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Excerpt from The Loafers
From The First Man in My Life, edited by Sandra Martin

All four of us were partaking in Rhonda’s first walk on the wild side. We laughed so hard we were crying when Studly made the car jerk to the beat of “Help Me Rhonda,” which blasted on the radio.

When we walked into the Idle Hour, she didn’t see the drunks slumped over the bar in a smelly old beach tavern that was full of townies drinking cheap beer off-season. Having just finished The Old Man and the Sea in our English class, Rhonda saw the Idle Hour as a haunt of the Hemingway Lost Generation. All I saw was the bullshit.

I had been around bars long enough to know full-blown losers when I saw them, so I just went out to the patio by myself to get away from the stale beer smell. I hung out at an old, cigarette-burned picnic table listening to the waves hit the rocks and watching the ugly plastic coloured lights strung up around the periphery pick up the moonlight off the waves. Amazingly enough, nature could even dress up the Idle Hour.

By the time I went back inside, all three of them were hammered. They had ordered french fries, which they hadn’t even eaten. I told Studly I had to get home.

He told me to “cool my jets” as he barely crept around the empty dance floor to “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling,” by the Righteous Brothers, with both arms clenched around the tiny Rhonda. Shaky and I sat morosely looking at each other. Shaky chewed on his coaster that said Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous and, between bites, said, “We were lining up shots with beer chasers. We challenged those guys over there from Bethlehem Steel, to see who could drink the most in a five-minute span. We drank them under the table.”

Christ. Shaky was slurring and Studly was weaving around the dance floor, staggering and laughing with Rhonda who was tipsy but not nearly as drunk.

“Guys we have to get going. It’s amazingly late and we have a forty-five-minute drive ahead. Studly, I’m driving your car and you’re sitting up on the back boot.”

"No way, you can’t drive stick shift. Don’t worry, my car knows the way home."

I knew we were in trouble.