Big pint glass by my side. I’m like a strung-out hippie in Budapest, Hungary. Cruising through the city limits waiting for a load of laundry to heal my wilted soul. Been traveling for weeks throughout Europe. And now I’m sitting in a well-lit bar in the center-west area of the city.

I guess I’m behind on writing. Been that way since Da Nang. I got lazy there. Even through I wrote a book of poems, after writing another book of poems throughout Cambodia, Bali and New Zealand.

Traveling is hard. Especially alone. I do most of everything alone. That’s what being a writer is. It’s lucky that I have a girlfriend with whom I communicate on a daily basis. Otherwise, sharing these words would be sorta like jacking off.

Laughing at myself here in the corner, bringing the pint to my lips.

Well, you know. I got to Bratislava, Slovakia on a whim. Hadn’t planned to go there. In fact, I had wanted to go to Vienna. When I was in Berlin, I became enamored with Beethoven, Mozart, etc. I hadn’t been able to listen to any good classical music on a routine basis, having been traveling so much. (I think my English is getting wilted, too.)

When I was back in South Philly, I listened to classical music on a live stream or I played the (very few) records I had. In Berlin, I decided to listen to a local classical music LIVESTREAM. That perked my gonads. And then in Prague, I did the same. EXQUISITE.

I did that in Bratislava, too. While drinking a bottle of local white wine. I hadn’t been submitting anything for a very long time and I had all these tabs on my laptop OPEN. (ONE OF THOSE.) So I clicked on one. They, a literary mag, wanted a longform issue of work. Long poems, long stories—nothing shorter than 5,000 words. And poems had to be at least 7 pages.

Jesus. I sat there drinking. “Don’t go delving into your bad habits,” I told myself, speaking to the wind. The purple, soft light out through the wind. Pink and golden. I was in a four-bedroom mixed dorm, lonesome. But not blue.

And then, after about an hour or so, a kid walked in. Sweaty and heaving. He was from the middle of Slovakia. Had a Misfits tattoo on his arm. We talked about that. (The kid above my bunk the first night had been from Turkey and recommended Cappadocia, for my girlfriend and I.)

Friday night in Bratislava. I’d already done plenty of walking around, exploring the parks, getting some strange and disdainful looks from the locals. What was there to do?

I don’t remember.

Saturday night came and I’d done enough walking around, exploring. I’d seen the Bratislava castle. I’d taken photographs around the touristy sections and I’d even gotten lost, somehow, in the outer limits. The river was nice, the Danube. Cruise ships rolled by. Rolled? Floated.

Strange bugs came out once the sun went down. (I should mention that the sun doesn’t go down until after 9 PM at these latitudes, from Berlin, to Prague, to Bratislava, and also here in Budapest.)

I’d done some of my copywriting work out by the water, on a bench. It was nice. They had WiFi for the tourists in a lot of areas. That was cool. I could be emo. Listening to music. On a bench. Working. In Bratislava. Fuck the weird looks. I felt good. Plus, they spoke in a language I didn’t understand.

Actually, there has been more English spoken as I’ve gone further south in Central Europe. But that could also be my imagination????

I went to my hostel bedroom, ready to call it a night. A friend had told me to watch Euro Trip. The movie. I rented it from You Tube at about 8:48 at night. On a Saturday.

Just then, a girl burst into the room. She was wearing a short green dress and she had long, dark hair. She wore glasses.

“HEY,” she spoke to us. (There was a dude in the bunk below me.)

“WHERE ARE YOU GUYS FROM?”

That initiated a conversation between the three of us. After twenty minutes, I got outta bed and started drinking with the dude, he was from England. Used to be in the Army. Said he’d been to 45 countries, including Kenya and Afghanistan. The girl was from Macau. She said she was jealous when I told her that I had a girlfriend.

“Just kidding!”

Okay, then I was walking with the British dude to get some beers. We got back to the hostel, started bullshitting some more. Soon enough, he had a can of whiskey and soda that we were chugging together. Then I put on my green Converse sneakers.

We went out. Decided against two strip clubs, after creepy vibes. I showed him an Irish bar. We had a beer there, each. Then we went to a music bar?

Drunk people dancing. We had a few beers. I told him the ladies loved him. He was taller than me, had a thick, grizzly beard. Brown. And he was muscular. In fact, the girl back at the hostel had even made a remark about his muscles that made me laugh so hard I nearly spit out my beer.

When we were in the bar, a very tan girl came up to my friend. “WILL YOU DANCE WITH MY FRIEND?” She asked. He was shy.

“Dude,” I told him after the girl had walked away, “why didn’t you dance with her?”

“Coz, mate. We need fresh beers.”

He was right damnit. I went to the dance floor. He brought the beers on over, eventually. After dancing to a few songs, a fight broke out. Two black guys came around a corner swinging chairs. One of the bouncers slipped and fell on his ass. I went over, after putting my beer down.

“GUYS,” I said, “JUST CHILL. CHILLLLLLLL. SOMEBODY IS GONNA GET HURT.”

The black guys looked at me all wild-eyed. They were frozen with fear and panic. I could tell that they were afraid of what they had gotten themselves into. Otherwise, I would’ve been the one to get hurt.

They ran. The fight had been stopped by me.

We were toasted, my British friend and I. In the morning, I couldn’t get outta bed.

“Come on, man,” he said, “let’s go get a pint.”

It was about 11.

“Hell no.”

“Well, it was nice meeting you both.”

I shook the young girl’s hand. My British friend exeunted.

After another hour—I’d somehow managed to message my girlfriend. Life is hard. My British friend had been messaging me. I got up. The cleaning lady came in. She had headphones in her ears. She was sweating and started talking in Slovak. I shrugged.

I got outside by the water. A soft rain was puzzling the Earth.

Then I made my way to the bar, begrudgingly.

“I’ll finish this drink and then come to you,” my British friend told me. He had met some crazy Slovak dude.

They showed up. In the drizzling rain.

The three of us were all walking to the Slovak dude’s “bar”.

“What do you do?” He asked us. He was wearing a blue zip up, bright blue. With black and yellow designs. He had a brown beard, neatly trimmed. Or maybe it just grew in that way. And glasses. Artistic. You know the kind. He looked like he was straight outta Brooklyn.

“WHAT IS YOUR REGULAR LIFE?”

He was yelling at us along the sidewalk.

“DO YOU WANNA BE LIVING IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!”

He was quoting SNL.

I laughed, even though the whole scene was strange. I needed a beer, I guess.

We got to his “place” which was a small room. With a wooden installation. The installation was supposed to be a whale. Made out of trash. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen artistically.

He had kegs. Poured us some beers. We drank them. He played loud music from a little JBL speaker. People walked past outside. Tourists and locals, alike. He shouted at them incoherently.

Whenever he talked, he got very close to our faces. My British friend and I kept stealing glances at each other. We thought he might be gay. But we didn’t know. He got very close and after he fed us vegan wraps he started talking about sticking his finger up dudes’ butts.

The three of us went outside, after an hour or two.

“Those beers really helped,” said I.

“I told you,” said my British mate.

We each had our beers in plastic cups, by then. We peered heavenward at the grayish clouds arm-wrestling one another.

The Slovakian dude said he had to go to a nearby bar to retrieve one of his friend’s bags. We followed him. (After pissing on the grass under an overpass.)

“HOW MUCH FOR YOUR WIFE AND CHILDREN?” The Slovakian dude yelled at a restaurant when we passed by. He said he’d been a photographer for the government, made 800 Euros per month. He was strange, all right.

When we got to the bar, he went in there. I saw that as our chance at an escape.

“COME IN WITH ME,” he said.

I pretended to do that. Then I turned my back on him and stared at all of Bratislava. Five nights. What the hell? Most people only did one. Most people didn’t go there at all. The women were all right. They were better than that.

When he came out of the bar, he called up his buddy. They started talking. Then our Slovakian host got on his back on the bench out front of the bar. I began walking away, down cobblestone streets. I turned around. My mate was getting the idea.

“Let’s keep walking.”

We did that. I turned around after a few more steps.

Nobody was there.

We went to a place to get some greasy food. Talked about how he was probably gay. And that was fine. But why was he so crazy? Why didn’t he just tell us? Etc.

Got back to the hostel. I was toasted.

My friend sat in the bed adjacent, upper bunk. He facetimed some girl who was staying in Vienna.

When he left that night for Budapest, we fistpounded. Cool, man. See you later.

Bratislava. Go there. It’s a drinking town. Or city.

Yeah.