I want to draw your attention to the hours you’ve spent shooting the shit with your friends. To the times when someone asks, “What’re we doing tonight?” Someone says, “There’s a show.” Another says, “There’s a party.” It turns out they’re the same. So you finish your beers and crush the cans with your heel and toss them in the overflowing recycling someone forgot to take out. You grab your bikes and carry them one by one out a too narrow doorway. Wait. Someone has to pee. Wait. Someone has to pump their tires. Ok. You head out and as you’re biking you acknowledge how wholesome it feels to be biking as a crew rather than alone. You stop at a bodega along the way and now everyone is carrying a black plastic bag with a six pack of cheap beer. You arrive at the show. The party. One person locks their bike to a poll and everyone locks their bike to that bike because the rest of the poles and bike racks are taken because there’s already a fuckton of people here. Some kid is sitting at the entrance collecting money. They’re chain smoking and wearing a leather jacket even though it’s July. You give the kid 5 bucks and they stamp your hand even though it’s going to rub off immediately because you’re so god damn sweaty. As soon as you walk through the door a wall of dense heat smacks you in the face. Gross but ok. You and your friends find a corner to stand in and crack open the first of what will be many beers tonight. The last of what will be a cold one.
When the party is over, you and your friends want to keep hanging out so you all decide to go back to someone’s house. You stop by a food truck on your way home. You stop by a bodega and get another black plastic bag with a cheap six pack. You tiredly slunk your bikes through the too narrow doorway. You head straight to the backyard where the night started. You shoot the shit until you’re too tired and too drunk to bike home and you crash on your friend’s couch. The next morning you all make breakfast together and reminisce on the night before. You drink too much coffee and decide to bike to the park and hair-of-the-dog it. You invite more friends and suddenly it’s the evening and you don’t want to leave. The hours pass by and someone makes a run to the grocery store for snacks that become dinner and yes, more black plastic bags and cheap six packs. You take a moment to yourself to admire each and every one of your friends. Everyone is glowing. A little toasted from the sun. A little crusty. But everyone looks so alive and full of it. You are overcome with so much love you don’t know where to put it. So you hug the closest friend next to you and carry on with the night.
April 2021