Brown plastic replaces amber glass.  Pint bottles no longer release a satisfying crack when hurled out the window on the interstate.  I drink a Miller Light tall can wrapped in black plastic, a throwback to years past.  But instead of a sopping wet brown paper sack resembling something mom packed your lunch in, my beer resides inside a bag you would find porno magazines in.  The condensation makes the plastic cold and tacky, uncomfortable to hold.  “How many bags would you like to buy?” the chubby cashier with her hair dyed crusty ketchup red asks.  In Seattle every bag costs a nickel.

“Just one,” I say with a pause.  “A skinny paper one.”

She chuckles uncomfortably.  When she smiles you can see the acne scars in her face, she avoids eye contact with me.  “We don’t have those,” smiling as she puts my beer and cheese chips into the black “privacy” bag generally reserved for late night purchases.

I’m at the bar up the street from where I stay in Seattle.  Inside it smells like bad breath and beer farts,  I’m hunched over the bar sucking down gin greyhounds like they were going out of style.  Somebody made a joke about me and pink drinks and I said something about date raping myself.  The twenty some blonde bartender glares at me, unappreciative of my humor.  I’m pretty sure I’ve pissed my pants, I got in an argument with some guy about talking to some broad, I think she was his wife or his cousin or something like that.  They closed their tab and stormed out, I resumed being loud and boisterous with other patrons.

“Beer just isn’t as cold these days,” says the Virgil, the skinny old regular with the nose like Rudolph the reindeer, hunched over next to me.

I go to order myself another gin greyhound and Virgil the coldest beer I could get, but before I could even open my mouth blondie hands me back my credit card, two copies of the receipt, and blue ballpoint pen with the phone number of a bail bondsman on it.  “You’re not as pretty as you think you are,” I sign the receipt and stumble out of the dimly lit wood paneled adult day care center and into the rainy moonless night.

I’m puking up bile from not having eaten anything all day except for road beers into a stainless steel jail toilet at a rest stop in southern Idaho.  “You alright in there?” an older voice asks from outside the stall.  “Never been better,” I reply in between hocking up mucus and a dry heave.  In the parking lot I peel open another pack of reservation cigarettes and collapse in the shade behind the pump house, I sleep until dusk.

Now I’m in the smoking area outside a strip club on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon.  I try to call her on the payphone, but nowadays she knows better than to pick up strange numbers with out of state area codes.  I stumble back into the candy red glow of the strip club and slide back into the red leather booth where I slyly refill my glass with liquor from a plastic flask.  “You doin’ okay, hun?” the topless waitress asks as I take my first sip from my fresh drink.  I order a steak dinner and eat it positioned so I can watch the girls at the rack dance.
A black girl with big areolas and a purple wig takes the stage and works the pole for a minute while new johns sit in chairs with backs around the platform.  She dances to a remixed top forty song and shoves her breasts and cunt into the johns faces.  From across the bar I can see her cellulite as she spins on the pole.  Her wig shifts mid routine and she carefully re-adjusts while she lays on the rack with her legs spread.  You can see the johns leaning forward in their chairs to get a sniff.  I finish my steak dinner and another free refill and leave feeling queasy.

I wake up in the middle of the night with a sudden urge to shit the bed.  I rush to the shared bathroom in my apartment and blow chunks of strip club steak with beer sauce out my ass.  “How the fuck do you eat at those places?” people ask me when I tell them I only go to titty bars for the dining.  I can’t get back to sleep, the gay couple in the room above mine are smoking crank, moving furniture, and jumping on a trampoline all night, so I dig some roaches out of the ash tray and roll joint.  I’m smoking little puffs by the window when my cell phone rings.

“Did you call me a little bit ago?”

“No?” I ask, pretending like I hadn’t.

“I know it was you, who else is going to be calling me from a payphone in Oregon at one in the morning on a Saturday,” she says.  I can hear traffic in the background of the call.

“Where are you?” I ask.  There’s a pause.

“My boyfriend wants to talk to you.”  She doesn’t wait for me to respond, I hear ruffling as she hands him the phone.

“Look you little faggot,” he greats me, “if you ever call her again I’m going to drive all the way out to Oregon and kick your fucking teeth in.”  He says something else, but I can’t hear him over the traffic and the gay guys upstairs fucking.

“What was that? I can’t hear you over-”  he cuts me off.

“Don’t test me you little bitch,” he says as he hangs up the phone.

I call back, but they don’t pick up.  I wonder if I’ll be seeing him soon, I could always use a visitor.