There was a lot of stuff we shouldn't have done that summer. We shouldn't have thrown that dead car battery we found in the Hinsdale Oasis parking lot off the overpass, even if it was three a.m. and I-90 below was dead, no traffic save the occasional drunk driver and the eighteen-wheelers that stuck to the right lane. We shouldn't have set fire to that propane tank behind Willowcrest Elementary, not because we didn't get truly spectacular results in the deafening, soccer field-cratering explosion that ensued but because we subsequently ended up spending a lot of money on propane tanks, money none of us had, trying to recreate that glorious moment. And we definitely shouldn't have done those knife hits in the kitchen at McAllister's party, not because the hash didn't taste terrific as we took turns holding the cut-in-half two-liter over the cherry, vacuuming the white smoke into our lungs and exhaling great plumes of the stuff, one rip after another, until the whole house smelled like a Moroccan Pottery Barn; no, we should've laid off that shit because you got so high that you ended up fingerbanging Maddy Dwyer in the basement and, well, you're still convinced she's not crazy, even though she sends you .jpg's of decaying animal carcasses with questions like, IS THIS WHERE WE'RE ALL HEADED? and COULD IT BE TRUE LOVE? in the bodies of the emails.
Yeah, we should have thought twice, maybe even thrice, about doing all that stuff. But the thing we absolutely shouldn't have done that summer was stayed in Mokena. I mean, Christ. How sadistic were we that, in possession of at least two dependable cars between the lot of us, we opted to dick around the black hole that is Southwest Chicagoland? What we should've done was packed a gym bag of clothes apiece and drove the nine hours south on I-57 to Memphis, to crash with my cousin Garrett. He's always going on and on about Beale Street, how there's this bar that never cards and only serves forty-ounces and spins Stax stuff on a continuous loop. It could've been us on those barstools, schvitzing our asses off in the wet wool that is Tennessee humidity, watching our forties sweat to Hot Buttered Soul, then Otis Blue, then Green Onions. We could've met girls there, could've slowdanced with them right there in the middle of the bar while some creepy locals named Clem and Gingerbread ogled us, pissed that Yankee carpetbaggers were about to make off with their women. After last call, we could've walked them down to the Mississip to burn a joint on the Riverwalk and watch the steam rise up off the water and wrap itself around the moon. We could've taken them back to Garrett's place to do Lord Only Knows, whatever our blood-thinned dicks were capable of after a night of drinking, wherever couch space opened up. We could've taken them to Waffle House in the morning, could've offered to bring them along to Nashville, the first stop on our Scumbags' March to the Sea, which is what we would've called our subsequent easterly push to the Atlantic. We would've laughed about the March for years, would probably be laughing about it right now instead of bitching about how our shift at Potbelly starts back up in twenty.
We could've never come back and we'd all be better off for it. I should've never taken you at your word that that summer would be different. |
