Late Night Call

Everyone who is too smart, one of my downfalls, makes this mistake

They call up old professors who were pot addled, women chasers, frauds

The sharing of pal-around kind of events brought back to life from the dark holes of the old days 

They were on my committees, or I worked for them, something like that

I’d call them when I was drunk and particularly brilliant like it was the golden age of Ex-Graduate Students

I think it was 2:00 am and Doug answered like he was a dead man

He was still teaching at the University of Texas

Hello

Hey Doug, it’s me

Jesus Christ, do you know what time it is

He was agitated and about 50 or so years old, I hadn’t seen him in ten years

Yeah, I wanted to talk about that time you got on top of my girlfriend and squeezed her tits

I laughed

Fuck, you woke up my son, he has Down syndrome, he’s banging around in his room, yelling, I got to go

Don’t ever call me again

And then he hung up

Of course, that made me mad, and I called him back and when he answered I said, hey fuck you

I could hear his son crying and then his wife started yelling and I hung up