Syrupy Fingers

         Last semester I had a bad habit of going to bed very late very often. The problem is that I am an extreme morning person. At precisely seven AM a little invisible alarm clock that only my ears can hear, sounds every morning, without fail. I cannot go back to sleep... ever. Thus, I decided that this semester I would go to bed at eleven o’clock and allow for one night of craziness on the weekend. 

Last night three of my very best friends and I decided to watch Black Swan after we went to an on camera audition for the USC film school’s database. The audition took forever so Natalie Portman and her psychopathic thriller extravaganza had to be pushed back. I thought okay... it’s only an hour of lost sleep... no big deal, I’ll just be a little tired for my nine am class... er... whatever it’s only an hour later than I wanted to be home. 

The four of us piled on top of a bed and snuggled in for the show. Now two of us had seen the movie and two had not. Right after the scene where Natalie is stabbing herself in the cheeks with a nail file we all relaxed and my friend and I announced to the others, “it’s okay guys, that was the last really gorey thriller scene, relax, you may now safely remove your hands from your eyes”. Two seconds later, Natalie turns on a light to a dark kitchen and switches the light on. There stands Natalie's more demonic looking version of herself standing there. We all scream. Kneecaps go into chins, fingernails grab for the nearest body part to dig into, and 16 limbs wag wildly in the air. It’s a good thing no one in that dorm called DPS for a suspected rape... because we were making convincing sound effects. 

  The movie ends and we decide we are HUNGRY. We end up calling a cab and whisking off to a 24 hour diner. As we are waiting for the cab on the curb outside our school, I’m internally going through WWIII. I will not get to my bed until 2. As I sat back and watched my friends giggle and jump around in circles, I decided I had to make a decision and then shut my brain up. I would either be lying in my bed thinking 'I wonder what their doing? I wonder if it’s fun? Should I have gone?' OR I could go and fidget and rip up the wrapping of the straw in a billion pieces while the calculations would be reeling through my feverish brain. I just knew I would be adding the minimal hours of sleep I would be getting and comparing the number to the amount of hours I need to be focused on work the next day. 
       I know, I know. This is ludicrous! I realized, I was being so mean to myself. Either way I would loose and regret and weave a web full of regrets and should haves. I wouldn’t do that to a friend, so why was I doing it to myself? Right then, the cab screeched around the corner and I took a sharp breath in. My friend stretched out her hand. As I grabbed on and leap over the gutter and onto the dog pile I allowed myself to be present. 

This place, The Pantry, was amazing. It hasn’t closed since the day it opened in 1927! The best part was the floor by the cash register. It had at least 20 layers of the different floors the store had recycled through. Tile, wood, plastic, paints... like the rain rings of an ancient tree. The waiters were all short middle-aged men with bow ties and crisp white uniforms. There was everyone from families, to men who looked like they were straight out of “The Godfather”, to sheriffs on their break. We feasted on french toast and a dinosaur sized piece of chocolate cake. I looked around at the wood walls covered in yellow newspaper clippings and sniffed in the maple and grease scents dancing around my head. 

As we deliriously sat on the cab ride home with protruding bellies and droopy eyelids I looked over at the smirks on my buddies' faces. The downtown LA skyline was whooshing past me like frames of an old movie. I looked down... these sticky, maple syrup fingers are worth a lifetime of goodnight rests.