Moonlit Midnight: Unwise Teenage Escapading

The following is a recollection that I wrote down spontaneously when someone on OkCupid asked me to "tell a story" about "any moonlit adventure". My response was lengthy:

I don't remember seeing the moon on this night, but here goes...

Once upon time, in the distant year of 2012, Sonya went to a karaoke bar in a mystical city called San Francisco. The establishment was set up so that groups could rent individual rooms, and then rock the night away for however many hours they had purchased. Sonya and her friend smuggled in a bottle of vodka (she was 18 at the time) and Sonya liberally spiked her soda. Alcohol turned the night into a window blurred with condensation, the wet mist too thick and persistent to wipe away.

Sonya's friend didn't want to sing. He wanted to listen to her self-conscious crooning, smiling as he sipped his own (lawfully ordered) beer. Sonya didn't know most of the available songs, but she delivered a decent rendition of "Call Me Maybe".

They left the karaoke place. Sonya remembers the streets as slanted and grey, tipping even more steeply than the San Francisco stereotype. Neon announcements and mellow traffic lights glittered against the pavement. Sonya talked fluently in the smooth endless sentences of inebriation, free-associating and unbound from the conventional rules of chronology. Her comments were excessive and effusive. Sonya assured her companion that he had captured her affections, that she thought he was Good and Worthy. It was not a romantic sentiment, nor a sexual promise, and he understood this. Regardless, the next morning would expose Sonya as fickle and false. But in the harsh city night she felt genuine, and let the words spill from her in the same cliche way that her drink had sloshed on the table earlier.

They walked farther than Sonya can recount or recall. Eventually the two passed those fierce swans that glide serenely as swans ought to, but will savage anyone who gets too close with a handful of dry bread. They wandered beyond the prickly topiary, following disco music. Sonya and her friend dodged faux-antiquated Grecian columns and came to an enchanted open place, where roller skaters spun with glow sticks in hand. Someone had brought a powerful boom box, or maybe there were speakers. Sonya felt prompted to dance.

After that point I blacked out completely instead of just fading and reappearing. But yeah, apparently midnight roller skating is a thing. We caught them at the Palace of Fine Arts.

// James Buck //