I remember I was dating this girl once and her sister came round my place and told me how she’d had to get this huge horse-pill put in her vagina.

That is all.

 My alarm had gone off at quarter past eight in the morning. In my view, nobody should have been awake then unless they hadn’t slept the previous night, but I could hardly afford to be late. Job interviews are scarce, especially when you look useless on paper like me, so I felt like it was necessary to make an effort. I groaned and fumbled with the “off” button showing the precision of a drunk inserting keys into a door. I’d slept badly the previous night so my vision was hazy when I got around to opening my eyes. The blur lasted for a few seconds as I squinted at the sunlight piercing through the thin curtains. Whatever dream the alarm had interrupted was pleasant, although I couldn’t remember any details so I propped myself up on an elbow and reached for my mobile phone. Checking it, I found a message from Audrey; “hey, good luck today! you really deserve it :) xx”. Without caffeine or nicotine in my system, I could only muster a short reply thanking her and promising to tell her all about it afterwards. I sat up in bed and swept a hand over the bedside table for my cigarettes, taking one out of the box and lighting it reminded me to take pleasure in small comforts. I looked at Audrey’s text again and allowed myself a smile for the same reason. When the cigarette had reached its natural conclusion, I collected the resolve to get out of bed and start the day.

I shuffled across the hall towards the bathroom, swearing under my breath. The morning ritual of toilet-shower-teeth needed to be adhered to. The linoleum tiles in the bathroom felt cold under my feet at first, waking me up a little more. Once the cloudy morning piss was out of my system, I headed for the shower. It was a modest electric thing on the wall at one end of the bath tub with a drab plastic curtain suspended by a chrome pole. Being in the shower gave me the opportunity to think about things lucidly for the first time all morning. I thought about how unlikely it would be for me to get this job, how wearing a suit made me feel timid like a child in a school uniform, how I was so fidgety and awkward in situations like that, how there was no way that anybody in their right mind would employ me… and I imagined how I’d spend the wages regardless. Audrey crept in there somewhere, too. There were a couple of little purple rings on the bathroom floor where her dyed hair had fallen wet and left stains. I’m sure they were far from indelible but I thought they were adorable and never put much effort into scrubbing them off. Her changing hair colour was even visible on the towel I used to dry myself. It made me feel lucky as I used it to wipe steam from the mirror before I brushed my teeth. Wrapped in the towel, I made my way back to my room to dress.

What I’d thought about wearing a suit was true – swapping the clothes I wore by choice for an uncomfortable uniform made me feel like a child. There was no good reason for this; I know now as I did then that personality and character are far beyond skin-deep, but moderating my appearance like that has always had a way of obliterating my confidence. Anxiety ebbed within me more and more with each shirt button I fastened. By the time my tastelessly patterned tie was on and I’d begun tucking in my shirt, I was flushed with it. A cigarette helped to steady my nerve and by ten to nine, I was suited up and heading downstairs to make final preparations for my departure into the world out there.

A disgusting cup of bitter black coffee was next on my mental check-list so I moved through the living room into the kitchen where a modest pile of washing up greeted me from the sink. ‘Not today’ I thought as I stepped past the sink and picked the jar of cheap instant coffee from its shelf, spooning too much of it into a mug. Pacing around the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil appeared to go on forever. Finally, the thing clicked and the coffee was made. I took it with me into the living room where I slouched on the sofa taking sips and screwing my face at the flavour. I checked my phone and saw that it was nine now. Still another fifteen minutes before I had to leave. I found myself lighting up yet another cigarette, this one just to kill time, and thought about quitting or at least cutting down. Eventually. I sent another message to Audrey while I sat there: “hope you’re having fun at work, i’m nervous as hell! do i get to see you later, fuckface? love you xx”. The cringeworthy fake derision was always well meant and well received. It was that sort of dynamic that kept me from turning to mush every time I talked to her.

More accurate with my keys than I was with my alarm clock, I made my way out of the front door. I hated my street. Barely even nine in the morning and already the promise of sunlight had brought each and every undesirable out, deck chairs and all, to drink on the pavement outside their doors. I could feel their eyes burning holes in my back; the suit was conspicuous. I uncomfortably shuffled to the end of my street and turned off, heading towards town. People nearing the end of their daily commute looked sullen and distant, beady little eyes stared through me from bus windows and it was far too bright out there. I cut in front of a car when I crossed over the main road and received a hurt sounding yelp from the horn which got my back up. Over the road and closer to the centre of town, the streets were half-filled; enough people to make me shift uneasily about them, but few enough to make the high street look bleak. I resented being outside.

There wasn’t far to go by now. Just another three hundred yards or so and I’d be there; face to face with my fate. The sun was off my back, obscured by the nearby tall buildings: a mixture of Regency architecture and later-developed concrete disappointment. There, sandwiched between a Greggs to the left and a bank to the right, was the employment agency building. I’d applied for a job handling complaints for a credit card company. It sounded tedious and I had no interest, but the pay was excellent. Twenty-thousand pounds a year for what was essentially data entry. My insides were welling up with all sorts of mixed emotion and so I chalked up another cigarette. The smoking didn’t help, but it gave me some more time before I had to walk through the door and into the jaws of disappointment. I played around on my phone while I smoked in the doorway, reading through old messages from Audrey and tapping out messages to her, only to delete them before sending. My mind was swimming so words didn’t come easy and I gave up. It wasn’t long before the cigarette end was underneath the heel of my shoe as I opened the door and entered the building.

Immediately in front of me there was a reception desk, behind which sat an overweight female security guard with greasy hair and an unwelcoming posture. I saw the signing in book on the desk and knew that I needed to be on the fifth floor but I couldn’t help myself from approaching the woman at the desk for confirmation of what I needed to do. How could I act with assertiveness or bravado when I felt like a child?

‘Hi, my name’s Andy and-’ I started before clearing my throat and remembering where I was. ‘I, err… yeah, I… have an interview at nine thirty on the fifth floor?’ The security guard looked up from her newspaper.

‘You what? Sign in on there, mate,’ she pointed to the book on the counter ‘and go on up.’ I didn’t reply. Normally I would have felt rude for that, but I wasn’t capable of small talk and I felt I was in somewhat of a hurry, despite still having about ten minutes before my interview and only a lift standing in the way of it. It struck me as I walked the twenty or so paces towards the lift that this place looked like every office I’d ever seen; full of wistful paintings of mountains and jungles and little green plants that occupied too many corners. The pastel walls made me think it was all very surreal. When I got to the lift, I summoned it by pressing the button and seemed to wait an eternity for it to arrive. It was just like the kettle only far more ominous.

The doors opened with a swish of indifference and I think I heard them beep or electronically ping at me. I stepped inside and waited for the door to close before I swept at my hair in the large mirror that occupied most of the back wall. Barely satisfied with the new arrangement of my rebellious plumage, I turned and pressed the button that would take me to the fifth floor. The whirring of the mechanism helped me keep track of time and stopped it stringing itself out again. I really hoped that I wouldn’t be grilled so much. I hoped, as my heart skipped, that I’d manage to come out with the right words at the right time. Any words at the right time. The sound of the lift slowed and then died, allowing for a small silence before the doors opened.

Stepping out of the lift, the decoration was much the same as in the downstairs corridor. I looked down the hall, past the motivational mountains and rubbery plants, noticing a door towards the end with the livery of the recruiting agency above it, resplendent in plastic and plywood. Approaching it was a mixture of anxiety and anticipation which levelled out when I wondered if I even wanted to be here or not. Was this too much? That wasn’t necessarily a concern in the moment, though, so I cast it to the back of my mind and stepped up the pace. There was a glass pane in the door and I didn’t see anyone when I peered through, so I hovered there wondering whether or not to knock.

I went for the option of walking straight in. Yet another samey office room greeted me and I said pretty much the same thing to the first member of staff I saw as I had done to the security guard downstairs. I was seated awkwardly among other applicants who insisted on making small talk with each other and tried to include me. Although I managed to seem polite, I didn’t engage them – too anxious to try and act like a real person. Everybody looked much older and the conversation in the room was mostly kept going by a short, thin bald man in his late forties and an exuberant thirty-something woman who had worked in banks for most of her life. Work was all that they talked about and I found it tedious that these people were so content to define their entire being by whatever mundane job they had ended up in. One by one, they were taken off for their ten minute interview and then ushered out of the door after a quick “goodbye and good luck” to those of us still waiting. I’d been the last to enter and guessed that I’d be the last to be seen. Thankfully, the conversation tailed off after the bald man had been called in to interview. There were only two people left in front of me at this point and I was fidgeting awkwardly, buttoning and unbuttoning my suit jacket.

By the time that I was left alone in the waiting room, I almost felt ready to relax until the last candidate was walked out of the door and the member of staff I had approached earlier established eye contact with me. She was probably about thirty-six, but my guesswork is usually flawed so I don’t know. Her accent was South African and reminded me of an old maths teacher I’d had at school who had the same out of place lilt to her voice.

‘Mr Roland? Is it Andrew, yes?’ she asked, obviously a lot calmer than myself.

‘Yeah. Yes, I’m Andy,’ I’d replied. I think I managed to annunciate properly.

‘Nice to meet you, my name’s Michelle. If you’d just like to follow me through here, we’ll begin.’ She sounded friendly but she was still professional enough to intimidate me slightly in my unravelling state of mind. I just nodded affirmation and walked after her, filled with uncertainty. The pressure was piling up with every step that I took across the cheap carpet tiles.

The interview room was sparse and reminded me of what the police use for the same purpose. Same pastel walls, just like everywhere else in the building, same plants, same pictures… whoever had decorated in here evidently lacked flare. I was seated on one side of a desk and Michelle on the other, where she flicked through a pile of CVs until she found my own and slid it out from between the rest. I’d got the interview based on this and an awfully elaborate and self-promoting cover letter, so it wasn’t too bad to see it again: I almost felt pleased to be looking at it. As she read through my mostly made-up academic credentials and well-embellished work history, I panicked when I remembered that I hadn’t put my phone on silent when I came here. I’d sent messages that hadn’t got replies yet… it’s really bad form if your phone goes off in an interview, it would have really ruined it for me, if I lost this opportunity because of my goddamn phone… Michelle looked up and flashed one of those smiles they teach you in customer services training: The sort that’s supposed to put you at ease but is too transparent to have that effect.

‘Okay, everything’s in order here, Andy. I’ll just get you a contract from the drawer,’ she explained, making my heart speed up. For a minute, I felt confident, self-assured and above all lucky. ‘…and then we’ll get you credit checked and give you a start date!’ she finished. My heart sank right down to the gutter. In the space of a sentence, I’d soared and plummeted to such extremes. I didn’t even know how I was going to extricate myself from the situation – my credit history was, and is, the very opposite of reasonable. While I was in the middle of this crisis, Michelle had produced the contract from a desk drawer and slid it across the desk. While I was staring at it, dumbfounded and unsure, she reeled off a standard list of questions about my credit history from a script on the desk. I’m pretty sure that I failed every one.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she said, ‘but…’

‘Don’t worry; it’s fine.’ I responded quickly and cut her off mid-sentence with the lie. In my head, I was kicking myself. I was kicking seven shades of shit out of myself. This was too frustrating. I knew full well that it was all my own stupid fault, but I also knew that it was the stupid fault of a younger me. A younger, more naïve, more stupid me. I’d known already that I would be drinking that night but had hoped earlier that it would be in celebration. I made my excuses and left, half in shame, half in relief. It was over at least.

That was that, then. Another failure carved forever under my skin. I walked home in a haze of let-down, shame and defeat. My eyes darted back and forth to observe the sunlight bouncing off shoppers, loiterers and wanderers alike as they did the dead man’s shuffle to the half-time beat of this society’s drum.

The fingers burned. He’d been scratching at the plaster on the walls. That was the blackout. He couldn’t remember why. He never did. The pain had set in, but the eyes hadn’t focused yet and the broken glass was just a thin fog in front of the face. This was Joseph. Never Joe.

Joseph spat and a mixture of blood and stale alcohol splashed on the cheap lino floor. This was Sunday, then. Twisting his head over his shoulders, he focused his eyes on the sunlight raining in through the blind. This spring day was going to be hell. He scrambled to his feet, because he had to make an exit, and followed the walls towards the kitchen door. Exiting through the hallway, he fumbled the front door and made his escape down the street.

He slowed his pace after three hundred or so yards, when there was suitable distance between him and last night, and fixed his attention to the pavement under his feet. It was two hours ‘til opening. Now without a sense of purpose, he found a spot in the sun and smoked cigarettes from a broken packet. Some girl went past, carrying herself all shameful, then a guy with a German shepherd dog. The dog took a piss up the glass panel of a bus shelter and its owner pulled it on. The a.m. stinks. It stinks of fear, of regret and most of all, it stinks of piss.

That was a good one. Joseph decided he’d keep it.

“Hey, mate. You got a light?”

Joseph looked up and saw some kid who had only been half-civilised by his upbringing.

“Hey. Excuse me, erm, excu-“

“What? Oh, yeah. There you go. “ Joseph handed over the lighter, “thanks.”

“Yeah, cheers mate. Thanks.”

The kid walked on down the street and disappeared into the sun’s glare. Joseph went to light the hour’s third cigarette and noticed that the kid had turned the disposable lighter’s gas valve all the way to full. The prick. It didn’t matter now, anyway. The moment had trickled away. There was still an hour and fifteen minutes left to kill and that’s when fate smiled. That was always when fate would smile.

Joseph clocked the walking penis immediately. The boat shoes, the absence of socks, the half-mast chinos, the 1950s quiff, the awful sweater and the Buddy Holly glasses. He fell in step a few yards behind the walking penis as it cocked its merry way into town. Further along, there was a newsagent who had misspelled near enough every sign in his window. You don’t really need to be a man of letters to sell piss-poor tabloid rags to the sort of person who didn’t like to read.

The walking penis slowed its pace as it neared a bank on the corner of a junction and Joseph had stolen an opportunity. He increased his pace and fell in step beside the walking penis as they both came up to the cash machines. Joseph was going to try this shit called “mirroring” that he’d read in some quack library book. It was supposed to be a cheap way to influence someone’s actions.

He lined himself up and made sure that he was aware of everything the walking penis was doing. He reached for his wallet in synchronisation and then took a little look over his left shoulder, and then his right. He wiped the card’s chip with his left hand and then inserted the card into the machine with his right… only he hesitated. Stopped dead with the edge of the card just teasing the slot. Joseph paused for what became an uncomfortable amount of time. That was great. The walking penis was just standing there, with the card hovering at the slot.

Then the walking penis took a glance at Joseph to his left and inserted the card. Joseph stopped paying attention then, because he’d done what he wanted. That was all there was to do at ten past ten in the morning. He loitered for a moment, then got back into step behind the walking penis wondering where it would take him next. He hated it, too. He hated how it looked so happy in spite of itself.

Fuck it, he thought, and turned away.  

She drinks bottles, I drink pints. I give her a cigarette and we bitch about money, about work and about success. “Fuck this” I say, “fuck it” she agrees, “sometimes I just want to grab the whole world in my hands, bend it in half and unzip my fly - see if it flinches.” She laughs at this. She tells me all about how she never expected her life to turn out like this when she was in school. Friends are discussed too.

Change in the jukebox buys three tracks. Outside, they’ve got the speakers on real low so we can barely hear how much of a waste of money it’s been. She’s on the phone and misses the second track. I think I missed the first one as well.

It gets cold so we move inside. It’s my turn and she suggests tequila, which I oblige. We stop playing rounds and she wonders what it’s like to be a man. I don’t have much to say on the subject. The televised football makes us both cringe.

After more shots and a piss, we go out for a cigarette and she sees her friend. He’s with some guy from his job. They start talking shop and I break it up with politics. When that’s ran its course, we all sit at a table with chipped paintwork underneath an electric heat lamp. She tells everyone how her house mate has the shits today and we all smoke another cigarette.

Her birthday’s in May and she tells us about how she’s shit herself more than a few times. I guess old age isn’t going to be kind to the likes of us. This other guy is a photographer. They talk business and contacts and swap numbers but it’s a lot of shit. Nothing will happen. “Ben, do you know the last couple of digits of my fucking phone number? I’ve got the start of it in my head and I can’t fucking remember.”

That guy is called Liam. He shows me his poems that he keeps in a book filled with his awkward handwriting. We talk and I invite him to this spoken word night I go to sometimes. The guy isn’t amazing but he’s got soul… and that’s how we all are. Nobody we know has any real talent and that’s fine. Writing gets talked about for a while and we end up talking about crime. Her dad gets brought up - she’d love to know what it was like in prison but she has no idea. He did tell her that it was easier to find drugs than sleep.

I go for a piss and offend some woman by forgetting to hold open a door. When I get back, they’re still talking about her dad and it’s turned to how young or old everyone’s parents look. She says that her mother falls in love too easily. I light another cigarette and she tells somebody that we don’t know how sad she is that a rock star died. We are drunk.

Judas sat up in his chair. Gandhi and Hitler had finished their drinks and were motioning towards the bar. Judas got a frustrated expression on his thin face and walked towards the bar. Hell’s barkeeper was a tall, red daemon who occasionally took on the appearance of Frank Sinatra. This wasn’t one of those times, but the thing was still sharply dressed.

“Same again, Sam,” ‘cause that was its name, “keep the change.” Judas said as he reached into his money pouch and produced thirty pieces of silver. He slid them across the bar and Sam laid out three glasses of a sour red wine. A Springsteen track cut through the screams of the tortured souls and for a moment, the place seemed like it had atmosphere. Judas picked the three glasses up between his outstretched hands and brought them back to the table.

“This claret is piss. Sam’s got all sorts behind there, why the fuck is this all we get?” said Gandhi before taking a large swig and managing to belch and fart at the same time.

“Sam’s a funny guy.” Said Judas, sipping on his own drink and wincing at the acidity. It was always this piss. Someone should fucking say something to Sam. While Judas fumed silently, Hitler took a Windsor Blue cigarette from an old box, tapped the end three times on the table and sparked it with a match. He blew smoke into Gandhi’s face and chuckled to himself, feeling clever.

They all drained their glasses and Sam came over, looking just like Frank Sinatra, to collect the empties. Judas decided that he needed to say something.

“Hey, Sam. What the fuck are you playing at with this shit-cheap wine, huh? My silver’s good at the bar, you know it. Why the hell do you have to sell us short?”

“Remember where you are, J. You guys are smears of shit on the toilet paper of time, man. You don’t get to choose. Maybe if you learn to like the shit, they’ll give you something worse so be grateful.” Sam said.

A couple of minutes later, Sam came back with a jug of the piss-cheap claret and set it down on the table, telling the boys that it was on the house. They allowed themselves to be grateful for that on the sly. Glasses were refilled and drained often and the boys got boisterous. Hitler kept demanding that they go to a titty bar and Gandhi offered to phone up this girl he knew. Pure filth, really tall, blonde, sweet ass. He had a coin out, ready for the payphone at the bar, but Judas piped up and said that it was too early for that kind of antic and they should finish off the wine.

Several glasses later, Judas went to the bar and thanked Sam for the jug of wine. Sam brushed it off and refilled the jug, on the house again. Judas pocketed his thirty pieces of silver. As he carried the large jug back to the table, Judas had a spring in his step. He told the other boys with glee how the second jug was on the house. They took the second jug into a booth so that they could get some privacy from a family of Japanese tourists who were staring at them piercingly. Their story was one of sexual abuse and double parenticide. The boys had to get away from their hollow gaze.

“You know, there was this guy in India. He was told to go fuck himself, so he went out to market and bought a huge knob of butter. The guy greased up his entire top half, bent over and shoved his head right up his ass.” It was the best conversation Gandhi could come up with.

“What happened to him? Did he die up there?”

“Nah, he lived another twenty years after that. It was tuberculosis that finally got him. I can’t see how he caught it with his head up his ass. Fate’s a funny thing.”

Hitler threw half a glass of wine down his throat and nodded agreement. Judas stared into space trying to picture how a man could perform such a feat and why he didn’t suffocate. Proud of himself, Gandhi burped loudly and giggled at the rasping sound it made.

A Victorian gentleman in a neighbouring booth had taken exception to Gandhi’s manners and requested that he “pipe down”. Judas had seen him in there a couple of nights before, and the word was he was a disgraced army officer. Gave a load of horrifying orders in Africa that even the colonial powers thought worthy of his imprisonment. Of course, wealth and status saved him from the hangman.

Gandhi had drunk enough to think himself mighty. He called the guy a prick and a phony and a motherfucker. Hitler joined in the jeering with a well-placed “arsehole” and Judas shouted “yeah!” This was boiling over into a fight. It would have been a low-down bar scrap, too, if Sam hadn’t intervened.

“Guys… guys. Guys! Come on, buddy, calm down. Boys, the fuck do you think you’re doing? I thought I was doing you guys a favour and you gotta go and spoil it. The fuck am I gonna do, huh? Play nice. Come on, move over here.” He pointed to a booth at the other end of the room. Judas was muttering to himself as they shuffled over to their new seats. It was embarrassing.

The whole thing was pretty much forgotten after a few more drinks went down. This jug of wine seemed to be bottomless as they pounded down glass after glass, getting more vulgar and restless with every drop. They started to sing some old drinking songs as their wine tasting got out of hand:

“This landlady in Spain
had seven daughters, none of them plain.
She whored them for a sack of grain
and now the priest goes hungry.

The Queen of Denmark sits and shits
and never does go hungry.

This whore Florentine
had a problem drinking wine.
She once stole some from a church
and now the priest goes thirsty.

The Queen of Denmark sits and shits,
and never does go thirsty,”

On it went. Sam made them shut up after some six more verses ‘cause the other customers were starting to get rowdy. Hitler swaying. The boys were genuinely merry, swearing and burping and talking shit about each others grandmothers. After a few more glasses, they were done. They had to get out of there.

The walk home took all three of the boys in near enough the same direction, so they walked together. Hitler kept stopping to vomit in the street. Judas had to keep an eye out for the cops; they’d peel his kneecaps again if he got caught drunk and disorderly. All the while, Gandhi was slurring as he tried to sing Bohemian Rhapsody without dropping the Windsor Blue he’d tapped from Hitler pre-vomit.

They got home one by one. Judas got in first and immediately took off his robe, hanging it on a hook in the hall. He got a beer from the fridge and fell asleep in the armchair, scratching his balls and watching some terrible game show where a reformed alcoholic interviewed battered wives for prizes. He dreamed something hazy about a synagogue full of crows but he didn’t remember it.

When Hitler got home, he washed his face with cold water and crawled into bed. Still feeling queasy, though, he couldn’t sleep. He stayed up ‘til about four, when the sleeping pills kicked in. If he was anywhere else, the dose would have killed him. As usual, he didn’t dream of anything at all. This always frustrated him.

Gandhi hit the whisky when he made it inside. He drank himself blind and passed out on the living room floor wrapped in the shower curtain which had come loose during an abortive attempt to piss standing up. The morning was going to be a different sort of hell for all of them.

They met up again at around one and made to Sam’s bar for lunch. It had been a good night, they all agreed. That cheap, pissy claret had come good. They welcomed their next drink of it, so Judas was sent to the bar because it was always his round and he always had thirty pieces on him. He caught Sam’s eye and said “same again please, Sam.”

Sam returned with three drinks, took the money from Judas and watched his face drop.

“Aw, man… fucking white cider?!”

You will drink steadily from twelve until six. You will read Hot Water Music. You will become the scourge of the fucking internet. Later.

Rum, anyone?

Pt.I
“So you love your partner, you’re comfortable in your job and most mornings you wake up with a clear head?” Asks the man in the room, dripping red wine from the corner of his mouth like a bloodstain down his shirt, “it’s no fucking wonder you’re depressed.” He finally closes and the scene fades to black once it realises its purpose has been served. If you want to imagine in greater detail then perhaps you could trick your mind into thinking that there was also an artistic sign-off, zooming into the half-empty glass.

Pt.II
Scene opens up again in a different room. In here, the closest thing that we know to poetry drips from the walls which vibrate under the volume of sound.
“You know, we’re all okay - every one of us.” Speech breaks the silence as the tracks are suspended and a different character to the one that spoke before opens his mouth to let sound spill from his lips. “It’s just that to most people, okay isn’t the same as happy.” An all too familiar line is drawn in the sand once more, almost as a challenge. A voice is heard from the crowd, the rest of the audience unable to speak:
”It’s okay that we’re just okay.”

Pt.III
On wealth, success, fulfilment. Imagine the scene is blank and the script is burned; it’s up to no other but yourself to quantify success or affluence or how either make you feel.

“The sparrow is immortal, money is piss and you have been wasting your time.” - Charles Bukowski.

I’ve just had an article published (online, like) for the first time… and I got paid for it. I feel like a boastful little shit for broadcasting this, but fuck y’all - I’m making PROGRESS!

To offset the nature of this post, you can all enjoy this picture of a smug pooch:

…it’s pretty satisfying opening leftover beer on a school night.