One Saturday Night

Narrator has to pick up his drunk friend from the strip club on a Saturday night. Explores some of the ideas of addiction and acting in bad faith. Also the idea of father and son.

On a Saturday night, at 3:01am, in a greasy spoon of a strip club buried in between the dunes of Pawley’s Island, a man begins to walk back for his third private dance. This fellow’s name is Whiskey. Whiskey Jones. Whiskey was a slight, rangely but overall good looking guy, he was a few weeks over 22. He was an insurance policy writer by trade, and a poet by passion. By the power of observation, one could deduce that a one point in the night he may have been wearing a suit, of course all that was left by 3:01am was just a wrinkled button down, khakis and his rolex. One could also deduce, equally by the power of observation, that Whiskey had had more to drink than he could handle, and had spent more money than he could afford. The stripper that Whiskey had solicited for his third dance was named Ginger, she had just graduated real estate school in Conway and her eyes shined with a certain Joie De Vivre and optimism that had been missing in Whiskey’s for years. The universe is a true comedian, and in comedic fashion it loves to make conventional wisdom obsolete. Sometimes late at night in the dunes of Pawley’s island, the cart goes before the horse, the stopped clock is only right once a day, and the blind squirrel does not find a nut. On this night, in the dark dingy and dirty private room, one of those two people were trying to forget their father, and it wasn’t Ginger.

Howard Jones was a criminal, a lawyer, a criminal lawyer, and a criminal lawyer. He was also a Clemson fan, a loving son, an a*****e, a collector of baseball cards, a workaholic, an old white guy, a father and a husband. This is what he was, not what he is. What he is, is nothing. He is not. It is just a carcass. You see, he died, and therefore the collective personality, thoughts, and actions ceased to be. Without some sort of an impact on the world, you are not. You don’t exist. This, of course, is just the opinion of Whiskey. Whiskey considers the Bartlebys of the world nonexistent. This worldview is not sprung from logic, but necessity. As far as Whiskey is concerned his father stopped existing long before his heart stopped beating. Whiskey needed this to be true. Matter of fact, it guides his entire life philosophy. The only reason Whiskey wasn’t religious is because he refused to believe the sins of the father are the sins of the son. Whiskey also never believed in the concept of family, or blood.

“Binge drinking yourself to death ain’t genetic, has nothing to do with that”

Whiskey would often spit that line out anytime someone tried to offer him help on his drinking. We were good hearted when we tried to take the bottle from him, we just didn’t want him to end up like Howard. Of course, that is what we were, now, we are not, I just am. That is a Whiskian Standard English way of saying that all his other friends are gone now. I am the only one that is left. I suppose that’s why I came to pick him up when Rowan, the owner of the t***y bar, called to tell me that I either come or the cops. Whiskey looked like a condom full of oatmeal as the bouncers dragged him to my car.

“Whiskey! Get the f**k in the car, what the hell are you doing?”

I was mad, I mean it’s 4:07 in the morning and I have a plane to catch in two hours. Hindsight would tell me that yelling at Whiskey does about as much good as yelling at a piece of gum on the ground.

“.........I….shink imma bit amered”

Whiskey could barely get out words.

“Hit this so you can f*****g speak you dumb f**k”

I say as I held a key with a generous mound of coke up to his nose. Have you ever seen Popeye when he eats the spinach? That’s exactly how Whiskey is with coke.

“Ohhhh, aahhhhhh, wheeeww, that’s the stuff” Whiskey howled like a frat boy at a football game.

“I’m not doing this again Whiskey. This is the third…”

“Well!” Whiskey interjected quickly “If y’all boys hadn’t let me drunk drive all of our happy asses into a ditch I would still have my truck”

He was never hesitant to remind me of that, but it was true, we are all more than happy to let Whiskey drive drunk and take the bullet instead of us. We just didn’t know we’d end up in a ditch. It’s been hard on Whiskey since then, he had to drop out of school, find a way to work a job without reliable transportation, and on top of all that he has to go hungry so that he can drink. Suppose that’s why I’m driving him now, survivor’s guilt.

“Whiskey, listen…” I said much softer hoping to avoid a blue face or black eye

“All I’m saying is this happens far too often. I think that you think you are uncontrollable, but that’s not true. I’m not trying to have an intervention, I’m just concerned.”

“You’re wasting good sober-driving energy worrying about me” Whiskey laughed as he lit a cigarette.

“And you think that I think I’m uncontrollable? Take a look in the mirror, brother. That is after you clear the coke off it.” Whiskey said smoothly as he held up the bag of coke.

That pissed me off. Someone once told me that you only get angry if something is true. Which is why the ‘alt-right’ gets pissed when they are called neo-nazis, why my sister gets pissed when I call her white trash, or why an addict gets pissed when they’re told to look into the mirror.  

“You got some s**t to say, Whisk?”

“Yeah, you’re an addict with a two year old, who is never home, and you have nothing better to do other than pick up your s**t head friends from the t***y bar at 4:13 in the morning. What in God’s green f**k makes you think you have the moral high ground? No one gives a s**t about you. You’re nothing. Your wife f***s around so much I don’t know how you are confident that it’s your kid. Half of your goddamn friends have so little respect for you that they fucked your sister, in more ways than one. So f**k off”

With no thought I slammed on brakes and grabbed Whiskey by the back of head and held it down against the dashboard. A few drops of blood fell from where I slammed his forhead, but nothing serious. Whiskey’s hand was in the air protecting his cigarette like it was a winning lottery ticket.

“Listen here you quivering f*****g p***y” I growled, “At least I’m trying to change, at least I recognize my problem, and at least my problem doesn’t go around f*****g up other people’s lives! I may have not had many people who cared about me, but you did! You had a chance Whiskey, you pissed it away, and it certainly is not your father’s fault. Your dumbass fucked everything up. You pushed your mom away, your friends away! Every opportunity you get you trade in for f*****g nothing. Small fleeting pleasures that just end up making you more miserable. Don’t look at me and try to accuse me of s**t. I can live with myself. You can’t.  Now that I’m thinking about it, you’re a lot like Howard”

I lifted my hand from the back of Whiskey’s head and gave him a chance to recover. My face was blue, and I was waiting for the black eye, it would only be fair, an eye for an eye is what we’ve always lived by.

I kept waiting. Almost a minute of silence went by, but nothing. Whiskey just wiped away the blood on his forehead and just kept slowly puffing his cigarette. The way the streetlights him Whiskey’s face gave him a devilish look. He looked over to me and put the cigarette out on my arm. It stung a bit, but I gladly accepted this act of mercy over the fight I knew was possible.

“I’m sorry, Whiskey, I’m just tired and lately things…”

“Don’t waste sober-driving energy worrying about it” Whiskey said, “We are all fucked up, and the fact that that I was trying to call the kettle black is not lost on me”

It was either divine intervention or Whiskey was just too drugged up to put up a real fight, whatever the reason I thanked god, because I did not want to fight Whiskey. Especially right before I got on a plane. I’ve been down that road a few too many times.

“You still staying at Ron’s cabin?” I asked after a couple minutes of silence

“Yeah, just right down Waccamaw, you can drop me off here.” Whiskey said “I don’t need Ron hearing this piece of s**t pulling into the driveway” Whiskey said as he laughed to himself

“Better than your imaginary truck” I shot back, laughing a bit myself

Whiskey opened the creaky car door.

“All right, thank you, I’ll see you around, whenever you get back to SC let me know.” Whiskey said as he stumbled out of the car.

“Yessir. Have a good one”

I drove off. I figured that everything would be fine, because nothing changes. I assumed that I’d come back in a year and find Whiskey in the same place, but I was wrong. I told you Whiskey was intelligent, intelligent enough to know that what I said was true. It stuck with him.

All his life he fought so hard to be different than his father only to end up exactly like him, and once he realized that, he figured that he’d just drink and snort himself to bed every night. Keep his mind off it. But of course, that only made him more like Howard Jones. Every shot, every line, every pill took away a piece of Whiskey and left him with nothing. Whiskey knew that he no longer existed by his definition, and a 6:17am he no longer existed by the majority of the world’s definition.

They found him lying in the driveway to Ron’s cabin. Wasn’t a suicide, wasn’t a homicide, wasn’t a heart attack. Whiskey just stopped being.

Before he died he must’ve got the urge to write a poem because on his phone was an unsent text

What if there is no me left?

Soul stolen slowly by surplus serotonin circling the synaptic cleft

Reflection in the mirror looks like death.

Wait.. it couldn't be clearer

The figure in the mirror is

some sort of fear or hatred that has allowed

me to be complicitly complacent in the fact I'm just

alive adjacent. I don't have the patience to do things of greatness.

I'm living without meaning, I'm latent.

Am I still alive?

I didn’t find a lot of comfort or closure in that. My heart did hurt for his death, mainly because I wasted so much time trying to help this man. Now I’m not one for sentimentals, but I did go by his grave the other day, and as I was about to leave, I had this unexplainable urge that I couldn’t help but act on. I took my lit cigarette ashed it on his piss-poor excuse for a tombstone, then spit as hard as I could on the ground where he is buried. Rest in Peace, Whiskey.

Author's Note

Any kind of feedback would be fantastic.