor to the 3rd to the 2nd (some other dopes live on the first):

Me and Milo share the top (loft) bedroom, which would be awesome for one person but is kind of not so great for two. So what we've done is put our mattresses in our respective closets (if you get out a ruler and measure the closet and compare it to the whole room you can see just how snug a fit we're talking about). I guess it allows us to do our manly things in privacy and peace, whatever they may be. But it gets hot as fuck in there, and sleeping in a closet is no way to live, especially for a gainfully employed new member of the working class such as myself.

The third floor bedrooms are occupied by Bob (#1) , Vic and Vernon (#2) and Joe (#3). Bob is out of town for the weekend.

OK, we may continue.

10:30am Sunday:

I hear something rustling.

It's morning. I'm alive. I don't know anything else. Not my name, not my life story, not whatever unfortunate series of events led me to this place, this dark, musty, sweaty chamber of pain. I'm not even ready to start asking questions yet. I just want something familiar -- a song, a newspaper, a bowl of cereal, an old T-shirt. Something to place me firmly back in the world I once knew.

Where am I? In a bed, good.

Not sure what the noise is, but I must ignore it. My body needs sleep. I am nauseous, achy, dripping with sweat, cotton-mouthed and miserable, and if I don't fall back asleep in the next 20 seconds I'm afraid I might be up for good.

More rustling. At the foot of the bed. Visions start bouncing off the walls of the dark spaces inside my head. Laughs. Everclear. The hospital kids. Telling stories. The long walk home. And that dude. Who was that dude?

"Dude."

Whoever said that must be responsible for the rustling. I can't even crack my eyes to look.

It's about 85 degrees inside my closet, and I'm regretting the decision to move my bed in here in the first place. It was a decision we made for privacy, I guess. To do certain things, I guess. Now I want air -- cool, standard-issue apartment air, and if somebody could give me some I promise I'll never do those things again.

"Dude, wake up."

I now realize that I'm not alone in my tiny closet. There is somebody else in here, as impossible as that seems. It's a dude. He's talking to me from the foot of the bed. I will ignore him. He isn't real.

"Dude, what the hell? You said you would wake me up at 9, man. I gotta go to work," he says. He's not going away.

My eyelids lift slowly, operating on their own. I think I can hear the seal crack as they open.

Kneeling at the foot of the bed is an African-American man who looks pretty much exactly like the guy who was just occupying my drunken half-memories of last night. He's a critical player, then, this fellow. I may as well say hello.

"What's up, man?" I ask. "What time is it?"

The door is cracked and a shard of sunlight is cutting the closet in half. My eyes are directly in the path of that bright sliver, this dude (Lee?) is almost completely in the dark.

"Dude, I gotta get home," he says. "It's like 10:30 already."

I sit up and I couldn't agree more. He needs to go home. Not until he does can I begin to piece things together, to address the unanswered questions: Why is he in my closet? How did I get home? And...Holy...fucking...SHIT... why am I not wearing any pants...or...underwear?

I pull the comforter over my completely naked lower half. Did he see anything? Did he touch anything? Did he...did we...?

More questions, uglier questions, every minute with this guy. Even if you're the most open-minded, love-all-people, to-each-his-own thinker on the block, youturn into Archie Bunker when your ass-cherry is on the line. Immediate ignorant thought #1: Did he screw me, and if so, do I now have HIV? This guy is an alcoholic homosexual drifter, that's gotta be pretty high risk. Yikes.

"Um, dude, can you wait downstairs and I'll be down in a minute?" I ask. I need some time, maybe a lot of time, maybe a lifetime, to pull myself out of this. A minute is a good start. My mood has instantly spiraled from typical hungover depression into potentially life-ruining misery.

"Sure, man, no problem," Lee says. "I'll see you in a few." He gets up, throws the closet door open, and disappears down the stairs.

I wait about 30 seconds to make sure he's gone, then I crawl out of the closet, force my way to my feet and throw on some fresh drawers. I want that to make me feel better but it doesn't. There's too much up in the air right now. I pull on a pair of clean pants and head downstairs to face whatever needs to be faced. My head is throbbing, the entire left side feels like somebody's slapping it with a coconut every three seconds.

By the time I reach the third floor, on my way down to the second, I have assembled some memories to plug into the mystery of last night.

-Dave, Eli, Everclear, Cap Centre Foods
-the dudes running outside to tell me that Lee was gay
-Lee's fierce denial of this possibility

And now waking up pantsless on Saturday morning.

I get downstairs to floor 2 and none of my roommates are around. Just Lee, pacing and smoking a cigarette. He sees me.

"So what did you say your name was?" he asks.

"Hans," I say. "You're Lee, right?"

"Yeah. Listen, can I get like ten bucks so I can get a taxi home? I'm like two hours late for work already."

"Sure, man. Hang on."

I run back upstairs and like a fucking miracle my wallet is neatly placed on top of my dresser, a moment of apparent lucidity in a night of tremendous mistakes. I open it and there's six dollars inside. That'll have to do. Six bucks to shuffle this dude out of the apartment and hopefully into obscurity forever. Seems more than reasonable.

I get back downstairs and I tell him that it's all I have.

"Thanks man. I guess I'll see ya later," he says.

"Yeah, take care," I say, which seems about right.

He's out the door and I lock it behind him. I lean against it.

What happened and is there anybody who knows? Do I want to find out?

It's all very important, but right now nothing is as important as sleep. I go up to my room, but for some reason I can't bring myself to lay back down in that closet. It's as if that three by seven space is my own little crime scene. I stare out the window instead. It's a gray and miserable day, but the dudes across the street working at Schmidt's Auto don't care. They've got some poor schmuck's car up on the lift, blasting his stereo, and soon they'll probably rifle through his glove compartment and rob him like they did to Vic a couple years ago. Stole some CD's right out of his Chevy Cavalier. Today the boys at Schmidt's are happy. Today whatever sins they've committed and whatever sins have been committed upon them are in the past. Today they're working smoothly as a unit, singing along with Journey and .38 Special and taking pleasure in an honest day's work.

I think I'd like to trade places with one of them. Right now, straight up, no questions asked. I can learn on the job. Send Larry up here to straighten out all my bullshit.

I slink back into my closet, lay down, and fight back a surge of nausea. I put my head down on the pillow and after at least an hour of trying in vain to clear my head of all thought, I fall asleep.

***

2:45 pm

I wake up and I can hear my roommates laughing downstairs. I'm pretty sure they're laughing at me. I need to head down to face whatever's coming.

laugh laugh laugh (inaudible joke) laugh laugh laugh laugh (inaudible response) laugh laugh laugh I enter the room total silence.

In the room are me, Milo, Max, Vic, Joe, Vernon, and Clyde.

"What's up fellas?" I say, innocently enough.

"There he is. THERE HE IS!" says Vernon.

Vernon's a bit of a Goody Two Shoes. We used to be better friends, in fact he's the one who got us this apartment in the first place. Now he spends most nights here on the couch with his Goody Two Shoes girlfriend. Our relationship soured when he ratted me out to our landlord after I broke the neighbors' door one drunken night by throwing my buddy Carl against it during a fake fight. It cost me $275. For all I know the door was already broken. Fucking Goody Two Shoes.

I figure we may as well get to it.

"So, what happened?" I ask, physically bracing myself for the response.

"Well, how much do you remember?" Milo asks.

By this point I remember all that I'm gonna remember. It's pretty much this and this and now this. I patiently go through a Cliffs Notes version for them, everything I know about last night.

"No offense man, but this is out of control," Vernon says. "You guys have done some pretty stupid things, but who the hell was that dude you brought home last night? I mean, this isn't just your place, it's all of ours."

What the fuck does that mean? Is he mad that I brought a stranger back to our apartment? Or is he mad that I brought a black stranger back to our apartment? I'm already feeling defensive, like I have to stick up for Lee's honor. Like he was my fucking girlfriend.

"What's the big deal?" I ask, just now realizing that this is the first time in my life when I awoke to find a strange person in my bed, and it was a dude. "We were just having fun."

This last part is pure speculation on my part. And still it sits in the air for a minute, probably meaning more than I meant it to.

"I missed most of it," Milo says. "But these guys have been filling me in on all the action. Sounds like you definitely did have fun."

OK, screw all these sarcastic hints, I need to know what happened.

"Alright, let's hear it...what happened after we got home?"

"Well, I was up drinking a beer and watching a movie when you rolled in around 4," Vic says. "You and your friend -- Lee? -- came in talking a mile a minute, completely blotto. I was still a little drunk myself, so I was actually excited to try to keep the night going. I got us some beers out of the fridge and turned on the stereo --"

"Loud. Really loud," Vernon interjects. "I was sleeping and all of a sudden I hear this awful music blasting from downstairs. Was it Billy Idol?"

"Yeah, Vital Idol," Vic continues. "We were rocking out to Billy Idol. Your friend Lee started talking all sorts of shit about not being gay. I was like, 'Whatever' and I pretty much ignored him. The music was really loud and everyone was sort of in their own world."

"I came downstairs and told you guys to turn it down, and Hans, you told me to go fuck myself if I couldn't appreciate Billy Idol and Old Milwaukee at 4 in the morning with no work the next day," Vernon says.

"Sorry," I say, not sorry.

"Yeah, after Vern went back upstairs, Joe and Max and Clyde came downstairs and joined us," Vic says.

It's amazing to me that Max and Clyde would choose to stay over at our apartment when they each have their own apartments across campus, with safe warm individual beds.

"We all came down and we were having the stupidest conversation," Max says. "This guy Lee kept insisting that he wasn't gay and he kept sort of half-challenging us to physical confrontations, like he had something to prove. Then he'd back off and put his arm around ya and pay you ridiculous compliments out of the blue, like, 'Man, that's a nice shirt.'"

"Hans, man, then you got all tired and went upstairs to bed," Clyde says. "You just left us downstairs with this dude, like he was our reponsibility."

For a moment, I am relieved. It seems my role in the story is complete. I went upstairs and passed out. No big deal. This is good news.

Then I remember that there has to be a chain of events that leads Lee from the living room into my closet where I found him earlier today.

"Eventually, we all went to bed. I crashed in Bob's room, because he's out of town," Max says. "I was sleeping for a while when I heard the door open and I saw a figure enter the room and climb into bed with me. It was Lee. It didn't seem like that big a deal -- we're always sleeping in the same bed because there are too many guys. Plus I was just so tired I couldn't bother to care. Still, I wasn't happy about it and I told him to stay on his side of the bed. He made some homophobic comment like, "You think I'm a fag?" and I just rolled over and went to sleep. Then I woke up a little while later because he was giving me a fucking backrub. I was freaked out, but I was so comatose that I just swatted his hands away and told him he better cut that shit out. He stopped and tried to make a joke out of it, and somehow I fell back asleep. But a light sleep, you know? What must have been at least an hour later I rolled over and the dude was just staring at me like a fucking snake staring at a mouse. Eyes wide open. He didn't say a word. I just got up and left and slept downstairs."

This isn't good, I'm thinking. Somehow Lee got up from that nice pristine bed that Max bequeathed him and he made it up into my closet by 10:30.

"I got up around 8 this morning and he was downstairs watching TV," Milo says. "I had no fucking idea who he was, and frankly I was nervous as hell. Then he told me he was your friend and he had to go to work soon. He didn't know your name, he just kept calling you 'the funny guy' and calling Max 'the Jewish guy.' He seemed nice enough. I had some cereal and then I went back to bed. He was still down there."

"So...did anybody see what the dude did between when Max left him in the bed and when Milo ran into him this morning? Or after Milo went back to bed?" I asked.

"Why?" Clyde asks.

"Well, when I woke up this morning he was laying in my closet with me," I say.

"Dooood," Vic says, laughing. "I think you guys did it."

I don't even have the guts to tell them that I didn't have any underwear on when I woke up. After all, in my head I've already explained that. I ditched the underwear out the window at Dave's place the night before, therefore when I got home and stripped off my drinking pants to pass out, I had nothing on underneath. Of course I was too drunk to go put on a pair of pajamas.

"That's not funny," I say. "This dude was like a predator. What if I passed out and he...did things to me?"

"You know what? That's possible," Joe says, emerging from a game of Tecmo to join the conversation. "We came up there this morning around 9 to see if you wanted to go get breakfast with us at the Regent Street Retreat and you weren't fucking budging. We were slapping you in the head, shaking you, the works. You didn't respond at all."

"Um...when you came in...did I have any underwear on?" I ask.

"Dude, I assume so, the blanket was on you...why? Did you have any on when you woke up?"

"No, but I shit myself earlier in the night, so that might explain it..." I trailed off. I don't think I'm winning any hearts and minds with this line of thinking. Imagine a scenario when the best plausible explanation for where you find yourself is that you crapped your pants. That's where I am.

"Hans, if that dude had sex with you, I'm pretty sure you'd know it," Milo says, and I value his opinion because he will one day be a doctor. "Like, your ass would be sore as hell." I wonder if he will ever use these words with a future patient. Like, your ass would be sore as hell.

I take stock of my ass soreness. Sore, to be sure. But not any sorer than any other night of excessive alcoholism. I convince myself that he didn't bone me.

"He probably just blew you," Clyde says.

I decide right then to work something out with God. God, I can accept that the dude blew me, if that's what you want to throw my way. No problem. Just agree that there was no anal sex and no HIV please. Hell, even anal sex is OK as long as you promise no HIV. Is that OK? I promise no more drinking. No drinking, no HIV. Deal?

No word from God, but I'm keeping my side of the bargain.

***

Lee calls the next day, speaking in his toughest, most manly voice. He leaves a message:

"Yo Hans. We're having a big party next Saturday. Tons of chicks. Many kegs. You and your boys should come out. Give me a call. Alright, Peace."

I don't call him back.

Regret Pt. 2

If you haven't read it yet, please start with Pt. 1 of this 3-part post. Now on to Pt. 2...

2:14 a.m.: location: somewhere on West Dayton street

Dave's apartment is your typical student pad, one of five thousand like it in Madison, two story houses split into two apartments and slowly destroyed by thoughtless kids year after year. We're standing outside it now, and we're talking about the 'Clear.

Me: This is crazy. I've never had Everclear before. Is it even legal?
Dave: I dunno, I think it's homemade. It's grain alcohol or something.
Eli: Dudes, I think I'm gonna bail. My apartment is just over there...
(he gestures back towards the Holiday Inn down the block. His apartment isn't at all close to the Holiday Inn.)
Dave: Nah, man. Let's have a couple of drinks.

I make a mental note that Dave is a champ.

Dave lives on the second floor with three roommates, who are all asleep. As we walk upstairs, I find myself wondering if I've been in this apartment before. In five years on campus, I've been to a lot of indistinguishable house parties, and this place definitely seems familiar. Oh yeah, now I remember: I think I was here at a party freshman year, on the ground floor. There was a girl chewing tobacco and I bummed some off her. She was just working that tobacco like a pro. We were all sort of in awe of her.

Eli and I sit down on kitchen chairs that are part of a circle Dave has laid out in the middle of the living room. He leaves the room and returns with the stuff. Everclear. It's in a plain glass bottle and I don't stop for even a second to ask where, how, or why. It looks like death and I want to taste it.

Me: So do you have some...I dunno...fruit juice? Something to mix it with?
Dave: Oh, shit. Yeah, that's a good idea. I never thought I'd ever drink this stuff. It's actually my roommate's. Let me check for some juice.

I try to make small talk with Eli while Dave heads back to the kitchen in search of a mixer. I can tell we're losing Eli. As much as he's already been dead weight for over an hour, I immediately recognize that his continued presence is key to the survival of this night. I walk over to the stereo and put on "Mind Playing Tricks on Me" by the Geto Boys in an attempt to perk Eli up.

It works, at least for a minute. Eli starts halfheartedly bobbing his head. It's also loud enough to stir one of Dave's sleeping roommates, who joins us in the living room. He seems like a nice guy, not pissed to be awakened by people he doesn't even know. He sits in a chair and joins the conversation.

Dave returns emptyhanded. No juice. No soda.

This is a critical moment; all the signs in the universe are pointing towards calling it a night. Everybody looks spent, drunk and spent. But something in me, some fucked up Irish gene, needs more. More fun. More booze. More night.

Me: Fuck it, I'll just run over to Cap Centre Foods (a supermarket about three blocks away) and get us some juice. They're open all night.

The kids are impressed by my commitment to the Everclear and they all nod in agreement, even Eli. Looks like I'm going to Cap Centre Foods.

I jog down the stairs and leave the building, and I notice a car in the driveway getting ready to pull out. It must be the downstairs neighbors. I run up to the window, this stranger's driver-side window, and I ask him where he's headed. He says something but I don't even listen.

Me: Can you drop me at Cap Centre Foods?
Him: Sure, hop in.

I get in, and it's him and another dude in the front seat, both sort of crunchy white guys who are laughing every ten seconds. I'm pretty sure they're drunk and stoned. In the backseat with me is an African-American dude, seems nice, introduces himself as Lee.

Me: Where are you guys going? Another party?
Driver dude: Nah, we're just going over to a friend's house to watch Highlander.
Me: Oh...cool.

Like three times since I've lived in Madison I have found myself in a room full of people watching Highlander. I've never made it through the whole movie myself, but around here people go nuts for it. One time it was a fucking Highlander party with like thirty people.

Lee says he's probably not gonna watch the movie, and asks what I'm up to. I tell him about the Everclear and the juice.

I guess this is as good a time as any to point out that since I have lived in Wisconsin, I have not had an actual black friend. In high school, we had a beautiful ethnic mix and I treasured that shit. I learned that diversity actually means something. Knowing different people from different backgrounds enriches your life and grows your brain. But Madison is an overwhelmingly white campus, and the only black guys I know are dudes I play ball with and against. More than acquaintances, less than friends.

So I am sort of tickled in my pathetic drunk honky mind to be meeting a black guy named Lee at 2:45 in the morning as we ride in a stranger's car towards a supermarket that I could easily have walked to.

2:47 a.m.: Capital Centre Foods, Mifflin and Broom

We get to Cap Centre and I get out. I thank the Crunch Brothers for the ride and I walk through the automatic doors. Lee also gets out and out of the corner of my eye I see him sort of milling around outside the store. As I scan the aisles, looking for snacks to accompany us on our suicide mission, I notice Lee has joined me in the supermarket and is hovering like thirty feet behind me, not quite hiding but not announcing his presence either.

Finally I turn and wave.

Me: What's up, man?
Lee: Nothing, bro. Just looking for something to eat.

At this point, I won't lie to you, I am sort of freaked out. He's not threatening but he's definitely not quite together.

Me:Yo (adopting slight, embarrassing "urban" speech pattern), do you want to come back with us and drink the Everclear?
Lee: Sure, man. That'll work.

This is already like the twelfth "If Woody had gone straight to the police, this would never have happened" moment of the night.

So we shop together, 3am, new buddies with a shared purpose. Like Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier, chained together by a bottle of grain alcohol. Finally, we settle on two mixers: Schweppes Raspberry Ginger Ale in a 2 liter bottle, and a gallon of truly disgusting IGA brand Grape Drink. I explain to Lee that the grape drink will turn his shit green, and he doesn't believe me.

Me: You check it out tomorrow, you'll have like a phosphorescent green shit, man. It's one of the great unexplained phenomena of science. It's unreal.

I am sobering up a little and I don't like it. We need to get back.

As we walk the five minute walk, Lee opens up a bit and he seems like a nice guy. Tells me he has to work in the morning and that he should probably have gone home already. Looking back now, I wish he had.

3:00 a.m.: Somewhere on West Dayton again

When we get back to Dave's, I introduce Lee to everyone and even though they shake his hand, there are raised eyebrows all around, as if to say who the hell is this. I feel bad for Lee, and embarrassed by my friends.

Dave and his roommate go into the kitchen and come back with five giant plastic cups, each full to the rim. Grape drink and Everclear. Mom would be so proud.

We start drinking, and it burns. Not as bad as I thought it would, but enough to let you know you're consuming something only a short walk from gasoline. The grape drink helps.

We're talking, the tunes are playing, and we're having fun. Inevitably, the conversation turns to race and racism and our experiences with both.

Lee tells a couple of stories about being harrassed for the color of his skin, really sad stuff. I take it from there and tell everyone what a great balanced life I've led, with black friends and Latino friends and Asian friends and so on. I'm tremendously satisfied with myself.

Then Dave takes the floor.

Dave (to Lee): You know, dude, don't take this the wrong way, but in Philly, where I'm from, things were bad. I remember some black kids started attending our high school and we left a big sign on their bus that said "Niggers go home."

I'm drunk on a dozen different types of liquor but the entire room is suddenly in perfect focus. There's silence. Even Bushwick Bill has to shut it down for a second. Lee is staring at Dave. We're all staring at Dave.

Dave: I mean, that's the way it was, you know? I didn't know any black kids 'til I got to college. The ones I did know I hated. They hated us, we hated them.

Lee is understanding. He grants Dave forgiveness. They hug. We all open up. The stories are flowing -- awful, silly, shameful, corny, earnest, offensive stories, all about race. We can't talk about anything else. We're erasing our sins and our fathers' sins over glasses of grape drink and Everclear.

It's 4:00 am and we've cashed the bottle of Everclear. I have about half a cup left, my second, and then I need to go home. My body keeps seizing up on me.

Me: Excuse me, can I go to the can?
Dave: It's right over there.

I go to the bathroom and I can barely stand. My eyes are pointing in like six different directions simultaneously. The light is bright and cruel. I start to piss and I decide a nice fart might clear my senses. Unfortunately, muscle control is lost and I soil my drawers. Depressed but determined, I remove the underwear, throw them out the bathroom window and clean up. I pull my pants on and head back out to the living room, where I find comfort in the fact that nobody else knows what just happened.

I finish my drink quickly and tell everybody I have to leave. Lee says the same. Goodnight, later, this was a blast, good to meet you, peace out, see you at work next week. I sense that we'll all be embarrassed about this but I am too drunk to try to figure out why.

Lee and I walk down the stairs and out into the night. It's foggy out there, a little damp, but it's a mild night and the streetlights are on, guiding me toward my apartment, which is about fifteen minutes away on foot. Lee says he's gotta catch a bus because he lives pretty far off campus, but wouldn't you know it the bus stop is over by my place, he says, so we can walk together. As we head off into the night, I hear a door open behind us. It's one of the crunchy dudes from earlier that night, coming out of the apartment beneath Dave's. Before Lee even fully notices him, Crunchy runs up to me and whispers in my ear:

Dude, you know that guy Lee is gay, right? I'm pretty sure he wants to have sex with you.

I don't know what to make of this, so I just keep walking and Crunchy heads back inside. Lee asks what he said to me, and I say, Nothing, man.

We walk a couple of blocks and I suddenly realize I need to address this point.

Me: Lee, um, well, that guy back there, well, he said you were gay.
Lee (in tough guy voice): Who said I was a faggot?
Me: No, he didn't use that word, he just said you were gay...and I think you need to know that I'm not gay, so you don't get the wrong impression...
Lee: He said I was a faggot? That's bullshit! I ain't a faggot!
Me: Dude, whether you are or not, I just need you to understand that I'm not gay and so nothing's happening tonight...OK?
Lee: Dude, don't worry about it...I'm not a fucking faggot.

We walk in silence for the next few blocks, my balls flopping freely and uncomfortably in my jeans. My apartment is getting closer and try as I might I can't think of any bus stops along the way...

Part 3

Regret Pt. 1

I read an article a couple of months ago where John Lucas implied that he got so far out of his head on drugs and alcohol one night that he may have fucked a chicken. Not definitely, but may have. He's not saying this because he's proud of it. He's saying it to illustrate something we all know but somehow fail to heed: drugs and alcohol will mess with your judgment big time.

You don't have to fuck a chicken to know he's right. But once in a while we could all use some reminding.

But first, to catch you up real quick...

This hospital job has been every bit as soul-crushing as I thought it would be. I'll tell you all about it later -- the dishroom, the patient units, the grime that builds up under my nails and on my pants and seemingly beneath the top layer of my skin. The fact that I wear the same shirt and pants three or four days in a row, sometimes not showering the whole time. How dirty I've become. That I'm not one of the best guys at loading the huge industrial dishwasher, nor am I a whiz on the trayline. How many fucking weird people I work with. Later for all of that.

The good news is that I've made some friends. The PMS crew is made up of three types of employees:
1. Limited Term Employees, or LTE's -- we're allowed 1000 work hours, which is roughly 6-7 months, and then we have to find a new job. Most of the LTE's, like me, are young adults trying to figure out what to do with ourselves and we hope to have figured it out well before we hit that 1000. Because we just know we're better than this place. However, it has become increasingly clear to me that none of us will leave until we get to 1000 hours on the nose. The trick will be getting out before they figure out a way to sign you up for another 1000.
2. University Students -- kids looking to make some extra bucks as they attend UW. Just a regular student job for these guys, and most of them work about 15-20 hours a week. I have become friends with a few of them -- Dave G. from Philly, Eli from Wisconsin, and a few others.
3. Lifers -- these are people who have given up on ever leaving the trayline. Many of them are smart, accomplished people who for one reason or another got broken by the world and now they're too tired or too scared to try something new. Some of them are just hopeless dumbasses, too. They are all state employees and they have an excellent benefits plan with a reasonable retirement age, so they are just gonna go ahead and wait it out. By far the most interesting is Jerome, The Checker. A post-doc student in English in the early 70's, he blew it all when his advisor caught him in an unexplainable clinch with the advisor's wife. After that he kicked around New Orleans for a few years and then came up North and took this job in the early 80's. He's saved enough money to buy a nice house on Madison's East side, where he lives alone and spends his days and nights smoking pot and reading books and listening to music. He seems to have no interest in ever doing anything else. He's about 46 years old and has more stories than anyone I've ever met. In fact, he occasionally alludes to dark nights of chicken fucking but I think maybe he's speaking metaphorically.

More about them all later, but first I want to tell you with all seriousness: I have had my last drink. It's been almost a week now and I don't miss it one bit. What I especially don't miss is nights like the one I'm about to describe, the night that has made me fold up my drinkin' pants forever.

Last Friday was shaping up to be a good one. I had Saturday off for the first time in almost a month, and I was looking for a strong night on the town. My roommates were also in the mood to rid the world of some beer, so we formed a raw outline for the evening: 9pm, Church Key bar on University Avenue, beyond that let God take over. I had told Eli and Dave, my two Trayline buddies, to come out and join us for a few, and they were excited to do just that, having both turned 21 in the last couple of months.

That much of the evening is clear. A plan was in place, we had every intention of executing it, and we had a powerful tailwind. It had the makings of a historic evening.

Unfortunately, shit got fucked up real bad.

What follows is a rough chronological reconstruction of the evening, based on:
-my own memory of what happened (in black)
-what others have told me happened (in crimson)
-theories of missing events that I have come up with based on the things I do know (in blue)

8:35 pm: location: our apartment, 30 North Park Street

I am excited as hell for the evening. We are watching the Knicks crush Atlanta and drinking beer out of the fridge. Riley has transformed this team in one season and I never expected that. They were a piece of shit last year. We are playing beer darts as we watch, getting ready to go out. Regular game of 301, if you get over 40 on your three darts your opponent has to take a drink, and if you don't break 20 on three darts you have to drink a full beer. Max is punishing me but I am so far able to get more than 20 on each turn, avoiding a potentially lethal early-evening full beer slam.

Just before we leave, I score an 8 when only one of my three plastic tipped darts sticks in the dartboard (house rule: only darts that stick count) and I am forced to drink an entire beer. It's too cold, too carbonated, and I have to muscle it down in three passes. Bad sign.

9:30pm: location: The Church Key bar

Oh, it's a great night. Our Appleton connection, Jeff Ice, is tending bar and drinks are for the most part free. It's rare you get to use the phrase, our Appleton connection, but at the Church Key it applies. The Church Key is a bar on the second floor of a two story building on University Avenue. Juke box is pretty weak. Beer selection is average. Clientele is decidedly unglamorous. The only memorable thing about the bar is that it overlooks a deli/liquor store on the first floor. It's all open air between bar and deli but the deli is always closed when we're there. So you look over the balcony and you see all the snacks and stuff in the darkened store and it's just one of those things that makes you feel a little bit drunker.

A lot of my friends are from Appleton and so are a lot of the people who work at the Church Key. So the price is always right, making it a great place to fuel up on the cheap before you head out further into the night.

10:00pm: location: The Church Key bar

We're fueling up nice and steady when I look over at the entrance and see my young buddies Dave and Eli making their way in. Nice guys, both of 'em, as far as I can tell. This is the first time I've actually socialized with them outside of the hospital. Dave is from Philly, a real sarcastic dude who is dating a beautiful Filipino woman named Elena, who's also part of PMS. She's not here tonight. Eli is from a small town in deep deep northern Wisconsin, "up nort" as they say, and he's a bit socially awkward. Funny once you get to know him, but kind of quiet and morose at first glance. I bonded with Eli because he was kind of obnoxious at work and didn't really give a fuck about the bosses. He knew that firing him would hurt them worse than it would him. He's been my constant bud in the dishroom.

In the dishroom, all the dirty, half-eaten, disease-ridden patient trays roll by, and each person is responsible for pulling off certain items -- cups, small plates, silverware, bowls, etc, which are then rinsed, gathered on plastic trays and handed off to the loader, who pours them into the super-hot, fast-moving industrial dishwashing machine in perfect little rows, making sure none of the tread is uncovered as it rolls on through the machine. It's an art, these guys are every bit as slick as Las Vegas blackjack dealers. I know because I've been the loader before, and it is hard as hell. Every time you find a rhythm and get a nice row of bowls going, suddenly two of them will get stuck together by some crusted mashed potatoes and you're immediately behind and faced with tons of empty tread.

PM Dennis was covering for AM Dennis one night a couple of weeks ago, and as manager his job in the dishroom is to disassemble the "Isolation" trays, which are basically the ones from patients with infectious diseases. I guess they don't pay us enough for that so the managers deal with it. Still, about half the time the nurses forget to keep the Isolation trays separate and one has already gone halfway through the dish line before someone notices. The Isolation trays are easily identified because the paper placemats are put on upside down. I sometimes wonder if the Isolation patients realize that that's how we mark them as contagious outcasts. Or if they get their tray every day and think, Man these food service workers suck! My placemat's upside down again today! What are the odds? Anyway, it sucks when your hand is deep inside somebody's half-full, still-warm coffee mug and you see an upside down placemat. Yuck. At that point you yell out "ISOLATION!" and the attending Dennis comes and pulls the tray off the line, takes it in back and dismantles it safely somehow. This happens, these errors, about five times a night. Sometimes a syringe will float on by. That always gets some oohs and aahs. By the end of dishroom, which is the end of our shift, your hands are covered in slime and food and contagious snot and blood and you've lost all dignity and you want to take your new infections and go home. We wear rubber gloves but they don't help, the dirty rotten dishwater pools up in the fingers and you end up with a rash that can lead to an open wound and then Dear God you're fucked. I hate the dishroom.

But Eli makes it bearable. The two of us will along sing as loud as we can, each trying to be more earnest than the other as we trade off the Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder parts of Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike." The lifers just stare at us and keep grabbing bowls off trays. I remember on this particular night there was an Isolation tray and I yelled "ISOLATION!" and PM Dennis came over and dutifully grabbed it off the line. PM Dennis was sort of a by-the-book dude, not much fun. He was in his late 30's, an officious little fella with a thick beard. He was a lifer already although he may not have known it yet. As he grabbed the tray he muttered something sarcastic about the singing and that we should be paying attention and we just stared at him. As soon as Dennis turned his back to us, Eli picked up an uneaten orange, a big one too, and threw it as hard as he could at the wall across from the dishline. It smashed into the clock over there, which was covered with a metal grate for just such occasions. But Eli's throw was so perfect and so fierce that it slammed the grate into the clock, broke the glass, and stopped the clock. The room went silent. Dennis turned around, stared at Eli, who stared right back. Then Dennis just kept walking away with his Isolation tray, shaking his head. I never quite understood why he didn't fire or at least reprimand Eli right then and there to save face. My only thought was that his pride meant less to him than the aggravation he'd feel if he had to replace Eli on that night's dishline. I hope I never get to that point.

Anyway, Eli and Dave G. are here and we're all having a blast. I introduce them to my buddies and we make sure they can get the Appleton discount. We're at the bar swapping stories about the trayline, in fact at one point we put together an all-star trayline team made up only of gay and lesbian employees. We even had them all on their correct stations. I went to the bar and and returned with a round.

Eli: What the fuck is this beer, dude?
Me: It's Sam Adams.
Eli: It's fucking gross, dude.
Dave: Yeah, this is way too strong or something.
Me: No, it's good. You need to get used to it.
Dave: Can I get a Bud Light or something?
Eli: Get me an Old Mil or a Bud Light. This beer is getting me fucked up. It's too strong.
Me: Have you ever tried any other kind of beer besides Bud, Old Milwaukee, and Miller?
Dave and Eli: No, not really.

I'm pretty much a lightweight when it comes to drinking, but these guys were greener than Kermit the Frog. I'd never heard anybody complain that their beer was too strong before. Rookies.

Still, I am getting pretty drunk myself. That slam before we left the house is hurting me.

11:45pm: location: The Red Shed bar

The Red Shed is another nondescript Madison bar, a one floor dive noteworthy only for its $4 L.I. Iced Teas that are served in mason jars and will take you right down to the ground, and for the covered wagon that sits atop the building. More on that another time.

We are at the Red Shed and I am almost finished with a Long Island Iced Tea and I feel kinda woozy.

Somebody orders some shots, I think. We drink them. Eli and Dave G. (not pictured) are hanging in there.

1:00am: location: the Red Shed bar

At this point Hans starts getting loud and feisty. He probably thinks he's being funny, but nobody is all that amused. He keeps interrupting people's darts games by standing in front of the bullseye and blabbering something about William Tell. A few of us hint that he should probably head home, but he says he's feeling alive and strong. BC (also not pictured), Milo and DB head home.

Yeah, I sort of remember that...and then Clyde and Joe and Vic and Max come over to where I'm carrying on and they tell me they're taking off. Everybody's getting tired...

Not me. I am too busy impressing the hospital kids to realize I should join my roommates and admit that the night has us all beat.

If I knew what laid ahead I certainly would have.

2am: location: The Red Shed bar

At 2am comes last call and I am in no way ready to give in. The young guys are still there, pounding down the booze right along with me.

Me: Let's go drinking someplace. You guys got any booze?
Dave: I have some Everclear back at my apartment.

Who are these punks? They've never sampled a beer any darker than Budweiser but are sitting on a stash of Everclear? What the hell? As far as I know, Everclear is just a myth that sophomores talk about to scare freshmen. I've never actually seen it.

Me: Let's go.

Part 2
Part 3