$28.26 or 2826?

So, I went to my local H.E.B. tonight to pick up a few things (including some sparkly mega-long fake eyelashes, a box of Cheerios, and some sewing needles). And the cashier says to me, “$28.26.”

But what I hear is, “2826.”

Not the same thing.

The difference is about ten years and five or six hundred tabs of X ago.

Instantly, I am back in Houston at Club 2826 (now defunct, of course. The only web reference I could find was in this DJ’s Myspace bio).

Pounding music pulsating, surging, reverberating through my body - packed ass to sweaty back with beautiful people grinding to the beats in a sea of Tanorexics and Glamazons, Strippers and Drug Dealers - strobe lights (or is it the drugs?) making everyone appear to be moving in flashes of freeze-frame photography – tracers of lights: blues, reds, whites, streaking through the smoky, thick atmosphere illuminating the faces of people so hyped up on GHB, cocaine, and Ecstasy that their eyes look like they may actually pop out of their heads, their tongues might succeed in wiping their lips right off of their faces, their shivery 98-pound frames might collapse into convulsions.

And there I am so hopped up myself that I can barely breathe – my eyes rolling back in my head – my barely-clad body broken out in tiny gooseflesh, shivering and sweating at the same time, oxygen eludes me, my boyfriend props me up like some limp, beautiful doll, while my head lolls to one side and my mouth gapes, stupefied.

Standing in the HEB, my stomach started to churn. I was sick. I needed to take a shit. Bad.

I paid the cashier and went home to my Real Friday night: curled up with my dog and reading.

I’m thankful to be alive and at home on a Friday night with my dog.