The Meatfields: Chapter Five: That Night

That Night
The bar was dark in the corners, like bars always are- why do they make them like that, why do they feel evil sometimes?- and all the lights where hard and bright. The shadows were precise: there was light and dark. I was drunk when I started to think about the phrase "paint the town". Some folks I think say paint it red, others say blue. I could never figure out what was what: if there were two separate sayings that meant two things or two variations of the same saying. I always hated people who went off on the origins of phrases or words and crap, but once at school I had tried to pry into a conversation about just such crap, asking that very question. But it moved so fast no one caught it or no one cared. I don't know and I never got an answer. Light, dark, red, blue, whatever.
I was feeling upset because something was wrong and I hated it when I was "think-about-crap-drunk" and not "have-fun-drunk". I had intended to take Sarah out and get her all liquored up but instead had had a hard time keeping up with her. I was hard on myself for being childish and angry at her for stealing my thunder when I realized that I only felt bad because something seemed wrong. It wasn't that things weren't going my way,things just weren't right. She was behaving all bad. I sat there, quiet, while the furor raged about us and watched her. One side of her face was a putrid yellow from a neon beer light, the other was all-the-way black. Things were never so simple with Sarah. I was then upset for having to care, for letting it bother me, for getting in the way of my fun.
But I'm not like that anymore.