the fifth of july
I tried to lay out on my roof today but I only lasted about 20 minutes. My sunscreen smelled like the vodka I drank the night before, or maybe it was just the alcohol seeping out of my pores. At any rate, it was too hot and too sunny. Last night we got kicked out of one bar and one of my friends slapped a guy at another. Before that, walking to the bars, we invited ourselves into a frat house to use the bathroom and steal a pair of sandals. At the end of the night we raided Shaws for junky microwaveable food and I made fun of the cashier’s hair and I spent almost all of today in my bed, hungover and recovering.
I’m not proud of these things, but they did happen. Sometimes we like to drink and sometimes we drink enough to be happy and dancing on the roof on a warm summer night and sometimes we drink a little too much after the happy dancing and start to act like fools and forget we are 25. Sometimes we do things we regret but they are funny in the moment and can be funny afterwards, too, if we have the right attitude. I’m unemployed so I have lots of free time to spend resting in bed or sitting on the rooftop listening to music or thinking about things like the line between a fun night and a night I should maybe be a little ashamed about.
When the bouncer was kicking my friend out of the bar and I was trying to explain that she wasn’t doing anything wrong, he for some reason started talking about his time in the army (the details of our conversation are fuzzy) and so I had to stop reasoning with him and thank him for his service, because it was the 4th of July and I was drunk and it seemed like the right thing to do. That was the extent of my patriotism for the day, but I did watch the fireworks and I did drink beer and both of those things felt pretty American. It’s funny how we celebrate holidays, how we celebrate our country, how people are so proud and loyal and how random and uncontrollable it is to have been born in one country instead of another. But all of that requires a lot more thinking than I’m capable of at the moment.
