Just a Friday Night
Oh, I really never meant to let this get out of hand.
We were just three dudes standing in the middle of Penn Station in NYC, sometime around midnight. My friend Jacob was checking the prices of tickets to Boston, my friend Jack was doing a rundown of the logistics in his head.
I’d like to think I was standing there calm and collected, basking in the afterglow of my 5 or 6 drinks. In all honesty, I must have been doing my own calculations of how I would fit this random trip into my schedule of backlogged homework and struggling bank account.
It was the first time Jacob had ever met Jack. I was good friends with Jack my first year, and we lived on the same floor till halfway through my second year. I ended up moving in the second semester because I was feeling quite lonely at the time and decided to make an extreme change in the name of socialization. I ended up living with Jacob for the next 2 and a half years.
Inevitably, it was time for my two worlds to collide, something I’ve never been very good at handling. We started off the night meeting up at Columbus Circle. I had just visited the TJ Maxx in the area to purchase a new raincoat, mostly because it was raining that night. I met them by the mall and we started walking up north, unsure of where we were heading.
We made small talk, me trying to show the two the similar interests they had. We were all pretty awkward to some degree, so needless to say we were in desperate need of some beverages.
We started off the night at a local barcade. Or was it the dive bar. I’m not sure anymore, but in this version, we’ll go to the barcade. We had fun, but it was limited by the expensive drinks and our own personal immersions in our respective games.
I could tell it wasn’t the vibe and we left a little disappointed. Conversation was very slow to reach us, and it only arrived halfheartedly, with strangers that were semi-forced together. It was sad realizing I couldn’t seamlessly make a connection between two of my friends. I guess people are just hard to figure out sometimes.
Before we called it a night, I mentioned that we should visit a dive bar. 1) because I didn’t really feel like spending much money and 2) because why the hell not.
It was this place called Billymark’s West, off 32nd street I think. From what I heard, it’s closed down since the COVID-19 pandemic. To be honest I was surprised it was still up and running in 2017.
I’d never been to a dive bar so I was in for a shock. When they said no-frills, they really meant no frills. It was dinky, strange lighting, filled with the kind of people that really had nowhere else to be tonight but there.
It was also perfect. Granted we stuck out like sore thumbs, a couple of Ivy League students among blue-collar workers of New York. But hey we weren’t complaining, just happy to be somewhere that suddenly felt genuine.
We sat down, intrigued by the riff-raff nature of the environment and astonished at the low prices of the drinks they offered. Within an hour, we were pleasantly smashed, just a couple of 20-year-olds grabbing a beer on the weekend. We didn’t belong, but everyone was drunk so no one really cared anymore.
We ended up losing a game of pool to guys 10 years ahead of us. I played ok but let’s just say I wasn’t the weakest link out of the three of us (it was Jacob).
That awkwardness that had pervaded the air had dissipated, giving way to a pretty hearty friendship. We drank and talked until we couldn’t drink and talk anymore.
Sometime in that New York evening, we took off, stumbling out of Billymarks. It was the first time of many times that I would leave this little hovel over the next few years, and I’m very sad that I won’t be able to return.
We stumbled our way through the city looking for the 1 train. We climbed the scaffolding, we danced, we stared at the Empire State building, still amazed that we got to live in this incredible city.
Our journey led us to the Penn Station bus terminal, which just happened to be above the subway stop. Through conversations that were mostly out of my control, the idea of taking the midnight bus to Boston arose.
It was revelrous. Just three drunken fools making critical decisions that they shouldn’t be making. I stood there seriously deciding whether I wanted to wake up in Boston tomorrow. I was also just struck by just how incredible this moment was, this freedom, the fact that we could pick up everything and leave for another city in a moment’s notice. The liberty of youth.
As you can guess by the title, we in fact did not make it to Boston that night. We returned back to campus and slept in our familiar dorm beds, dreading the coming hangover that would be upon us later that morning.
While we never made it to Boston, we talked about that night for the next few years. We might not have taken the trip but our spirits did, and our hearts slept in Boston that night.
