Episode LXXXXII-Failure to concentrate leads to concerns.

“This doesn’t concern you.” The square-jawed hulk muttered at me. “Why don’t you just bug off and mind your own business.”

I considered what he said for a second. It was the small hours of the morning. It was past two, but not quite three. Many hours before, the streetlights had all switched to flashing red. The sidewalk lamps were tiredly waiting for dawn with their dim, bug occluded casings. And it was after two. Somewhere, at some time and place, someone had told me that nothing good ever happened at two in the morning. If the statement I had heard was true, my staggering group of friends and I were in deep trouble. It was trouble because if there was an absence of good at two, there was probably negative good at every moment beyond that point.

Fortunately, I wasn’t sure if the statement was true, so I didn’t have to mentally figure out when exactly, good started to trickle back into the world. I really didn’t think that good ever left the world on a daily basis, but if I was to assume that it did disappear, I would further hypothesize that it probably returned around sunrise. Just as my brain was about to continue to chase the preceding reasoning down whatever rabbit hole it had come from, I stopped and took a slow, deep breath and steadied myself. Such incomplete, fuzzy logic was a direct result of consuming too many warm cans of basement beer from whatever fraternity house we had just left. I realized that hazy or not, I had to focus on the problem.

Overdrinking wasn’t the problem. Since we were walking home, the only threat to society that existed was potential public urination, which for tonight, was something that appeared highly unlikely. It seemed much more probable that someone would fall over as they staggered along, and begin to rant against the earth’s quick rotation, or that someone else would begin some sort of rambling diatribe that would surely end with something to do with something being “the greatest”. Walking might be a problem for some people, but that was what friends were for – to support other friends, because at times like these, four legs were better than two. I wondered why I was so unconcerned about people peeing, because more often then not, that was what happened, despite the walk only taking ten minutes at a slow stagger.

Abruptly, the pieces came together. We had been drinking and had decided to leave, because it was after two and the music had stopped. We had passed the bushes where SC almost always pulled his pants off when we had heard the noises. At first we had thought the noises were made by SC because he couldn’t get his pants off to pee, even though whimpering seemed a little odd, even for him. Once we had looked back at him, and saw that he wasn’t making the noises, we had converged in a huddle to whisper about what we thought had been going on. The huddle had nominated me to investigate. I had gone through the bushes, and found a young woman partially dressed making the noises next to the hulking gentleman who immediately stood up once he realized that they had an audience.

Whatever we had stumbled upon, that was the problem. That, the phrase I had just heard, and the whole situation. I also had a small problem. Square-jaw was looking at me like I was an idiot, because I hadn’t responded to his statement.

“Yeah? Says who?” I replied lamely, instead of just turning around and writing off the whole incident as a drunken mistake.