The Gallant and the Glitterati

Soundtrack: Lana (Who else?)

I'm playing trivia.
A drag queen saunters nearby and flirts with me for the delight of those in attendance. I play along.
Bashful, shy, like it's my first time.

I leave before the game ends and stop by to see a friend working downtown elsewhere.
A young, fresh-faced coquette, glances nervously next to me. I bide my time and talk to my buddy. I don't intend to stay long as I'm now Cinderella. I can't stay downtown long, lest I turn into a pumpkin. I have that living on borrowed time feeling that comes with knowing you're holding your breath. I know I should not be downtown, but I've taken a dip in the shallow end of the pool but the temperature is dropping as the sun sets and I keep glancing at my towel nearby.

I felt the siren call and headed out to be part of the glitterati with all its false pride, illusory promises, and feeble attempts to appear adult-like. Old habits die hard, no?

The girl opens me up with some unimportant question. She is young. Slightly awkward. She doesn't carry conversation well and she's nervous. She flirts in her inexperienced way and it's endearing to an extent, if I'm capable of feeling such things with any depth any longer.
She asks what I'm drinking and I tell her I no longer drink. She's surprised but curious. I don't elaborate b/c I don't care to.

How do I intimate the decade of my life spent mired in spinning my wheels on the same beaten path of iniquity?
I don't and I talk to her simply and honestly. Some dude creeps on her and the body language and her deference to me paints the picture to anyone looking for art.
She's in school for ********.
She invites me to the next place they're going but I demure as I'm not so much physically tired, but tired of the rigamarole of downtown and people trying to squeeze a dollar's worth of fun out of 15 cents. I don't have the spirit for it anymore, hoping against hope that you'll meet the kind of person you'll virtually never meet at a place like this on a night like this at a time like this.

I have work to do in the morning but that never stopped me before nor figured into my decision-making. Though I am not tired from the gym, nor is it past 11, I pass up on the waste of time that would be ingratiating myself into her coterie and dealing with some clown hangers on that she's clearly not feeling and if she is, she can fuck them and my life will continue spinning as I get into my metal box and drive very fast to work surrounded by other ants building ant hills on a rock spinning in frozen space hoping nothing collides and destroys our giant ant hill.

As it is, I roll down my windows and consider powers greater than myself at work, forces unseen passing effect onto my illusion of control as I do one thing at a time....or do I?

I sleep deeper than I ever thought possible without booze or ****, dreaming vivid dreams which I cannot recall. I drive to work, the hipster-ish barista flirts with me as she does despite the myriad of girls I've brought into this shop over the course of * years in this city.