When does Yorkside close again How many drinks is What was her name the girl the Girl whose face was demure and innocent whose skirt was cheap? The bouncer’s felt marker cross on my hand the ash of my forehead Ash Wednesday, Toad’s Wednesday … Woad’s — Wash! The black of the marker on my hand is ash on my forehead is a crucifix. I am the resurrection and the life. I am become the Word I am become the Woad.

The horror of this strait and dark prison is increased by its awful stench. I’m so fancy, you already know, cries the siren, heard but not seen. As my heart once danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide, so my limbs now dance to the beat, dirtier than the DKE basement. Trapped in trap music, I myself am hell, but the orgiastic riot is rapturous. On the floor the Yalies come and go, talking of “Directed Studies, bro.”

I grope in the darkness of my own state. Until the groper becomes the groped. Does it have a name, this thin creature with hands and a fecund, swaying waist, that moves ever closer to me? The neon of her bootyshorts sways me to kinesis. She goes by Mary. Virginal? Alas. Ascending to heaven on a greasy pole.

— Kiss me, she said.

Ravished over her I stood, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the pizza warm and chewed. Joy: I ate it: joy.

Joy jogging jogging up to East Rock Hill with you, Nora. Memory in the strobes and blackness took me to you, when the trees were in their Autumn beauty, the woodland paths were dry, when I was conscious of nothing in the world but the dark pressure of your yoga pants ass. I am unfaithful! Liberame domine!

An exile from boarding school, silent and cunning, I am broken by college, by Dick Pic Yik Yaks, by unfiltered Internet at ungodly hours. Animus bends to corpus, as my prick bends towards her in the Woad’s heat, alighting my loins … Phototropism! Chem 110 imbibed my pores with understanding. Now they leak sweat and sin. But I am stultified by desire.

Take me back to the pregame, safer than the womb of my mother, wet amniotic. IKEA cushions scatter a dorm clad with Bob Marley “Pulp Fiction” posters, ironic beyond irony? Naughty little gin sloshing in my gullet, spills on my shirt. EDM trickles out of the infant speaker

— Is she coming tonight?

— I know her from Tinder!

He that swipes right sitteth at the right hand of the Father

— She has a paper tomorrow, has to work

— What about him?

— Already there

— Hey pass me a cup. Can we play pong?

The pain which will inflict my damned soul in hell is the pain of conscience. 18 years on this earth, yet I brandish a plastic rectangle claiming 21. Faithful to the one, yet lusting after the many. Damned by numbers! From my waist I can feel now I am harder than my math midterm.

Hurtle out of the cave, free of the noise. Stumbling now, drank those drinks. Drinked. Drunk? Bouncer, bumped. Excuse me. Breathless in the new air, the cold air. Sidewalk streetlight city traffic cone blare and din of sirens. Sickly feeling. Gin. Gut. Gulp. Hold it back, hold it back now. This unholy baptism brought to you by Budweiser riddled with Pabst Blue Ribbon spewed up on the sidewalk. Static society, slimy sobriety. Snotgreen vomit chunks ooze down my shoes.

Woad’s is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake.

Mr Toad in top hat, ash cane imminent, croaks a goodbye. To bed, to Berkeley, to section on Thursday. A holy communion of flies and bile. On Wednesdays, we pervert the Sabbath. This is my body. Take, eat in remembrance of me. Will I rise and return in seven days? Yes I said yes I will Yes.