Drunk Driving Incident

       Corpus Christie, Texas (2005)

Once, after a night of Scotch whiskey and port wine 

when the moon was a White-Russian mistress 

and the stars aligned in regiments of sparkling gin shots, 
she insisted he drive them to a motel —

them meaning she and her feral, one-eyed 

girlfriend closing the tavern.

"We'll party if you pay for the room," said the girlfriend.

He promptly escorted the ladies to his car
and proceeded in the wrong direction
down a one-way thoroughfare.

"Hey, Sport, you trying to get us killed?" the ladies protested, 

triggering an abrupt maneuver onto 

a stranger's lawn and through the neighbor's 

meticulously groomed azalea bushes.

He was not so far gone to dismiss the sarcasm 

betraying their praise of his excellent driving.

"We'll pull over here for one more," he countered, 

and one became three, four, then a round for the bar.

It ended badly when patrons confronted
their one-eyed companion with a discernable note

of condescension.

"Are you a pirate?" one asked, signaling to her eye-patch.

"Are you a rectal lobotomy?!" her friend replied.

"I think I'm in love with you," he said,

then declared a plague upon their antagonist's houses 

as they hustled into the sapphire night.

He cursed the tyranny of traffic laws 

while racing past bicycle cops, crowded boardwalks,
and escalating appeals for steady passage,
finally coming to a screeching halt on the freeway 

to inquire WHY in the HELL 

they were nagging him about his driving?!

"Let us out!" the ladies screamed.

He pulled onto the shoulder

and summoned an incoherent plea for solidarity,

but it was too late for speech-making.

He saw it in their frantic eyes

as they spilled barefoot onto the concrete,

straightening their skirts

and bouncing into their high heels.

He marveled at their ability to hail a ride.

Within minutes his companions vanished

and he stumbled into the wild grass

above the freeway offramp.

The radio shouted Green Day's

"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" at him

as the car sputtered its dying gasps.

He wished he had turned off the engine

before reaching a state of no return.

There's never enough gas to get where you're going,

he thought, before passing out beneath

the warm, neon glow of a Motel 6 sign.

**First published in Barbar Literary Magazine

**Illustration by Morgane Xenos