Gin at Five in the Morning

"Well what am I supposed to do then?"

"I don't know man. Keep on."

"Fuck you," I said. "Your hippy fucking horseshit."

"I love you."

I kept looking at the ground. It was night and we were in the backyard of a friend who was celebrating her  twenty-fifth birthday. It was well into the night and William and I had stolen off with a bottle of gin and two ping pong paddles and were standing beside a table thinking about ping pong, but to ourselves thinking about everything else and not ping pong. It had been a year that I had been alone and a year I had been making bills and making time and making a life. It had been a year and it had been fourteen hours since I had been fired. I had been home alone and when Michael called me to come to the party I had refused and when Farrah called me at two or three in the morning and asked me to come I did. I had been pissed at Michael, but that's another story. I had mingled but spent most of the night with William and had drinks and that was a lot of drinks and I had been somber and then alive and on fire and laughing. Now we were splitting a cigarette beside a deteriorating ping pong table.

"I love you too," I said.

He passed me the bottle of gin and I took a large swallow and set it down on the table. William was digging around near the table and then he had popped up with two ping pong balls and set one down and said, "ready?"

"Ready," I said.

He served and it went off into the night and I took another swig of the gin and passed it to him. 

"Okay," he said, "I'll try again." He served and slower this time and the ball bounced naturally off the table and I caught it with my paddle and William caught it with his and another volley between us and then it too was gone into the dark.

"You think I should move?" I asked.

"Why?"

"Why should I move?"

"Yeah." 

"I don't know. Start again. Somewhere fresh. Where I don't know anyone. Where I could be someone people don't know or expect or whatever. I could cut my hair and be someone else."

William set his paddle down and walked to a chair in the yard near a dead fire pit. I followed and sat in another chair. "I don't know man. Aren't you you?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Well, I guess, if you are then why change, regardless of where you are?" He swigged and handed me the gin.

I swigged and then swigged again. From my chair I could see inside the apartment and mostly it was quiet now and not much of a party. Farrah walked into and then out of frame and Michael had passed out somewhere a long time ago. I had had a few bottles of wine throughout the day and now the gin was really coming to me. I wasn't dizzy yet and I hadn't split my face open like the fucking last time, but I was sure it wasn't far off.

"If like," William said, "the apocalypse happened, the end of the world, total devastation, do you think you could eat another person?"

"Sure," I said. "Where the fuck did that come from?"

"Gin. I thought it was a good way to get your mind off shit."

"Oh, well, yeah. I mean, I'm moral and love and respect life and happiness, but, you have to look out for number one," I said. 

"Totally," he said, "but like, I mean, what if you didn't have to be moral,  or respectful,  or like, maybe just because you wanted to?"

"I'm not sure I would."

"But if you did."

"If I just randomly felt like killing and eating a person and if randomly the world had ended and if randomly I wasn't concerned with morals or respect  and was randomly somehow capable of that shit?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know man. I think I'd be pretty on the goddamned fence about it right until I was starving to death and even then, that unlucky sonofabitch would have to be a real asshole."

"You'd eat an asshole?"

"Fuck you." I swigged the gin again and passed it off. "That's not your ticket in."

He laughed and took the gin. "I'm glad you came out tonight," he said. "I don't get to see you often. How've you been doing, since, you know, everything?"

"Fine dude. Thanks. Paying bills. Waking up everyday."

"Gotta do it," he said.

"Well, no. I don't. That's the thing."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I don't have to get up. I don't have to pay bills. I could leave. That what I've been saying."

"You'd still have to wake up." He handed me the gin.

"I don't have to do that either," I said. I drank from the bottle and now I was very drunk and could feel it. I saw Farrah shut the lights off and I saw William play with the lace on his shoe and I saw the porch light bounce and fade into the impending dark and I saw everything that had happened and every move I had made to keep my head above water and every reason why none of it mattered and it was nearing five in the morning and I thought about how nice it would be to never see the goddamned sun come up again, that piercing, blinding beacon of effort and fortitude and endurance. "I never have to wake up again if I don't want to." I handed the gin to William and he fucked with his lace and we spoke more and later I laid in the dark and pretended I would always lay there. I can stop waking up whenever I want.