After 5 AM

Whether truth or bragging, I remember high school classmates talking about getting home as the sun was rising, going to sleep as their fathers were waking up. At the time, I couldn't fathom that they were possibly telling the truth at their age, considering my own curfew was set well before midnight. Maybe I was overprotected or they were undisciplined. Perhaps it was a combination of both. I do remember being more naive in those days about a lot of things. When guys would talk about getting a “dimebag” I silently wondered why they were getting a bag of dimes. Years later I was glad I never actually asked anyone that question; I got laughed at for enough of the things I'd say back then.

When I was in college, I'd hang out a little later with my friends, usually in a basement somewhere watching cartoons, out at a movie, or occasionally at a bar for a party. I don't know that I ever got home later than 1 AM, and for the most part there weren't any conflicts with my parents over it. After college, when I had my first real job and first long-term relationship, I once came home from my girlfriend's house at 3 AM. I thought it was odd that the porch light was out, but it was even stranger that the screen door was locked and I couldn't even get to the main door with my key. I tapped on my parents’ window until they woke up, and had a long argument through it with my dad that included the position, “This isn't a hotel! If you want to live like a bum and come and go at all hours, get your own apartment!” I eventually got them to let me in, and explained that we had rented two movies and that since my girlfriend lived with her mom, there was adult supervision. At the time it didn't occur to me that I was technically an adult, but even now ten years later at the age of 32 I occasionally forget that fact.

In my mid-20s, a buddy of mine had an apartment in the city. Whether clubbing, bar hopping, or filming a public access TV karaoke show, I didn't have to worry about catching an early train because I always had a place to crash. With a seven or eight hour gap between trains on my line during the night, it was a good alternative to cutting a fun evening short. My folks still worried, but I never got in serious trouble and I think 4 AM was the latest I ever hung out with that crowd. Besides singing with inexplicable confidence, the worst side effect of alcohol was the one time I danced in the street before people pulled me out of the way of traffic. After that, I learned to sense when it was time to switch to water.

This past Friday, to celebrate a colleague's last day, I joined people after work for a couple of happy hours. After hitting a local bar, we headed in to the city. The first bar there was somewhat quiet, as Summer Fridays in midtown tend to be. My friend Sparkplug's brother works as a sound technician for a Led Zeppelin cover band, and he said his brother would have concert tickets for us should things get boring. Meanwhile, though people we knew gradually left one by one, Sparkplug's buddy had struck up a conversation with a couple of lovely young ladies at the bar. Things started getting interesting again, and the alternative of a concert faded as we decided to stick around. The girls were visiting from Manchester, England, and had some pretty sexy accents.

They joined us when we adjourned to a smaller bar up the road. We had some interesting conversations about music and life as they kept referring to us as “you Yanks”. I kept the evening's soundtrack lively with my jukebox selections, ranging from ”You Shook Me All Night Long” to ”Jump Around”. The only time things slowed down was when ”My Immortal” came on, and when my friend asked who picked it, I absolutely denied that it was me and blamed a couple of stocky blonde girls dancing with each other at the end of the bar.

As the evening progressed, Sparkplug’s brother joined us, and our lovely British friends took a lot of pictures to remember their trip. One was particularly critical of us “Yanks” and our lack of culture. I countered that we had popular culture, and had plenty to offer in movies, music, and television shows. She was adamant that travel is a necessity, that life is too short not to see the world, and that if you play it safe and stay in the same place, you aren’t living, only existing. In England, she said people who don't travel are considered to be poor. I didn't agree with everything she was saying, but she had some good points.

Sparkplug asked one of the girls which of us she thought was the oldest, and which was the youngest. She scrutinized four faces, and ultimately determined that I was the oldest, while Sparkplug was the youngest. I’m not sure how old his friend is, but I do know that he’s two years older than me, and four years older than his brother. She didn’t understand why we were all laughing, and I asked her how old she thought I, the “oldest”, was. When she replied “Twen-ty-sev-en?” in a rising inflection, I no longer minded being picked as the oldest.

The girls each insisted on buying me drinks, and I joked with my friend's brother that, much like driving on the left, they do a lot of things opposite across the pond. In addition to wisdom on life and travel, the slightly prettier of the two also said she didn't like to stay in one place for very long, and never kept a job for more than a year. Staying with one company for over seven years as I had was unheard of over there, and she pointed out that the only way to get a decent raise was to continuously switch jobs. As it got later, I sat at the bar, rested my chin on my arm, and closed my eyes for a second. There was movement to my right, and I opened my eyes to see the pretty British girl on Sparkplug's lap, seemingly trying to devour his face.

When they took a break to breath and she and her friend headed to the ladies room, I asked my buddy how he managed to make out with her when she told us she had a boyfriend, from Africa no less, and when he spent the better part of the evening insisting that guys just hate to travel while I ended up conceding her points. He said he asked, “what about your boyfriend?” and she simply replied “Well he's in England, isn’t he?” I also thought it was interesting that his friend ended up talking with the second girl for most of the night, when it was the first one he initially approached. He simply said that sometimes it's better to hang back, cool and aloof while someone else does the leg work, then swoop in. Had I a notebook, I think I would have been scribbling furiously. I also feared that the girl overheard earlier in the night, when he said that the original animated The Transformers: The Movie was one of the worst he'd ever seen and I defended it, going so far as to say I “...nearly wept when Optimus Prime died.” 32, and I still lack that inner voice warning me which things to keep inside.

Serendipity proved to be a better movie to talk about, and bringing up a romantic comedy about a couple's chance meeting in Manhattan only conjured more smooching. Again, I really should have taken notes. Still, a fun evening with good friends and interesting new people left me in a pretty good mood as I bid them farewell and walked back to the train station. I would have timed my arrival perfectly, save for one important detail. Apparently after midnight on Friday, they switch to a weekend schedule. I had to wait over an hour for the next train, which got me back to my car in the office parking lot a little before 5 AM. A nap on the train helped, and I was surprisingly awake and alert by the time I got home. I realized that for the first time in my life, I was perilously close to walking in the door as my father was waking up. What could I expect when I got home?

I'm an adult now, and I've proven I can be trusted, though my folks still worry about their only child and worry that I'll become an alcoholic like my uncle. Decades ago, before he got control of the problem and started going to AA meetings, he'd often get drunk, forget where he left his car, and call my mom or my grandmother in the middle of the night. Occasionally they wouldn't even get the phone call, and had to drive around looking for him to see if he'd passed out somewhere. I'm never going to do that. I tend to nurse two or three beers when I go out, and though my dad worries about me getting a taste for alcohol, socializing is what I find intoxicating. When I found the porch light still on, and the door unlocked, it was a small victory. After a new post and responding to a few e-mails, I settled in to sleep as the sun was rising.

The British girl spoke of crossing continents off her list so as to look back on her life someday and not feel she'd wasted it. My list isn't as ambitious, but I'm glad I can now cross off “came home after 5 AM”.