Saturday night.

[jeremyashford]

I cut a path through downtown to Waterfront Park. On the way I saw many drunk people. Stumbling down the street with their friends holding on to them. This made me laugh. I got to the park there just in time for them to turn the purple lights off on second street bridge. The wind came off of the river and rushed past my neck, prompting me to put my hood up. I sat on the middle bench in the row on the right side of the great lawn. There was only me. No one else was there. For all of the people in the city, I was the only one who decided to come here. I am baffled because the reason I am here is that I think it is more beautiful and more fun than all of the clubs and all of the bars. The park is lonely too, and it seems glad to entertain me. I hope one night I will see someone else, and it will be just us and the park. This person would have something unique in common with me, because we would be the only two there. Is there another like me? Will I ever see someone where I would usually be completely alone? At a park that closes at 2300 and I am there three hours later than this, will I see another lonely person in a coat with fur around the hood taking in the beauty of the water reflecting the lights from Indiana across the river from us? I sat there wondering how no one else could want to be here, where it seems like such a nice place to be, but eventually I started on my way back home. I walked by Fourth Street Live during this eight-block trek. This is where everyone in the city was. There had to have been ten thousand people on fourth street. This is my street, so I am on my way home when I see all of these people. There were two fire trucks, three ambulances and five police cars. It seems so surreal to me, to see all of these people stumbling down the street, trying to hail cabs in a city where you would normally just call one on the phone. They were all booked. Girls were out there practically in their underwear, trying to be all sexy, but mainly just being cold. I tried to sell my coat to one, but she just asked me for a cab. She was dressed as snow white with no gown, if memory serves me. She was with Scooby-Doo. Swear to god, man. I see a few guys stumbling along, one of them starts knocking on the front passenger-side window of this stretch escalade and he's wondering why the guy won't unlock the door. His friends are all saying, "Man, we have the Yukon, we don't have the Escalade!", but he's too drunk to hear them. There's another guy standing there with his girl on his arm. He says this: "Well, dude, we're gonna go back to the place and fuck. Uh, you can, uh go back over to Sully's and have some more drinks, or you can go hang out with Monroe over at so-and-so's, but we'll be at the house. You know, just whatever man. Cool?" I'm glad I went out this night, because I saw and heard a lot of things that made me laugh. I walked about three more blocks south, I was almost at my house by this point, and I see a group of men ahead of me. They look like thugs, so I assumed they were from the city. When they got to Broadway, they stopped and had to wait, so this is when I caught up with them. One of them asked me where Fourth Street Live was. I laughed and told him it was the other way, where all of the drunk people were coming from. I wondered how high they had to be to miss the huge neon sign and the thousands of drunk people and the sirens. I laughed at this too. I jaywalked across Broadway and finally got home. Mr. Wilson(the security guard in my building) is in the lobby and I ask him if Matt came by. He told me no, which was a lie I found out today when I talked to Matt, but I'm sure he just forgot. He also told me a story again that he had told me on my way out. It was of how he stayed up until seven in the morning watching horror movies on FX and how his daughter called him early in the morning and woke him up asking him to bring her a cigarette downstairs. I finished the story for him when he started telling it the second time and he looked at me like I was psychic. I laughed at this and asked him to let me use the lobby phone. He told me yes, but said that I had to dial nine to get out, which is what he tells me every time I use that phone. I laughed at this too. Mr. Wilson is a riot, anyone who knows him can tell you that.
"What kind of drugs did they put in the gumballs, Mr. Wilson?"
"Just drugs!"