Found:

It had been nearly a week since that thing we had called a party. There was plenty of beer and sangria, but few in attendance had dressed for the theme and the party as a whole had left the hosts with a feeling of dynamic urgency. As the Ben Harper played on the stereo, this following Thursday was slowly sauntering into nothing. Tonight’s wine was a better bottle than last night’s. There was a growing sense that many things needed to change for all of us, before the wine became the only thing that could be improved upon from night to night.

There were still the constant themes at least. Life still had its reasons. That was what made it impossible to complain. Youth had been rife with depression and anxiety, as each stumble seemed to create a wound that would never heal.

Tonight she was bar-hopping with friends in a limo, drinking and carousing through the streets of Scottsdale and Tempe in a celebration of her friend’s birthday. There was no question of trust or fidelity. I had no burning desire to hear from her tonight. Was it that I didn’t care, or was I actually growing up. I talked to a man once, at some bar somewhere, that had said that he loved his wife so much that he never even needed to spend time with her. He merely needed to know that she still existed.

He was beginning to simmer over the fact that the possible female interest in his life, Jen, had yet to call him tonight. It was her birthday today, and they had made tentative plans to spend a portion of the night together in a celebration of sorts. His phone had been ringing consistently since he had gotten home. None of them turned out to be Jen. Various friends had been calling to coordinate attendance for the show tonight. In an ideal world, all of the cool and meaningful things to do in one night occur on different nights of the week.

Anyone’s birthday was the best excuse to go get admirably drunk, talk to people we didn’t know, insult women who were not impressed by our intoxication, get in fights, get kicked out of bars, eat bad food at 2:00 in the morning, vandalize something, then invent a reason to go to bed with the girls we really cared about.

As I fought to get through the crowd of acquaintances to the people I really cared about, I was once again struck by the notion that I really needed to cut back on my drinking. If I didn’t spend half of my fucking life and most of my paycheck in this bar, then it wouldn’t take me half an hour to get back to the table where my friends were waiting.

“What’s in the bag,” the officer said it less like a question, and more like an indication that he was going to open the bag no matter what I replied.
“Surfboard,” I replied in a mumble. I was more concerned with the three half full bottles of beer in the cab with us. I could have cared less about what they thought about our belongings in the bed of the truck.
“Did you just say C-4?” the officer inquired. “Guys, give me some help over here,” another officer was approaching. “Please step out of the vehicle,” the officer ordered.

For a moment, my eyes met those of the first officer. My jaw, brows, and most importantly the depths of my pupils, exuded confidence in my compliance with the law. His face had the stern look of a teacher that had just turned around from a blackboard after being hit in the back of the head with a paper airplane, to find a classroom full of smiling faces and folded hands.

The car behind us honked its horn. Traffic moved at a relatively steady pace until we got to the Mirage, then we stopped again. Hank’s bladder could hold out no longer. He had apparently miscalculated his consumption to urination time ratio by about fifteen minutes.

Joe fumbled around in the back of the truck. He was looking for the empty 40-oz. bottle that had contained the malt liquor that was now fighting to make its way back out of his body. There is a standard principle that one must follow when urinating into an empty bottle in a car on a road trip. The rule of thumb is that you will excrete as much liquid as you had previously consumed.

I started to wonder just how much whiskey one man could drink.

My life had gotten really comfortable in a really short period of time, and it scared the shit out of me. Mine was an ideal life that never got me any closer to any ideals that I had ever imagined in life, and I knew I needed to get away as soon as possible…

Nothing but a circle of lit candles warmly glowing on the pristine hardwood floor. This townhouse apartment seemed to possess the all of the spiritual justification that invited the meditation that now took place within its barren confines. Each night of unexplainable mood swings and depression was followed by a day that would find my pillow a soft cloud of ease and contentment.

Mike and Aaron: Try as they might, these two can not avoid being observed as employees in the café/coffee shop industry. Tall, dark, and charming, their good looks create a confused, uneasy, and irresistable attraction in the minds of unsuspecting patrons coming in for their morning lattes or mid-afternoon iced mochas. These two are extremely overqualified, and after six years of making cappuccinos, their passion for coffee preparation could be described as sarcastic at best, though your drink is guaranteed to be. They will spend most of their time trying to get Brit pop played on the coffee shop’s sound system and looking down on any guy that comes in with one of the hot “regular” babes (those guys are twats). These guys WILL be appearing behind a counter near you, and if you want to continue drinking, coffee you had better stay on their good side.

When I got into my car, it smelled like my grandfather’s car. It smelled like the old purple Cadillac from sometime in the sixties. The one that honorably carried Miss Arizona in the 4th of July parade every year from 1970 to 1985. It smelled like age.

I often battle with myself to make each month better than the last. I want to live a life better off than my parents before me. What were my parents doing each night of their lives when they were 25? I know that my father was still trying to find an existence in the small town that I now patronizingly refer to as my hometown.

For every moment that I want back, that I want to live again, for each of those flashes of nostalgia, I spend precious seconds in the now, hating where I am. Each second with the girl that got away now seems so precious that I sit and do nothing but think of all of the time I now waste not living my life as happy as I was with her. I can’t even remember why I liked being around her so much. When we grew apart, she gave me so many different reasons to hate her, and she had to. I am beginning to lose touch with the sense of what we did, she and I, on a daily basis.

I wish that each day could be an exercise that would allow me to come home each day and write about in a way that expressed growth and purpose that was clearly defined. I have a picture of Marilyn Monroe on my wall in my bedroom for fuck’s sake. How long is that going to be with me?

I listen to Air, and I feel like Stevie mother fucking Wonder at the keyboard here. For my status in society, I feel depressingly drunk and psychotic.

Anyways, the three remaining of us ended up closing down the bar without event. I then went and got a burrito and briefly became frustrated with God once again.