With one eye Jay looked at the clock beside the bed. 1:30 pm. Shit. He sat up and gagged and spit on the floor. Another case of heinous ass mouth. Yummy. It's a good thing the girls didn't want to make out right then, he thought. He got up and gargled with some hot water. A little better. Surprisingly his head didn't hurt right then, but it will around 5 or 6 pm, though, he thought. He stepped into some clothes and stepped outside the unit. Another warm day. Fuck warm days. He slept through them all. He liked his porch. He liked the decaying tri-plex he lived in. The rent was cheap and the cable was free due to the skill of some previous stoner tenant. Good man. He liked his neighborhood. A great central location right near downtown that hadn't been cleaned up by the yuppies yet. No one had bought yet. Until then it was freedom fuckin' reign. All hours. Open all night. The neighbors themselves were drug people. Each of the different houses stocking some different shit. But no one bothered anybody. It was a pretty quiet place, except when Jay got drunk and started breaking all the bottles he could find. Jay didn't use drugs and smoke the light bulb like his neighbors, but he liked to drink and was surprised the cops had never shown up when he was breaking his bottles against the decayed brick chimney of the abandoned squatter unit next door. Lucky stupid ass drunk, he thought. It was hard to tell when people were in there until someone emerged from the weird place asking him why he did this. Other people back in there lurking, weird faces barely visible under candlelight. Tweaking. Just then he spotted some young people walking from one of the houses to another. They did that. They had all these little paths and routes to dart from house to house. He also noticed they always wore their same jacket and beanie even on the hot days. Maybe it was like the old cliche' he'd heard of- the stoner never taking off his jean jacket, hot or not. Or maybe it was because they were holding shit in little pockets and up in their hats. Probably both.
Jay walked back inside, found his shoes, put them on and grabbed his wallet and headed out the door. He walked toward downtown along his street, Lafayette, then took a left and cut up Hill street. He walked by the bar on the corner and got the deep fryer smell. He turned he corner and saw a girl cleaning the windows of the new pizza parlor. Wow! He thought, is she on the menu? Damn it. She ducked back inside as he walked by. He kept walking. Everybody drove, no one walked in this town, he thought. Everybody zipped by in cars. He got to the area and walked inside the burrito boy and got a large iced-tea, then walked to the main bench and sat down. He watched people drive and walk by. He looked at them. They were scrubbed and in order. Boring. He wondered if he could get away with laying down on the bench like a bum. He thought of what was cool to him in any direction in town from that central bench. He couldn't think of much. He hadn't played his drums in six months. They sat at home stacked against the front room wall. He had only worked as a pizza delivery guy and drank at the bar at night. He was 24 years old and felt the time passing quicker than ever.
He got up off the bench and walked back toward home. He be would out of the tri-plex in a month. He was glad. It was time to get the fuck out of this town and start doing some work. He walked along thinking about it.

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