Shit to shoot

Well I guess it started when a friend calls me up that they're home since I've been waiting to pick up a chair.

So I get off work around 5:30 and hop on the train and I'm off it by 6:15, not a bad time considering the walk bookending it trudging through summer heat with my jeans layered on me, too.

I'm walking up the stairs and there's already a crowd, as I ought to expect at this point, some sitting at the TV and then some sitting around the island playing cards or fuckall and then Marcy running around trying to clean everything since I suppose she's trying to cook, and she's got beads of sweat on her forehead too since she just got back from the store with a whole case of beer, and it would be nice if I could just stay for a minute and have a beer with her and everyone since I'm always secluded away.

I ought to have gotten up right then and just told her she's made a very astute observation and that I'd better get back to being me but sometimes I have to show Marcy she's wrong about me especially at 6:30 on a Friday.

So I take up the beer and by 6:35 I've either got to leave or have another one, I just don't know how people can have a bottle in their hand without sipping it the whole time through.

I go to see the chair with Theo but I mean I have to talk to Theo as well so then it's 7:03 and I'm another beer deep and just sitting in this chair.

I could just sit in this chair. Now I've got to take it home. The train runs in another 10 minutes so I could probably just get it out the door.

More people are coming up the stairs when I leave the room. Well we all say hello and I recognize Josie there too and we talk for a minute and I explain I'm there for the chair, so I exchange a promise to meet later for a cooing goodbye.

I'm out the door and down the stairs and I've got this chair, and I'm back sitting in it right about 8pm sharp.

I got another beer from the fridge and I can see twilight take, which is about the only part of the summer I can stand since it feels a bit magic and reminds me of people.

Now I get called up again and they're saying to come back to the party. Well what the hell I'm not going to get any work done with 3 beers, I guess, and all I had to eat today was a sandwich, so I'll head on back.

8:45 and there's about 20 people now and there's Josie again, so we can chat for a bit, fortunately someone's gone ahead and restocked so I kept up with the rest of the party.

Josie takes me into a corner in a frustrating and unparseable gesture which is just taking a bump so now we've got our conversation really going at what must be 10 but I think it's really about 9:30.

After we got up to date Josie floated off somewhere so I make some rounds and I must have talked to 20 people, whoever would have me, about my concert is next week and okay, I'll go to that and have you met my girlfriend, her name's Asha, and that sort of thing. I end up in the kitchen and I glance at the oven and it read 1:03 in stern green.

Well I flit around the party and I knew why I was still there, and I wanted to leave. I talk to Theo and I go to the bathroom for another bump at 1:15 once I couldn't wait any longer.

At 1:24 I'm talking to Theo and his friend Joshua, meanwhile I was facing the sliding door the whole time and I could see Josie was on the porch with a group of people. At 1:45 and in spite of 2 beers I found the situation fairly impenetrable, so I say my Irish goodbyes and go down the stairs and out under the porch with dew and wine dripping down and went sourly away from the clamor.

I walked through the maze of streets that engraved our small hill, towards the north stars, past some other parties drinking and couples smoking on mortared stone walls, and said hello to Vicky who was standing outside sheepishly with a Mike. Suddenly I missed that summer used to be that way, where you would court someone just beyond the threshold of the porch, riding the gravity of the nighttime, and let the warm breeze twist your stomach around and not know what was next. I walked away from them guessing at how it would play out, who would go with whom, and I got so lost in this fantasy of matchmaking that it was 2:35 and I was collapsing in bed and asleep.