I hope he learned a valuable lesson

Nathan’s friend Crazy Bryan is staying with us for the foreseeable future, until he finds his feet in Seattle. He’s coming from Twin Falls, where he went to school with Nathan, and I would be heartless indeed to cast away someone seeking refuge from there. We call him Crazy Bryan for several reasons: first, we know far too many Bryans to let them all to be addressed by their naked Christian name; second, there’s already a Socialist Bryan and a Little Tiny Bryan, and there are a finite number of adjectives in the English language, many of which are curse words; thirdly and most importantly, Crazy Bryan is crazy, maybe even Crazy, and Nathan has referred to him this way since high school. Bryan’s always saying irreverent things, and as with anyone who cracks wise that frequently, his hit rate isn’t golden. He’s had some gems during our brief acquaintance, though, such as “Does threatening them with a knife count as cash?” Also, as Nathan has explained to me, Bryan frequently enacts insane stunts he knows will cause him bodily grievances purely for his friend’s amusement.

Today, for example, Bryan took it upon himself to test the limits of Zoka’s coffee shop. “I wonder if they’ll ever cut me off from espresso.” “Bryan, it’s a coffee shop, not a bar. You won’t get cut off.” He tried anyway, and managed to ingest 17 shots of espresso before running out of money. Actually, that was yesterday; today he only made it to seven. Yesterday he was fine, but about twenty minutes ago he spewed mocha chunks in the toilet; from the sound of it, he wasn’t having that great a time in there.

My latest masterpiece of pop culture ran in the daily today, and hopefully you read it and enjoyed it. On Monday I turned in a short story to my writing class to be work shopped tomorrow, and one of the protagonists is an “indie kid.” I wonder if they’re going to think it’s me? This will be the test of whether anyone who reads my stuff ever recognizes me in real life and makes the connection – I’m guessing no, but the die is cast.