ome bouncer downtown just turned down my ID. My real ID with my picture on it. I’m from one of those crap states like Vermont and New Jersey with the IDs everyone else has. I got that license the summer I turned sixteen and I’ve waited five years to use it. Now some loser with a baseball cap and a GED tells me I can’t.

This guy had a thick neck and those lips that stick out a little bit all the time, like the caricature of a fat baseball umpire. Whatever he looked like, he turned me down, asked to see something else. This never would have happened in Europe. I gave him my ATM card, and he told me to take a walk.

They let me in across the street, but I didn’t care. The crowd there was too old, and I walked in one side, straight past the bar, out the back door to the garden patio, and out the back gate. It was raining pretty hard, so the outside was empty.

I always do this. Wait until after to say what I should have said. I should have gone to the cops, that’s what I should have done. I should have held up the line or something. Something.

I had to circle the block to get back to my car without passing in front of that goddamned bar again. But what the fuck ever. Things haven’t been right since I got back—I spent five months of my last school year overseas—and it’s probably better that I get home while I can still drive there. I have a case of beer in the fridge. I figure I’ll get drunk at home and work that fat lump over on the keyboard.