the world has turned and left me here

to bust

We (Mark Henry Jeff and I) decide to go up to Omaha for the night and hit a club. We touch down at a place called the Cactus Cafe, which is decidedly not our kind of joint. It is midnight. Uninspired rap interleaved with 80s hits. There are no available chicks left really, but there's this one super cute chick who looks a bit like Jodie Foster.

I'm too chicken to go talk to her. What the hell happened to me since last summer? Use it or lose it I guess. Anyhow Mark pulls a cool move and starts talking to another chick, asks her for advice on how to introduce himself to Jodie Foster, and once he gets Jodie Foster's ear he starts telling her about me. "My friend's really shy etc." He's pointing across the club at me. Mostly, I'm cowering, because the situation is not one a 23 year old man should ever find himself in. Maybe if you're 14 and you just got passed you one of those do-you-like-me-yes-no-maybe notes.

Nothing of course came of the subsequent introduction except that Mark got 5 points up on me. Then the 4 of us went to the boats and all won money. At three in the morning we started back for Lincoln.

Jeff, who didn't drink much but was somehow trashed, started puking. Seems like every 5 or 10 minutes we were stopping on the interstate shoulder for him to puke in the ditch. The trip was dragging on interminably: normally it takes about 45 minutes to get from Omaha to Lincoln, and we'd already been on the road an hour and a half. Then a cop pulls up behind us, lights flashing, spotlights trained on Mark as he held Jeff, tells them to stay away from the car.

Because, what would a night of fun without the cops be like?

After a cursory survey of the ditch situation she walks up to Henry, who's driving, and decides she wants to put him through the test. He had had 2 drinks 5 hours ago & we all knew he was fine. But the whole thing adds an extra half hour of sitting around in suspense--and I'm getting madder & madder by the minute.

It's just too ridiculous to me. I see too much of cops these days--nothing ever transpires, because nothing really wrong is ever going on--and they're always on a mission not to help & serve but to bust. There's a particular mindset that goes along with these random exercises of authority, and I think this mindset can be a pretty sick one.

I'm saying this stuff as we drive back to Lincoln. The sun is rising. At 5:30 in the morning I finally get back to my car at Mark's place, and the argument between Mark & I is getting heated. Finally I have an outburst, jump in my car and peel off angry. I wake up that afternoon and wonder, now what the heck was all that about? Words too cold to the heated deed breath gives I guess, I seem to have forgotten all my righteous rage. The intensity of feeling that had brought me back to life, for once, was extinguished, and I was again in my usual dreamlike state.