Five Nights

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Flack
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Five Nights

Post by Flack »

###
### PART ONE: SUNRISES AND SUNSETS
###

The first time I stayed up all night, I was seven years old. It had been just over a year since we had moved from our small starter house to the home I would grow up in, and my best friend from our old neighbor, Scott, had come to visit and spend the night. Scott was one grade ahead of me and two years older. He had a fort on stilts in his backyard when I lived across the street from him, where the two of us used to play every day, climbing up the metal pole ladder and daring each other to leap from increasingly higher rungs. Although our new house was twice the size of our old one with a yard ten times as large, I didn't have a fort in my backyard. What I did have were LEGOs, and Star Wars toys, and Atari. I also had a small black and white television in my bedroom, on which Scott insisted we watch Solid Gold. Throughout the entire show and long after it ended, he commented on how sexy the dancers' sparkly dresses were. I remember thinking that sexy was a naughty word.

My friends and I were into building blanket forts at that age. We would drag all the barstools from our kitchen into the center of my bedroom and drape blankets over the tops of them, creating a makeshift tent. If the blankets wouldn't stay draped or began to sag we would collect heavy items from around my room and place them on top of the barstools, which both held the blankets in place and created an air of suspense as we constantly worried someone would pull on a blanket or bump a barstool, sending a tub full of LEGOs or some other heavy item crashing down upon our heads. Under the blankets we would pile pillows and create a comfy nest in which we would lay and giggle in the dark until we fell asleep.

It was Scott's idea for the two of us to stay up all night. I had never head of, nor even considered, trying such a thing. Stay up all night? Why? Darkness is where the monsters live. The earlier we went to bed, the earlier we could wake up Saturday morning. I looked forward to waking up early and sitting in the floor in front of the living room television -- the color television -- with a bowl of cereal in my lap, watching Looney Toons before the real cartoons began.

But Scott was not interested in going to sleep. Once the lights went out he talked, and talked, and talked. He talked about how big our new house was (at 1,800 square feet, it was double the size of our last house) and how big our yard was. He talked about the new guy his mother was dating, and wondered if the old guy would come back. We talked about Star Wars and Star Trek, Superman and Batman. He talked a lot about the dancers on Solid Gold.

We talked for hours and hours, until the room began to glow.

"The sun's coming up," he said. "You wanna go see?"

I must have known that the sun came up every morning, just as it went down every night, but I had never made a point of watching the sun rise. Scott and I sat in my front yard on a large wooden porch swing my dad had built from scratch. Despite it being summer, I shivered in the morning's cool air. For the first time in several hours, Scott stopped talking. The only sound was the creaking of the swing's chains as the two of us rocked back and forth, watching the sky change from black to purple to red to orange and finally blue.

I felt as if we were doing something dangerous or naughty by being outside that morning. It seemed like we had the whole neighborhood, the whole city, and maybe even the whole world to ourselves. There were no kids playing, no dogs barking, and no cars driving. Just the two of us and the sun. This could be our new thing, I imagined.

I never saw Scott again, and I don't remember why.

Sometimes -- a lot of times -- I wonder if people think about me as much as I think about them. A few years ago, I tracked down my best friend from third grade. That year, we were inseparable. I went to this kid's birthday party, spent the night at his house, ate lunch with him every day, and sat next to him every day for an entire year. After searching for him online for almost two decades, I finally tracked him down. His response to me was, "I think I remember you."

Sometimes I wonder if Scott thinks about that morning we watched the sunrise together. I don't really want to know the answer.

###
### PART TWO - SPEECH AND DEBATE
###

The second time I stayed up all night was the night before a speech and debate tournament. In ninth grade I joined my school's speech and debate club about a week before their first contest -- meaning I could go on the field trip, but would not be competing. The contest was held in Tulsa, a two-hour bus ride away. We left for the contest on Friday night, stayed in a hotel, and attended the contest all day Saturday. The hotel we stayed at was near the house where they shot The Outsiders. I think there were four of us in our hotel room that night. The minute our teacher went to her room, the four of us (fourteen years old?) left the hotel on foot. We walked around for hours looking for that house from The Outsiders. Unable to find it, we amused ourselves by daring any soshes or greasers who wanted to rumble to come and get some while yelling "STAY GOLD PONY BOY" at every car that passed by. After loading up on candy and fountain drinks from a nearby convenient store, we returned to our room where we remained awake for the duration of the night.

The following morning, I was beat. My eyes burned and begged for me to close them on the short ride to the local school where the tournament was being held. Once we found the correct room I took a seat towards the rear of the classroom. At the front of the room, competitors were giving three minute speeches. I had hoped by sitting near the back of the room, I could fly under the radar.

In the middle of a girl's speech about saving the rain forest, I heard an odd noise. I looked around the room to try and determine where it had come from. Everyone else was looking around, too. Unable to locate the source of the noise I turned my attention back to the girl at the front of the room, and a few moments later I heard the noise again -- louder this time. Again I looked around, but this time I noticed everyone was looking directly at me. The third time it happened, the noise was long enough for me to recognize that it was coming to me. It was the sound of me snoring just long enough to startle myself back awake each time. The girl giving the speech was obviously distracted and annoyed. No one felt worse than I did.

I politely excused myself from the room and wandered the halls of this unfamiliar school before finding a vacant classroom far away from the contest. There, using my coat as a pillow, I curled up in a chair and slept for several hours. Although the club's sponsor never confronted me about the incident, there were rumors that it would be addressed at the club's next meeting. I don't know if it was or not. I quit and never went back.

###
### PART THREE - THE KETTLE
###

By the time I was eighteen, I had moved out into my own apartment. Like most teenagers who set out on their own, I went from having a curfew in the suburbs to not being accountable to anyone in the city. I didn't have a roommate. I didn't even have a phone. With no one to answer to, my waking hours began to slide. I started staying up later and later. First it was midnight -- then two a.m., then three, every night. I went from waking up at six or seven in the morning to sleeping in until 8 or 9 a.m. I still got six hours of sleep each night, but those six hours began coming later and later each day.

I, and all of my friends, worked at fast food restaurants. We all went to our respective jobs at four or five p.m. and finished up around midnight. When I lived at home, hanging out with friends after midnight was not an option. That changed once I had my own place. All of a sudden I could stay out until one or two or six in the morning and nobody knew. Nobody cared. In the town where I grew up, if you were out after dark, people noticed. Parents noticed. The police noticed. That was not the case in a ratty apartment on the southside of town. It was like falling overboard in the middle of the ocean. You could dog paddle in the dark for days and no one would notice.

Halfway between the suburbs (where my friends still lived) and my city apartment was The Kettle, a 24-hour restaurant not unlike Denny's. The Kettle knew its audience; this one was located down the road from the airport, conveniently nestled in between hotels and bars. Every night -- we're talking seven days a week -- my friends and I would meet at the Kettle. Whoever arrived first would grab the corner booth and the rest of us would slide in as we arrived, still wearing our stinky pizza uniforms.

We all knew the Kettle served breakfast, lunch, and dinner all day every day, but we soon discovered a secret -- the Kettle had a breakfast buffet that began at two a.m., just as the bars were closing. From our booth we would watch drunkards stumble into the place shortly after two a.m. and eat plate after plate of artificial scrambled eggs until they sobered up, passed out, or someone threw them out. (The waitresses at the Kettle were part server, part mom, and part bouncer.) The breakfast buffet, with its steam-warmed pans of scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy, became a staple of our diet, a counterbalance to all the pizza we were eating at work (and often, the only thing I ate each day).

We became more than regulars at the Kettle. Sometimes when it got busy, we would help bus and wipe down tables. On slow nights the waitresses would sit at our table, sharing their stories and dreams. It was there every night in that booth that all of us talked about where we were headed next and what we wanted to do with our lives, waiting for the sun's rays to peek through the blinds and let us know it was time to move on.

###
### PART FOUR - COCAINE
###

College parties are different than high school parties. Every high school party I attended felt like a couple's skate at the skating rink, with boys on one side of the room and girls on the other. In high school, my friends and I would sit around in the floor, listening to The Misfits or watching Heavy Metal on VHS and drinking whatever cheap beer we could hornswoggle someone into buying for us. In college, I once went to a party where a live band kicked holes in a guy's living room while everyone, including the homeowner, cheered them on.

Around this time I became cool -- or perhaps a better way of saying it is, I quit being a dork. I lost weight after working a physically demanding job and being unable to afford food. I quit buying clothes at Walmart and started ordering shirts from the back of skateboard magazines. I stopped going to the local beauty college for haircuts and found a trendier place. "Cut it like I don't care," I once told a hairstylist. I was still finding myself and not everything worked; I wore a pre-Columbine trench coat, and the green combat boots were kind of a phase, but a lot of it did. I felt myself starting to evolve into me. I began playing the guitar again, and reading for the sake of reading. I graduated from Boones Farm to Rum and Coke (eventually, I would lose the Coke). In high school, my friends and I threw our own parties because nobody invited us to theirs. In just a few years I became the party, or at least that's how I felt. If part of me was still a dork, at least I was a dork with self-confidence. I quit being intimidated by people. I read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (if it was good enough for Charles Manson, it was good enough for me). No longer a wallflower, I quit leaning against walls at parties and started standing in the middle of the room.

The way I remember this particular party is as if it were a scene from a movie. I can see myself in the scene from afar. The lights were dim with a red tint. A dude staggering by spilling beer from his red Solo cup with each step congratulated me on the party, even though I wasn't sure whose house it was.

I did not notice the girl on the couch at first, but apparently, she noticed me. I later reasoned that I may have intentionally ignored this girl, having written her off as someone who was too attractive to speak directly to someone like me. (I was confident, but also realistic.) A few feet away, two guys were having a spirited debate whether or not the Spin Doctors were the greatest band of all time when I politely suggested they gather up their entire music collections, throw them into the nearest dumpster, and buy a copy of Led Zeppelin's debut album. When one of the guys told me he listened to Zeppelin, I pilfered from White Men Can't Jump and asked him, "yeah, but have you heard Led Zeppelin?" The dudes eventually stumbled away, but the conversation had caught the young lady's attention. When she said to me Zeppelin IV was better than Zeppelin's debut album I almost cringed until she said, "which is ironic since I hate 'Stairway to Heaven' so much." I was hooked.

The two of us started talking music and with every song and band I thrust at her, she skillfully parried and countered. When I asked if she liked Ministry, she said the WaxTrax era was better than their newer stuff. She liked the Beastie Boys, and preferred Paul's Boutique to Licensed to Ill. Sure, she liked Beck, but liked his early acoustic stuff better. I had a hard time keeping up with her. Eventually, one of us mentioned Nine Inch Nails. "What's your favorite NIN song?" I asked, making a few guesses. "Head Like a Hole?" "Up Above It?"

Her big almond eyes, surrounded by too much mascara and hiding behind shaggy bangs, rolled around as she thought. ""Something I Can Never Have," she answered.

Was she into deep cuts, or was she simply playing with her prey? Either way... touché.

"Would you like to go get some coffee?" I asked. The red lights from the party were soon traded for the dingy yellow halogen lights of a Denny's. In a small booth next to a big window we talked about our favorite songs, our favorite movies, our favorite books, our favorite everything. Her smile cut through the restaurant's shitty lighting. She held her coffee mug with both hands while wearing fingerless-knitted gloves while I nervously picked at the booth's cracked vinyl next to my leg.

I am not this cool, I thought to myself, over and over.

She told me she was from California, but had lived in Seattle, too. I told her I had lived in Oklahoma my whole life. I can't remember how she had ended up here, but she made it clear she was not staying. She was not one to be tied down, she said. "It's a big marble."

"Big marble," I repeated, nodding as I continued to pick at the crack in my vinyl seat.

We left as the Denny's breakfast crowd began to arrive. I drove her back to her car, arriving as day began to break. Before she left, we exchanged numbers. She never called me, and the number she gave me was disconnected. After making a few calls I was able to determine who had invited her to the party. When I begged them to pass a message to the girl I had spent the evening with, she just shook her head.

"Cocaine, man. Hell of a drug."

Sometimes, they get away. Sometimes, you let 'em go.

It's a big marble.

###
### PART FIVE - CRUISING FOR CONTENT
###

It is somewhat ironic that the cruise industry describes their voyages as "getaways," as it can be difficult to "get away" from human beings on a cruise ship. Everywhere you go you 'll be hounded by the ship's photographers, as determined as paparazzi to capture your memories and sell them back to you. Waiters pass by your table ten times a meal, urging you to purchase the drink of the day. No matter where you go on the ship, some subset of your fellow passengers will be there, too. There's a sense of entitlement that comes with paying for a cruise cabin that that causes people to fight over the last slice of pizza on the buffet, knowing good and well that fresh pizzas arrive on the buffet every three to five minutes, twenty-four hours a day. Outside, hundreds of deck chairs are occupied by the beautiful people tanning themselves in the sun, oblivious to the hundreds of other beautiful people only a foot or two away.

However -- on the rear of one of the decks is an adults-only area labelled "Serenity." It's located in the very back, away from the waterslide, and the putt-putt course, and the swimming pools. In Serenity, you are oblivious to everything else happening on the ship. There are no photographers and no waiters selling drinks. Mostly, you'll find middle-aged people in lounge chairs reading paperbacks.

At the very rear of Serenity, just a few feet from the railing separating you from a thousand miles of water, are a series of round wicker privacy balls -- maybe a dozen in all. (Carnival refers to them as "clamshell seats.") Each one seats two people, and the view inside is blocked by a giant wicker dome. The only way to tell if the chairs are occupied is to peek through a small window in the rear of the dome. The chairs fill up early in the morning and remain occupied most of the day. It's a comfortable place to sip on a margarita, stare at the ship's wake in the ocean, and ponder the meaning of life.

After one particularly long and late night of drinking, dancing, and gambling, my wife and I made our way to the Serenity deck and found most of the clamshells had been vacated. Even though most of the decks are notoriously windy and chilly from the ocean's breeze, the location of the deck, combined with the design of the seats, protected us from the cold.

I hate silence. My brain was not wired to unwind. I have never won "the silence game." The longest I have ever been fishing is approximately seven minutes. Let's get happy, let's get sad, let's get angry -- whatever. But let's not do nothing.

My wife, on the other hand, has no problem sitting alone with her thoughts. In fact, she has a phrase that for many years drove me crazy: "content." Every time I found her on the couch reading a book or watching TV, I would offer her things. "Would you like a pillow? A drink? A snack? A blanket?" To get me to stop, she would tell me she was content. "Are you happy?" I would ask, which to me means "can I make you happier?"

"I'm content."

"Are you sad? Mad? Angry?"

And she would shrug. "No. Just content."

I don't know what my wife was thinking about as the two of us sat in that wicker clamshell on the back of our ship, staring east into the deep black Atlantic. Me, I thought about every choice and decision I had ever made, good and bad, that had led me to that exact moment. I worked backward, starting with the drive from Oklahoma to New Orleans where our cruise ship had departed. I thought about how we had scheduled the cruise, and how our previous cruise, the one to Alaska in 2020 we had scheduled for our 25th anniversary, had been cancelled. Then I thought about our previous cruises, and how much fun we'd had with our kids. I went back to when I started my current job, also 25 years ago. I thought about the jobs before that, even the ones I worked in high school. I thought about the party I attended in seventh grade, the one where a friend of mine and I showed up with our skateboards and how the girl I would end up marrying happened to be there and told all her friends that I was cute.

When I ran out of memories, my mind shifted out of reverse and into drive. There we were, two kids dating, then not dating, then moving in together, then getting married. I thought about the births of our children; how happy she was, how scared I was. I thought about everything I've ever done wrong and imagined throwing it overboard, watching the mistakes float out to sea behind us. I held on to everything I've done right -- gripping each memory as if my brain was a fist and telling myself to never forget, never forget.

Eventually the memories catch up with me; there we are, laying in a wicker clamshell on the back of a cruise ship. Our son has moved out; our daughter will too, in a year or two. Then, it'll just be us. Someday it'll either be just her, or just me.

There's time for that later. For now, I finish what's left of the margarita just as the sun begins to rise, illuminating the entire ocean. My wife notices the tears in my eyes, and I can't explain to her the journey I've taken.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

I reach over and hold her hand in mine, squinting from the slice of blinding sun that continues to rise.

Finally, I understand.

"I'm content," I say.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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AArdvark
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Re: Five Nights

Post by AArdvark »

This is why Flack gets the MVP every year

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Flack
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Re: Five Nights

Post by Flack »

Thank you, 'Vark.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Re: Five Nights

Post by Casual Observer »

What is up with Flack still having to sling federal IT services when he oughta be on Book Tour (besides the upcoming federal pension you lucky dog)? it would never occur to me to write about nights I've stayed up all night nor could I put it so eloquently, bravo Flack!

Truth is my wife stay up all night on a Friday or Saturday night on a regular basis. She's an insomniac and we're both alcoholics so it's a fun night for everyone and lots them. Last night was Friday night (5 hour) Video Game Night and the wife actually enjoys me playing RDR2 and Forza, GTA5 to a lesser extent. Then I have to agree to watch one of HER movies.

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Re: Five Nights

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

I had one of these traveling from Ireland to Denver, I think. We woke up at 5AM Ireland time. That's 10PM Denver time, I think. I got home at 7PM Denver time and was in bed by 8PM.

The airport in Dublin has literally one woman scanning boarding passes before security. One. In the whole country / island. Call it what you want - they fired people during COVID, "nobody wants to work" or corporations won't pay people. Call it what you want, it is FUCKING INCOMPETENT.

So! A guy made a website that accurately identified the waits for the Dublin Airport, for security. You knew it was accurate because someone in the airline industry had nothing to do with it. Dublin asks him to take the site down, and the guy does. And - you'll never believe this part - the official Dublin estimation for security was whhhhhhhhhhhhhhildly fucking wrong. They said 50 minutes, it was 90. Fucking assholes. But of course that's how it was.

(Did I mention that we had to scan our bags twice? 90 minute wait to scan our bags the first time, then we entered an area for people going to the United States where there is ANOTHER. X-RAY SCANNER. I thought DIA - otherwise known as "that shithole" - was the worst airport on planet Earth when they -- lemme break out of parenthesis.)

DIA, a shithole (it's what "Denver International Airport" stands for - that shithole) turned one-half of the security area to be the "TSA Pre-Check" area. In other words, you can pay those fucking thieves money and go through security faster. This means that **literally everyone else** goes through *one half of security*. Denizens, the security line was TO THE ENTRANCE OF THE AIRPORT. 2+ hours.

Everyone involved in that should be fired and not allowed to work in flight ever again. Every CEO of an airline should be wigging the fuck out that the TSA did this, because why the fuck would I take a flight anywhere now that the TSA has decided to act like a cartel here? I won't fly ever again except for 1. emergencies 2. my wife wanting us to go somewhere or 3. if I really, really want to go to some city.

As worthless as the TSA has been, they have done one of the things that I absolutely cannot stand in life. When you are incompetent, you shut the Christ up and don't draw attention to yourself. Incompetence I can handle. Incompetence while complaining or drawing attention to yourself? Fuck off.


Defund the TSA.
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

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AArdvark
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Re: Five Nights

Post by AArdvark »

Based on this, and Flack's recent podcast, I would take the train to Ireland, no matter how much longer it would be.

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Re: Five Nights

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Ireland is fantastic. I had to blow the pipes out but now I can sit back, relax, touch my crank and think of the great emerald land.
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

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Jizaboz
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Re: Five Nights

Post by Jizaboz »

That damn security line in DIA almost made me miss my flight back home!
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Flack
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Re: Five Nights

Post by Flack »

About 10 years ago I had to fly home from Seattle with a short layover in Denver. I overdid it on the Xanax and by the time I got to Denver I was fairly incoherent. By sheer coincidence, an old friend from high school is a customer service agent with SWA at DIA. By the time she located me I had been holding up the Q*Doba line for about ten minutes, trying to figure out how to order. She ended up sitting with me for about an hour as I picked at a $15 plate of nachos and fumbling around in search of my own mouth. When it was time to board she walked me to my gate and made sure I got on the plane. Later she told me I was crying because I "felt bad for fish." I guess the point to this story is if you have the opportunity to abuse Xanax in a building full of armed TSA agents and overly-patient Q*Doba employees, I highly recommend it.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Jizaboz
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Re: Five Nights

Post by Jizaboz »

Flack wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 9:40 pm About 10 years ago I had to fly home from Seattle with a short layover in Denver. I overdid it on the Xanax and by the time I got to Denver I was fairly incoherent. By sheer coincidence, an old friend from high school is a customer service agent with SWA at DIA. By the time she located me I had been holding up the Q*Doba line for about ten minutes, trying to figure out how to order. She ended up sitting with me for about an hour as I picked at a $15 plate of nachos and fumbling around in search of my own mouth. When it was time to board she walked me to my gate and made sure I got on the plane. Later she told me I was crying because I "felt bad for fish." I guess the point to this story is if you have the opportunity to abuse Xanax in a building full of armed TSA agents and overly-patient Q*Doba employees, I highly recommend it.
Hahah finally a drug-induced Flack story!! GOLD.

I haven't head of Q*Doba but it looks like they make some good nachos. Also, people.. Xanax is dangerous mmkay? Seriously I've seen people ruin their lives (and attempt to ruin mine) on that shit; especially when coupled with alcohol.
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Tdarcos
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Re: Five Nights

Post by Tdarcos »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Mon May 30, 2022 7:50 am DIA, a shithole (it's what "Denver International Airport" stands for - that shithole)
My dear friend Andrea (she worked as a counselor for crime victims, so she'd have contact with the police) told me that when a Denver Police officer does a medium screw up - enough that they need to transfer them but not enough to fire them - they get transferred to the airport. This is the lowest you can go in the department and remain a police officer; another screw-up and they will fire you. Sp that means that Airport Police in Denver are the bottom of the barrel. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens at TSA; medium-bad to not-quire-fireable screwups get assigned to a number of airports, where they put all the bad apples in one or more barrels. Perhaps DIA is one of those barrels.

I mean, ask Flack how Marvin Granger and his friend Katie were transferred from the VA to a different government agency, him for making a mistake, her for defending him. :cool:

On the other hand, it could be that TSA employees are routinely incompetent and this happens (almost?) everywhere.
Alan Francis wrote a book containing everything men understand about women. It consisted of 100 blank pages.

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