From over here I can see all the same old silhouettes. The old men chatting about the young days while leering at women half their age, the middle-aged women in skimpy outfits, the nineteen-year-old girls looking twenty-five, acting twenty-two, and talking sixteen-year-old things, and us, mainly me, pondering the night away. And then the conversation starts:

n    Did you hear what happened to that Punjabi girl?

n    That foreign guy knocked up that girl from that place.

n    My parents keep bugging me about college, but I’d rather be hanging out around here.

Etc, etc, etc.

The conversations might change a bit, but the atmosphere carries the same inertia. What are we doing? Where are we going? These are the questions we all avoid.

n    Hey, someone says to me, so did you get the replies from those

American colleges?

n    Yeah, I reply. I got rejected again.

And that’s the light water we tread when talking about the future. The ‘future’: such a dirty word, don’t you think? At times like these I just like to sit back and listen to the words being spouted by these characters. Trying to find the gold in the gloom, I guess. The most fun is this half-American half-Nepali kid who loves to talk about San Francisco, like he lives there, when actually he’s only been there once when he was ten. He strings up bits and pieces from memory, with facts from Google, and the trivia his father tells him. Everyone knows he’s a load of shit, but it helps to pass the time.

n    Is this all we’re meant to be?                                                                                                                             

n    Crying out we’re not lonely.               

You’re such a pig! A girl yells and runs out. Suddenly I feel the urge to go and comfort her. I sprint after her all the way down to the street. Hey, I say. Are you alright? She’s crying, better give her a napkin. Thank you, she says. It’s fine. So what happened, my lady? She begins, You see the guy up there is my boyfriend; well, he’s not anymore. Turns out he’s dating someone else, or has been dating someone else since last month, and he only tells me now, and all the things we’ve done, and when I told him I wanted to take things slow; now he gets mad and starts bragging about the other girl like I already knew, and then accuses me of being a prude, even after… after… after… And then she cries some more. I put my arm around her and say, Hey, you’re a beautiful girl, and there are going to be guys who’ll hurt you, and take advantage of you, and all you can do is to get stronger with each mistake and try to come out on top.

I comfort her some more for a while and take her to a taxi. Before she gets in she kisses me on the cheek and writes her number on one of the unsoiled napkins. Call me, she whispers, and then fades away into the stardust-covered night. I stand still and take in the beauty of the moment for about five minutes or so. Then I tear up the napkin and turn back. Nope, I’m still bored.

I return to the same spot, and as predicted, they’re still talking about the same things. T. Ray asks me what did I do with the girl from before and I tell him; he teases me for being too much of a good boy, and then begins his tirade about all the girls he’s been with, or as he likes to call them, his conquests. He’s a bit misogynistic, given that he has an overbearing mother, but it always surprises me how many girls he’s dated. T.Ray views dating girls as a form of revenge against womankind, seeing as how he torments, manipulates, takes advantage of , and leaves them, exactly in that order. I sometimes wonder why I’m friends with him. But he’s really rich, so I guess I can let it pass.

The rest of the group… What were their names again? …anyway, let’s just say that a sick boy, an overweight but trying to hide it girl, the annoying best friends, the quiet when sober crazy when drunk guy and the San Francisco guy were watching the band play. You can find those sorts of people at every bar—the weekend rock stars. Nothing special whatsoever.

 Sometimes I wonder if this is all there is? Facades and masks hiding empty shells of hypocritical idiocy. Has evolution really brought us all the way here to waste our time away asking ourselves why we’re wasting our times away? A clang goes up in the air when I realise that a waitress has just tripped on the floor and broken all the glasses of beer she was carrying. I look on and stare at her face. She’s so ugly. She keeps saying sorry, as Francisco guy screams at her for getting a bit of beer on his shirt. How worthless—the both of them. Anyway, what was I thinking? Oh yeah, hypocritical idiocy.

Apathy is what’s wrong with the world. People just don’t care that other people are being hurt and degraded, even right before their eyes. It makes me sad, really. Hey, let’s go, T.Ray says, and pay your share dude! I don’t have to, I say. With a helpful and awesome friend like you, I coax him. While getting up, Francisco guy steps on the waitress’s hand and we all laugh.

Outside, the night has gotten

busier. The shady people have stepped onto the streets to cheat, and the naïve people are all ready to

be cheated. It’s mostly the tourists, paying a hundred dollars for things worth next to nothing at all, the poor dimwits. A beggar child asks the Francisco guy for some money. They always go for those who look foreign. The Francisco guy and quiet when sober crazy when drunk guy steal the kid’s bowl and throw it to each other. A mildly funny sight. Sick boy screams at them to go get the car. What a boring night, I think.

So, so boring.