Gulp Fiction

What to do with the night when the night means nothing

It's getting dark earlier. And even darker for me.
Working nights is a new and, in many ways, an unpleasant yet somehow welcomed addition to my life.
It has its perks: no alarms to rudely roust me in the mornings, no bedtimes, no traffic, no busy and jammed lunch hours to worry about any longer; only dinner hours, a strange bedfellow of service industry years gone and still remembered fondly.
It has its cons: no more watching sports on weekdays, no more dinner with Izza, no more making to the bar in time for anything except the nomads still left behind, no more "Girls Night Out" with the girls . . . and me.
I work four 10-hour days now, which is nice. Working until after midnight (and later) on Friday nights is nothing to brag about but there is something that soothingly makes up for it (if only in schadenfreude) in knowing on Monday mornings when my friends are slowly dragging themselves to work, I am, if not sleeping, at least still in bed.
The only question is what to do with the nights.
After arriving home, the time alone is beneficial -- I hear there is a Sarah Palin porn coming out soon and I haven't balanced my checkbook in quite a while -- but for a man who wishes for chicken wings when he gets off work, whether it be 5:30 p.m. or 12:30 a.m., something about watching the sun come up alone is worse than having chicken wings but no one to eat them with.
Aside from video games, compulsive cleaning, compulsive exercise, compulsive TV watching, compulsive online gambling (not if lame-duck GWB has anything to do with it) or casual writing, I can see no way to pass the time with any real meaning.
I suppose I can't complain too much, though I have a tendency to do so otherwise.
Izza makes her own schedule now and we have our mornings. We watch "Jeopardy," make chicken strips (though not chicken wings), and enjoy the peace and comfort of domesticity. I rub her shoulders, ask for her to rub my shoulders (or vice-versa)(mostly vice-versa), then shower and go to work.
But once again, what I am to do now?
She is asleep. I can't sleep.
Sportscenter can only be watched two or three times in a row without the desperation of the situation becoming horribly clear. Watching a show you've seen before is like watching a show you've seen before.
Honestly, I like Stuart Scott, but how many times can you see that man's lazy eye stare you in the face before going insane?
Perhaps chicken wings, thawed before I go to work, of course, cooked myself beside a stove Izza just cleaned, can remedy the late-night urge to which there is, despite Stuart Scott's attempts, no time to cure.

The sad and destructive tale of Hurricane Boland

DAVIS — The destruction was beyond belief.
After a night of slutty cops, slutty school girls, slutty nurses, slutty sluts and just about every cliche male sexual fantasy ever imagined, I was happy to once again be safe in the confines of my home.
It was 364-UTNH. Three-hundred-and-sixty-four days until the next Halloween. The safest day on the calendar.
Until Hurricane Boland reared its beautiful, dimpled, beard-clad face.
Waking up, I found four voicemails on my phone. Five missed calls, four from Boland. Four voicemails, all from Boland.
I listened to the first one.
"He's on the couch," Izza said. I deleted the rest of the voicemails. From the tone of the first, it was a safe bet to assume each one would just grow in desperation and at 7:45 a.m. I just couldn't handle it.
He said he was bleeding. He said he was lost. He said everything that I expected and admired.
He spoke with the confusion yet determination of a man who still suckles at the teet that is Halloween; a man who still dresses up, a man who still believes.
I had done nothing for Halloween except for drink too much and look at 21-year-old girls dressed in barely nothing, girls too afraid to dress with the disregard for convention the rest of the year.
They were once-a-year skanks.
Boland was a Hershey's Kiss. A brilliant mix of duct tape, coat hangers and tin foil that would impress any talented yet alcoholic and currently unemployed engineer.
We had been at the bar. The G Street, to be exact, the only bar worth mentioning but nothing happened worth mentioning.
Somewhere between me being disgusted with everything, going to sleep and waking up, Boland had broken his nose, destroyed my shelf and knocked down a tree.
PG&E is here now. The fire department was here. The fire department moved Boland's truck.
Izza and Bethany have found, much to my displeasure, Sex and the City Movie DVD.
Now, once again, much to my displeasure, I am about to watch Sex and the city . . . the movie.
Normal conclusion of a post seems impossible. Suicide, reasonable.
If I survive, I'll continue at at better and far-less emasculating time.