I vaguely remember performing a heartfelt duo with that guy in the bathroom, and that’s where my mind started to shut down, capturing snippets of imagery in snapshot memories. Grainy scenes with soft borders, faint copies of copies shot through a kaleidoscope lens, attempts at bringing coherence to babble. I reject these, mostly. Pretend they didn’t happen, and pray that’s true. There’s me, snorting lines off the toilet lid. That dude with the bald head right in my face. We’re laughing or yelling at each other or both. Crashing against the stall walls like rodeo bulls in a cage, wrestling or fighting I’m not sure. My shirt’s off. Shoes, gone. Zipper down. Dancing in the barroom, on the bar. Malia stuffing dollars down my waistline and through my open fly. Kicking glasses, falling. Razz slapping me on the floor. Laughing, yelling, both. Grabbing his face, the latex yielding in my fingers, tearing along the neckline, gapping around the eyes. So much jostling, stumbling. A camera held in palsied hands. The bathroom – Malia on her knees, maybe bent over the counter. I pray that’s a dream, not a memory. OBSIDEO in steam. Kicking the cigarette machine, staring at the elevator, wanting to kill. Wanting to die. Razz’s braying laughter on a broken record.

Minutes, hours, days, who knows? Oblivion achieved.

* * *

“Sir.” I’m being hauled up by my feet from the depths of a bottomless well. Diffused light comes hazy to my eyes, gilding the closed lids with an amber glow. “Sir.” Someone is shaking my arm. Hard wood under my head. I lift it and gape through burning eyes.

“Sorry, sir. This isn’t a hotel. You’ll have to go.” The man saying this is dressed like a barkeep from an old saloon. White frill shirt with long sleeves. Black armbands and bowtie. A groomed beard that comes down past his neckline. Round spectacles.

I straighten, still drunk, but back from my blackout. In a bar I don’t recognize. My mind struggles to establish context, to answer the questions racing through my head: What happened? Where am I? How did I get here?

My first flash memory – false or not, I’m not sure – is my finger tearing the latex mask on the man masquerading as Razz. I try to see more, connect that moment to this one, but I come up blank.

“Sir, please.” The man is trying to be polite. Man being a generous term. This hipster barely looks old enough to serve liquor. I look around and see another guy down at the corner of the bar. His banker’s shirt is straining against the avalanche of his belly. Red-rimmed eyes glare at me through inch-thick lenses. He shakes his head in disgust and returns his attention to his watered-down scotch the color of my morning piss.