PATTERN REMINISCION or, REMISSION

ON THURSDAY MORNING, CHARLIE WOKE UP HUNGOVER. The previous night, he had been with his girlfriend, Lucy, and had mediocre sex that had been so mediocre because of his level of intoxication. Wednesday nights were for mid-week drinking because Charlie did not have class until late in the afternoon as opposed to his usual 10 or 11 o’clock classes on the other days of the week. While he had not stayed up particularly late, he had drunk quite a severe amount and unceremoniously fell asleep with his face half-nestled against Lucy’s breast while she was in the middle of telling a story about her family’s first cat. When he woke, she was gone, off to her eight-thirty oil painting tutorial. 

On Thursday morning, Charlie woke up hungover. Wednesday evening he had not had as much work as he usually needed to complete waiting for him, and thus, he rewarded himself by having a vodka Coke when he got back to his room after dinner. To his delight, Phillip called him at eight and asked if he would be interested in just a little bit of cannabis to take the week’s stress off. He obliged, and the two of them walked around the old toppled stone walls that used to keep the animals that roamed their college campus in– or, so he was told– as they smoked. That had left them parched, so it was only natural for them to head back to Phillip’s room for a few more vodka Cokes. Charlie, the entire time, thought of a paper he had to finish that was due the next day. He would finish it, eventually. Charlie and Phillip walked to Charlie’s room after Phillip’s roommate came back, and Charlie ignored a phone call from Lucy. Phillip and Charlie took two shots, back-to-back, and had slurred conversations about their mothers and where they would eventually want to be buried. 

On Friday morning, Charlie woke up hungover. He went to class, and dinner with Phillip and Lucy and Catherine and __ and __. He called his mother and told her that he had been terribly busy. He finished a mediocre paper and had a boring argument with Lucy that he couldn’t recall the specifics of by eleven o’clock that night, at a sweaty party with everyone; only really Phillip. He left with him, and they had sex, and 

on Saturday morning when Charlie wakes up hungover he thinks about dinner with Phillip and Lucy and Catherine and __ and __ how he tried to talk to them and it just didn’t quite work about how he might be losing something about how he feels like he misplaced something last night running through the halls of his house about how Phillip’s sweaty head is against his shoulder and it’s his damn fault in the first place he never finished that Anthropology paper so goddamnit because he will drink tonight too