After Karaoke we headed over to Frazier’s on the Avenue. I hadn’t been there in a while, and Mike was determined to buy us some Bohs. Damned nice of him.
While walking to Frazier’s Mike and his Wifey pointed out the brick in the sidewalk that had their names on it. It was joined by bricks with other people’s names and businesses. I stepped on the brick and Wifey was all, “Oh no you di’int!” and I was all, “Oh yes I di’id!” and it looked like it was about to be broughten, but it wasn’t, because we were just joking around.
Once I made it into Frazier’s I almost immediately ran into an old friend of mine, Ryan. Ryan is an interesting guy, to say the least. Just recently Deanne was lamenting how frequently she’s had to nearly fight some “chav scum” for their want of her cigarettes. I told her about my friend Ryan.
Ryan used to keep 2 packs of cigarettes. From one pack he’d remove a single cigarette, pee on it, and then let it dry. Once it was dry, he put it in the other pack. He’d carry both packs around, and whenever anyone wanted to bum a cigarette, he’d give them one of the cigarettes from the “special” pack. It brought him a sick sort of pleasure.
I run into him from time to time, and he’s one of those people with whom you don’t have stupid back and forth forced conversation about the weather. I can’t even remember what we were talking about (the time he got kicked out of a Billy Idol show? The time he got kicked out of a Foreigner show? Both?) but in the middle of the conversation he removes the napkin from on top of the plate of food resting on the bar between us and he starts eating. He starts eating the half-eaten potato skins and onion rings and pizza bread that someone else had left behind.
At first he looked at me and said, “What? I’m just eating the stuff that they didn’t touch.” He held up and unblemished onion ring for me to examine. Then he stuffed it in his mouth.
“Dude, that’s so gross. Think about what you used to do to cigarettes.”
“Meh. I’m hungry. No sense wasting good food.”
He paused for a moment as he finished the last of the untouched food, looked at me, and then started eating the food that already had a few bites taken out of it. I was disgusted, but not surprised. Ryan, at the ripe old age of 23 or 24, has always been like this.
I made sure to bum a cigarette from his friend.
