Mindy and I dove again into the smoky wood-paneled Lakewood Landing Saturday evening. After confirming our young profile in the mirrored wall, we sank into a tattered brown vinyl booth by the swinging front door and split a chicken Cesar salad complimented by Camels and white wine. She introduced me to two men with cockeyes: one with a straw cowboy hat, and one with a long memory for old American poems. Both men taught languages, and both were charmed by old country music and blues masters that nobody my age ever talks about around here. When last call rang out, Kyle and Doug ordered two beers and a whiskey a piece to pass the last 5 minutes, then invited us over to their home.

We passed the Greenville Avenue lockout where traffic snuck slowly, cops stood in huddled teams, and drunken TX/OU revelers studied strings of skirts that might unravel the evening into something more than just 2am. We tripped over the fans all the way up to Kyle’s front door, past swaying men urinating in the bushes and throwing up in the gutters.

Cool inside the lamp lit house with a wooden floor and a screened front door, I found a dark corner with shelves of books, and settled in to skim, while Mindy talked of her latest action item, while Doug listened with bobble head, while Kyle clacked his boots in time to a coarse record player that woke Hank Williams. Occasionally, he’d tap over to me at the little wooden table to tip his head and mumble softly his disappointment in Dallas women who don’t ever seem to want to dance, and I'd smile and nod sympathetically over his books.

We stuck together reading and reciting poems, making pancakes, black coffee and hand rolled cigarettes. Mindy made us promise not to give up the collective until the dawn happened; no matter who amongst us gave over to sleep. But Kyle left us to seek out a dance partner somewhere else; his boots and eyelids twitching to a tune we couldn’t make out, and the rest of us laughing into our stomachs and smiling into the palms of our hands so as not to cut in.