Are You Going to Write About This?

"You're going to write about this, aren't you?"

Michael is drunk. The night is almost over. We are sitting at a back table in a hip hop bar in Albany and Michael keeps bordering obscenity. He keeps referring to New Years Eve and it makes me wonder if he actually understood anything that happened or didn't happen or could have happened then, or if he's just drunk and loose. It could go either way and I don't care beyond my natural analytic state. We had just finished playing a show and we were both covered in a thick film of sweat and we both felt wonderful and we were the only white people there. We smelled. We were in flannel. We wore tattered clothes and shoes and nodded in unison to the bass and snares around us. Michael used to rap. He doesn't anymore. He was good at it and occasionally I try to persuade him to do it again. 

"Probably not. Maybe. Nothing's really happening."

"What do you mean? This is perfect. This is how I want to spend my life. I could never leave here and be totally happy."

"Until you can't afford the drinks."

"I got paid yesterday," he says. "Fucking rich."

"I'm drinking a six dollar Bud Light." 

He points at me. "Good point. You're going to write about this, aren't you?"

"About what? You don't even read my shit. What do you care?"

"I care. I've read your shit dude. Some of it's, whatever. Shut up."

"You just like to know you're a character."

"You're a piece of shit. You want a beer?"

"I have one," I say.

"You want another one? Fuck."

"Sure."

"I guess I'll buy you one then. Singer. Front man." He flips me off, slaps the table and gets up. He disappears in the crowd and noise and neon and I look at my phone. It's a little after midnight and I think I should start in the whiskey soon. We were supposed to meet people here. Friends of ours were playing a show across town and we had to miss their set and they had to miss ours and we all decided that we wouldn't book shows on each others nights from then on. They were late. 

A woman knocks into me as she shakes her formidable hips to whoever is on the P.A. at the moment. She smiles at me and waves her hand in apology and mumbles something. I smile and blow a kiss and she smiles and turns and disappears. Michael is leaning over the bar pointing at the liquor behind it and I don't think he's getting me a beer anymore. I have to piss. I look around behind me and the bathrooms are down a long and lit hallway. I get up and head to the men's room. I had six Steel Reserve sixteen ouncers under my belt as it was from the last hour and as I walked they all seemed to hang on me like fat or disregarded responsibility and I knocked into the wall once or twice before making it safely to the urinal. 

When I come back to the table Michael is sitting sideways in his chair and there are two small glasses on the table. Michael's is empty and mine isn't. I sit down and it is whiskey and I wonder if Michael knows me well enough by now. He turns to face me.

"You know," he says "You can be a piece of shit."

"I know."

"I love you dude." 

"I love you too." I swallow the whiskey in my glass and in ten minutes it will hit me. I can't stand this bar. I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to fuck anyone. I don't want to pay six dollars for goddamned Bud Lights. 

"No, I love you. I really love you and I kind of want a burrito. You want to get out of here?" Michael asks.

"Sure."

We stand and shove and slide and squeeze through the bodies and bass and blackness and when we get outside onto the sidewalk, Michael asks me "Are you going to write about this?"

I laugh. "If I do, I'm going to make you look like a drunk asshole."