Against the Wall

You always ask after the worst of yourself, if it is true. It is. Tonight I drove home drunk. Well not drunk, but at the tail end of drunkenness at the very best. Two hours after drinking one glass and one pitcher of beer, I found myself at the Jack in the Box drive thru, but let me explain a bit about how I arrived in this precarious situation.

Three hours prior, outside Uncle Sam's, I discovered that my car would not start and I resolved to drink as many of the $0.75 draft beers within as I could until someone arrived to drive me home. One hour, one pitcher, and one glass later, my friends decided to walk across the parking lot to Applebee's since Uncle Sam's had run out of bread. I followed, the notion that my car might start given a short rest beginning to make my beer-soaked mind sweat slightly, and I immediately ceased all drinking.

Eight buffalo wings and two hours later, my friends walked with me to my car, to watch and listen for clues as to why it would not start. It started. I decided to drive the short distance to my house rather than be burdened with returning the next day to retrieve my car, which at that point might not even start again.

I've recently lost about sixty pounds and am anxious to not retrieve it, so I decided to order only one Sourdough Jack instead of the three I would have ordered two years ago. We're back at the Jack in the Box drive thru, by the way. As I rounded the corner the image of an Xbox 360 struck my eye, plastered across the garish and inaccurate portraits of menu items. I was not ordering a combo and therefore did not qualify for a chance to win a $5k game room according to the advertisement. I got to thinking though, after not being able to read the fine print from the confines of my resurrected Altima, that most of these contests were run with a "No purchase necessary" disclaimer.

It occurred to me that these disclaimers must be the result of some fancy sounding legal ordinance making necessary purchase of an item to enter a contest a form of gambling, and therefore illegal. So as the woman opened the window and asked me if I'd like some ketchup or hot sauce, I said, "No, thank you, but would you happen to have any pieces for the Jack's Big Rip Off Contest?"

She shook her head, "No," she said. I was bemused.

"Then this contest requires a purchase to be a part of? Surely that defies several grand jury statutes on the legality of gambling." She was an immigrant from Mexico clearly, and it seemed to me that my five dollar words were sliding off of her like waxed lead, although I now possess serious doubts about my words having been delivered as I have related them here, or I daresay, whether I spoke them at all.

"I don't know."

I was failing. "My friends are drunk and can not properly articulate their thoughts." I made a broad sweep of my arm, gesturing to the silent emptiness in my car. Whatever I meant for this to accomplish toward my objective, I no longer recall. She disappeared from the window. When she returned, she handed me my food and I drove safely to my household.

The entire time melodic prose dances round the narrowing hall of my brain and one poor cowardly artist against the wall mumbles over and over, "Everything is true and we are all liars assembled in the night, as though the most furiously lonely of all the world would be content with eyes shut, to stand near to one another for a moment in stillness."