Five dollars.

Five dollars. And it’s a terrible glass of wine, too; I’m not even sure the cardboard it came from would taste this bad. But habits become rituals, and rituals are important. I like to have a glass of red wine on stage with me, even if I rarely ever drink from it mid-set. But this time it might well come in quite handy. I’d been asked to play three songs at a tribute night, and no matter how much I practiced, I never quite remembered all of the words. I worked hard on getting the hardest parts right, but it seems I can only do so much. Having perfected all the tricky bits, it’s the easiest bits that throw me. I miss an entire verse of one song - and I fluff the grand crescendo in another. So much for that one. That glass of red wine keeps me upright as I leave the stage. In a break between acts, I shepherd my bandmates to take our amplifiers off the stage, and I then coordinate the movement of the crowd so we can take our heavy machinery to my car. I'm alone as I drive it all home. It's up to me to deal with all of this junk inside the house. I stop for a single piece of toast as dinner. I walk to the bus stop.

Twelve dollars. That’s what I pay the taxi driver just to get back into town. Turns out there’s no eleven o’clock bus. There’s a ten o’clock, a ten-thirty, and an eleven-thirty. So much for living in a Planned City.

Eight-fifty. For a single glass of Irish whisky, no ice. The bartender doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘neat’, the first time. Perhaps she thinks I want her to pour it in a clean, straight line. Or perhaps I was simply congratulating myself on a fine choice of beverage: ‘One glass of whisky. Neat!’

Five dollars. Just to enter one of the world’s most heinous late-night discos, purely to satisfy the whim of a girl whose birthday it hadn’t been since midnight. (Upon entry, the clock had struck 12.05.) Everybody here wants to look important. Everybody wants to look like they’re having fun. Sometimes I think a few might actually be having fun, inside their own soapy bubbles of self-importance. They’re not mainstream! They’re at an alternative disco! They know all the words!

Five dollars. Just to enter the comparatively nicer establishment across the road. And here we are again, in the same seats at the same table as the night before. Someone seems to have recognised us. He takes issue with my friend’s outfit. It’s not one mild comment, either; this little pisshead wants a whole conversation. Well, I figure I’ll show him. Soon I’ll wish I hadn’t. I’ll wish I’d found it amusing (it was, after all, quite amusing in hindsight). I’ll wish I’d deferred to his greater wisdom, and asked him every pithy fashion question I could muster, demanding his advice on all the important issues, such as matching coloured buttons or the correct placement of shirt collars. But no, what I do is, I fly right past all the world’s cleverness and summon my loudest tenor squeal. Then I call up the sharpest weapon in my verbal arsenal, the most jagged dagger in my rhetorical sheath. Yes, I yell at him - and with a rude word, too.

He asks whether I’m threatening him. It seems a fair question, given that I’m reaching up to grab his wrist. But since I clearly have the physical strength of a wilted sunflower, I’m somewhat surprised at his reaction. I pithily reply, ‘er, not really,’ and back down. It's not that I can’t take him; he too is likely to bend in a strong breeze. I just can’t bear the thought of reducing myself any further. I curse myself as I walk away. I handled that one badly. On reflection, I handled it all badly. I should probably learn from these things, but if I stop doing all of this, what on earth is it I’d have myself do?