Kansas City

There we sat, in a booth in the half-dark, saying nothing. We had moved over there - first me, then him - to keep the last two arrivals from having to sit by themselves. But instead they took our old seats at the first, full table without knowing what we had intended and we found ourselves sitting alone. It was one of those nights when no one really has anything to say. Or maybe it seemed that way to me because I didn't, I was tired. From an unseen direction, interrupting my personal bubble of silence in the noisy room, appeared a large bald man appearing to be in his early thirties, standing by our booth as a waiter would, ready to give a presentation of daily specials. He wore a black t-shirt, jeans held up by a thick black belt with silver-colored studs all around it, and clunky, hiking-style boots on his feet. How much is this table worth to you? He was a little too gregarious while asking this, a little too energetic and comfortable. Twenty bucks? He said. I didn't want to talk to him. I wanted him to go away, and he knew it, and he knew this gave him an advantage since we might go along with it to get rid of him. I looked down at the table, looked at Nate so to tell him I didn't want to answer. He seemed to be of the same mind, because he too said nothing. Gregarious man continued to raise his offer. Forty bucks? Sixty? We became uncomfortable, but still said nothing. We didn't want to move, to stand up, and would have felt dirty taking this guy's money, willing though he was, for a crappy booth with no real view of the stage anyway. I'll go right over here, Gregarious bartered. Maybe this guy over here will take twenty for his table right now, and I'm offering you eighty. Still, we remained silent, shrugging our shoulders and diverting our gazes. I finally spoke up to turn him down. A table had just opened up by the window anyway, and Gregarious happily moved toward it.
The first band was terrible, and overwhelmingly loud, so I paid attention to visual things. The bubbles in my vodka tonic each shone like an individual aqueous light-bulb, squirming its way up the side of the glass or around the ice cubes to reach the surface, and oblivion. The neon blue and red beer advertisement in the window shone through two translucent black panel curtains in the corner, its light falling on Gregarious' forearms and glinting off of the top of his head, almost silhouetting him like a persecuted character in a purplish film noir movie. Several other men join him, and I recognize suddenly that they all have bald heads and black t-shirts. Where's the f-ing waitress? One of them yells during a brief blank spot in the air, a pause in the music, and I write them off in my head. I'm glad we didn't take his money. Later in the night he walked by our table on his way to the bar and we made brief and accidental eye contact, and I could see that our rejection of him only added another shiny, slippery coat to the lacquer on him, that he wanted a reason to prove that he was more comfortable and pushy than ever.
As the hours disappear I start to get that ridiculous feeling from being too tired, from waking up in the dark and continuing to move around and interact with the world until well after it was dark again. The feeling is that all actions of humans, that humans, themselves, are completely ridiculous. Our habit of gathering in close physical proximity without adequate lighting and making loud repetitive, rhythmic noises with apparatus other people have made from wood, metal and plastic for exactly this purpose, while we ingest a liquid chemical that interrupts our normal brain function and changes the cells in our livers- ridiculous. People standing, holding hands with each other and jiggling their bodies around while the loud noises rage on, this is completely ridiculous. Conversations, inhibitions, apprehensions, opinions and our rights to have those things. I can take it a step further, too, and think of how ridiculous a human being is: a pile of intricate, delicate squishiness strung together on bones, covered with skin and hair, preoccupied with its own intellect and/or appearance and somehow balancing itself, projecting itself forward and stopping itself with two long, spindly appendages that we decorate with fabric. But most of all it's the apparent concept of each person that he or she is NOT ridiculous at all that makes me start to giggle because there's no real way to react to something quite. this. ridiculous. Feeling this way reminds me of floating in an inflated donut, riding down a lazy river in some water park somewhere in the bright mottled sunlight, except that in this feeling the whole experience has been recorded on camera and is being played back in fast forward and all motions are fast and jerky like in a Charlie Chaplin movie. Down and down the quick lazy river we all drift, spinning and flailing and rocking our floats, fast fast, with no sound.
Later that night I, the only one of the seven who, as usual, had only had one drink and that several hours ago, drove the van home. And the wind occupied our thoughts and people dropped off to sleep, one by one, and Nate and I watched the road.
The end.