Walking into a restaurant with a 30% discount on alcohol is the first step on a dark path toward tequila.

“Are you sure?” G asks, pouring the seventh round of shots.

“Who you asking? Me or you?” I boast, trying to figure out the mystery of picking up a slice of lime. G laughs. I get the lime between thumb and pointer. I fill with pride. I take the shot. I blink.

My eyes do a split. When they come back together, my left contact is knocked out of place.

“Shit,”

M sits across from me.

“What?”

“My contact. Does anyone here wear glasses?”

I look around. A girl raises her hand.

“What is your prescription?” I ask, tugging the lens from my eye and accidentally dropping it into the bowl of salt.

She pulls out her glasses. She puts them on.

“Oh, I don’t have a prescription. I just think they look cute.”

I glare at her. My other contact, feeling lonely, begins to itch. I slip it out and flick it somewhere.

I look around.

The world has become food coloring droplets on a paper towel; the consistency of a drowning man’s last thoughts.

I look across at the blob of condensed air that is M.

“It’s a stylistic choice,” he defends the girl.

“Oh, bullshit, it’s mocking the handicapped, next thing you know, crutches will be cool.”

I stare up at the light. It is a pool, shimmering.

“It’s not like that,” M says. I can feel his eyes rolling around his tone.

I grunt. “You’re right, it’s more like black-face.”

M thinks about it. My fingers stumble around the table in search of a glass of water.

“Yeah, except you weren’t enslaved,” M reminds me.

“No,” I shrug, taking a drink of what turns out to be a Vodka Tonic, “just blind.”

I squint at M. It helps. He is giving it some serious thought.

“No,” he decides, “slavery is definitely worse.”

“Yeah,” I sigh, “yeah.”

G’s hand appears out of nowhere. An eighth shot of Tequila.

I can smell it.

*

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