Contemporaneous: Chapters 70 – 72
70. Once we get to the strippers, I moderate my drinking so I retain a better sense of self – I used to be good at this when I was younger. While everybody else was getting insensibly drunk, I’d take it easy, or even pour the beer out when people weren’t looking. It probably comes from a lifetime of anxiety – while drinking gives me a buzz and relaxes me, I don’t want to lose control. Stan pays for several lap dances – I can’t remember if it’s in the same order he did last time. But there’re a lot of different dances, like he’s determined to sample as many…
Contemporaneous: Chapter 64
64. I drink and drink, the waitstaff always approaching me with uncertainty, like one of them wants to tell me this isn’t a bar, but they’re all teenagers – they don’t have the courage to approach some foreboding-looking fifty-year-old who’s drinking peacefully (but, given I’m drinking alone, self-destructively), and tell him he has to leave. The cook looks like he might, though – he’s about thirty, but a rotund guy, with a big, meaty, crewcut head that’d might’ve just come out of his wood-fire oven. Give him another decade and his bulk will turn to fat. Right now, though, he’s got this affable look about him – maybe it’s cliché,…