My first drink is a Jack and Diet. For the rest of the night, I am drinking just whiskey on the rocks. I can’t deal with the caffeine.

During the first set a trio of twenty-somethings in collared, red shirts stand tentatively near the door. “Are they on a bowling team?” someone says. But I don’t think so. They are too pretty to be bowlers. And I’m right – when the music starts one approaches our table, and asks if any of us smoke. When I say I do, I discover that they are promoters from Marlboro. Somehow I procured a pack of Reds for a dollar, and ten minutes later I am outside bumming matches from a woman with big hair.

When the first band is done, the next one gets onstage. Two of the men are guys whose orientation had been a matter of our debate.

A friend texts me requesting a hookup. We message back and forth. After a bit he stops responding.

A woman is where the bands were now. Things are getting blurry for me. But I can see only too clearly as she strips off her shirt, her breasts donned only in speckled, red stars. As my friends let out whispers of “what the fuck?” I realize at least I’m not the only one seeing stars tonight.

I tell my friend that the fat, tattooed stripper – a part-time stripper, to be sure, here only for open mic night – proves that the very idea of life is futile. We do not speak much for the rest of the evening.

One discount Marlboro later, I am in a car on the way home, though reluctantly so. My home is to the East; everyone else resides West. To turn right is to drop me off. To turn right is for me to end the night alone. To turn right, I warn the driver, will mean me jumping out of the car.

I am on the street. My friends call me crazy from the rolled-down windows of the SUV.

I am at home. I am eating saltines with peanut butter substitute.

I am awake at 5am. You are texting me from the mountains. You say you didn’t know what else to do with yourself.