Five formative hypothetical possibilities that could assail you on this, the 56th day of 2005

1. you will leave work and go to a restaurant to meet your friend, the one who checked herself into the local “crisis center” on the 53^rd day of 2005 after having a particularly bad week. you will certainly feel the force of the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. She will be able to leave the center without an escort because today – surprise! – is her birthday. You will stop to load up your friend’s dogs in your car, because she will want to see them. You will stop and buy a carton of cigarettes, because she will want to smoke them. You will order a large burrito, slathered with cheese, onions, and ‘mole, and you will chew your food with mouth closed, be supportive, and to be honest I really don’t know what the fuck else might happen, I’ve never been to this restaurant either so in terms of clientele, alcoholic beverage selection, the admission policy on dogs – I can’t help. You will be the one grasping for words, not wanting to invoke the relevant fact that signing out and signing back in are what will follow after all this fork-lifting. You will sing, in scratchy-throated agony, a rendition of happy birthday, and smoke seventeen cigarettes over the course of the meal, before going back to your living space and staring at the wall, wondering what they told your friend about coming back ten minutes late and half-drunk besides.
2. you could go to a movie. Haven’t done that in awhile. Maybe an indie film, or one with subtitles. You could ask that girl in the building over who rides the motorcyle, she might say yes. If she said yes, you would most likely back out. You are not in it to win it tonight. You just want to sulk in a dark place, with something televisually captivating in front of you, and maybe smoke a spliff beforehand on your walk to the movie theatre. or maybe you say fuck the movie. Maybe you do something else. You are after all unbound by cultural constraint. You could get dressed up and go eat by yourself in a prohibitively nice restaurant, and drink a bottle of wine by yourself so all the other diners notice you, the aberration, the young lonely nicely dressed young man who happens to have passed out face-first in the wild plum pudding.
3. you will climb to the top of that canyon back behind Lone Pine Ridge, where all the mule deer gather, with flashlight and flask in hand, to wait for the coyotes to start hauling themselves to the opposite ridge. You will wait all night to hear them howl out prayers. The moon will be full, so the flashlight is precautionary if also something like a security blanket, but perhaps you should bring a gun. If so talk to the roommate, but do so with enough grace and finesse that he will neither invite himself nor feel hurt at not being invited. This is some primal shit; no need to insert small talk into the chain. Be sure to bundle the fuck up; can’t have fire and a chorus of coyotes at the same time. It’s one or the other, and you’re seeking out song tonight.
4. You will stay at work till seven, wrapping up that bullshit outreach project your eel of a boss saddled you with. You will go home, heat up some leftover lasagna, watch a bit of the game, masturbate to images of your 11^th grade English teacher, Miss Applebaum, and go to bed.
5. at 12:07 am on the 57th day of 2005, you will yell "Victory for the forces of democratic freedom" and once more smoothly transition into the realm of fiction, becoming, once more, an imaginative character and amalgam of late nineties self-help idiom.