Brandon left Bloomington later than expected after wrapping up his last final of the semester. In no hurry to spend the next three weeks at his parent’s place outside Atlanta, he decided to stop in Nashville for the night and see what the town had to offer. Currently, it offers Sylvia, who is talking his ear off two bar stools away from mine.

She's yabbering about the boyfriend she cheated on, her nephew, the movie "Crazy/Beautiful", how she’s never been with a black man, and on and on and on.  All of it is punctuated with repeated mentions of her current state of drunkenness.

"Sorry if that didn't make much sense - I'm a little drunk . . ."

"God, I can't believe I got trashed so quickly . . ."

"I wouldn't normally say this, but I'm drunk, so . . ."

When she moves on to chat with some friends a couple tables over, it doesn’t get any better for Brandon.  The next person that sits next to him starts going on about the failure of Christianity, how Obama betrayed his supporters, and various rants about the country falling apart.  This guy's an American but was born in Scotland so he claims to have an outsider’s opinion that apparently should be held in higher esteem. He doesn't have any trace of a Scottish accent.  No mention is made of his current level of inebriation.

Brandon and I never speak - I figure he’s got enough to deal with.   The extent of our communication was a sympathetic nod from me after he looked over and rolled his eyes while Sylvia rued her black cock void.  It's entirely possible that this was what he was looking for out of the evening. Given the one-sidedness of these conversations, though, I'm guessing this is bit more than what he was looking for.

I picture him getting to his parent’s house tomorrow afternoon and telling them about his stop in Nashville.

“How was it?”

“The people are friendly, but they won’t shut up.”