“I used to be a drinker, would get hammered on the regular; no hangovers, always made it to work. But now drinking costs money at bars if you don’t want to put up with the monkeys. And the young white guys you run into at bars that sell something worth drinking—they wanna be niցցers. So what’s the difference?

“This one time, maybe twenty-one, twenty two years ago, before I met you I had just started working here. I wasn’t even at a bar but a house party, drinking whiskey. I got hammered—don’t even recall how I got here, but I was here, in the middle of the night, shopping. There was this one particular monkey; a good guy really—except for being a monkey. He can’t help the fact that he was born a monkey, and he did his job, so I left him alone, got along with him on the job.

“Anyways, I’m in here trying to buy something and this monkey is making fun of me, getting on my back about being hammered. I’ve got a monkey on my back and I’m tearing it off if I have to commit murder. Whiskey, whiskey is murder juice. It never took much to get me torqued up about a monkey so I went ape shit, and charged at him. I remembered wanting to rip him in half: seeing his jabbering monkey face cackling like a clown, wanting to grab those skinny arms and break them off and shove one up his ass—I was gone.

“You know, them people might move as slow as molasses on the job, but when they need to move they can move. I was tearing across the store at this guy—was pretty fast when I played offensive line. But this guy was bouncing over the registers like Spiderman on crack, and locked himself in the office so I couldn’t get to him.

“I was pissed, so, I guess figured I’d go get me a monkey someway and started driving. I remember waking up with my face slamming into the windshield. I was pissed, so I put it in reverse, and that’s when the cops blocked me in and arrested me. I might not be the brightest bulb, especially when I’m drunk, but I’m not stupid enough to fight the cops.

“There was so many people at the jail there was like twenty-five of us in one room with two guards. The next day I woke up next to this gigantic black guy who told me that I was attacking the wall and cussing it out after they brought me my sleeping pad. Two days in jail and I didn’t even get to ring a monkey’s neck! Had to pay a fine, my insurance doubled for two and a half years. I’ve changed my ways over the years and still can’t believe I’m alive after all of the stuff I’ve done.

“Whiskey—whiskey and monkeys getting on your back, will do it every time.”