By Dean Steadman
Derek awoke in a room that wasn’t the room he had gone to bed in. He thought at first he must somehow have been hospitalized. But the room was much too cold.
Getting to his feet, he stood naked in black socks and wingtips. A suit and other clothing lay abandoned on a nearby table.
Bemused, he parted what he thought were floor length window curtains and found himself before a gathering of flushed faces.
“To Derek!” they shouted, raising their glasses high.
Peeved but resigned, Derek blew them kisses, bowed graciously and, closing the curtains, finished dressing for the occasion.
They seemed to take his reappearance very calmly, considering. Different.
I had a few days like this in my early college days… couldn’t remember where I was or how I got there. The wonders of partaking in the consumption of “bathtub gin” laced with moonshine. Aaah those were the days! Thankfully I was saved by empty pockets and hard labor bucking bales under the the pulsating heat of sun on hay fields of a Nebraska family farm.