Methadone

The bar was long and blue. There may have been a coin-operated pool table. I don't remember much in that department, but I suppose that's to be expected when you start drinking midday on the hottest day of the year. Still, there's stuff I do remember, and vividly. I was wearing a gray shirt; just plain-old gray, but that shirt connoted power, like the drab outfit of a fascist dictator. It's been over ten years since I've worn that shirt, but I'm sure it must be around somewhere back home, lonely and forgotten. Shirts don't decompose like half-eaten apples and dead carcasses. No, you'd have to burn it or shred it if you wanted that old shirt gone, and I don't think anyone ever cared enough to want it gone from the face of the earth that badly, least of all me. It's probably bunched up and smelling like mildew in my closet back home, or maybe in the basement. Sometimes I think about that shirt. It was plain, simple, nice.

My hair was the same length all over my head, the result of growing out what I'd shaven clean bald from my scalp over half a year prior. By evening my face was crimson from sitting out all day on the cottage porch steps, drinking bottle after bottle of Miller Genuine Draft. I must have had at least a dozen and a half, but youth scoffs at such an amount, and on into the late-night hours I drifted aimlessly and drunkenly.

On our way home the next day we stopped for breakfast at a diner. I ordered a grilled-cheese sandwich with bacon and tomato. My brother -- convention be damned -- smoked a cigarette while he ate. After our meal we stopped for gas and I bought a 500ml carton of orange juice.