Audio By Carbonatix
Next to the two-dollar tubes of cherry-flavored Chapstick, above the eight-dollar packs of Parliament Lights and Marlboro Reds, and beneath the one-dollar bags of Sun Chips sit three, maybe four rows of 5-Hour Energy bottles. Berry-flavored. Two ounces for three bucks.
Before tonight, I’d never tried the trendy energy shot with no sugar and only four calories. In fact, I’d been on a hiatus from coffee for months, drinking zero cups each morning instead of my usual two French presses’ worth. Yet, as I feed a borrowed five-dollar bill into the vending machine separating the two main-floor bar areas of Jackson’s, I’m…giddy. Oddly excited. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because my decision to jump on Monty’s bandwagon (he’s already finished one by the time I return from a bathroom run) means my night is destined to be different from the slow, steady slip into beer drunkenness I’ve come to rely upon. Different from a balls-out blitz of tequila shots or vodka mixed drinks. Something altogether new and exciting.
As it turns out, though, all that’s different is my elevated heart rate.
According to the label directions, I should drink one ounce for “moderate energy” and the whole bottle for “maximum energy.” I go for broke, stomaching the sucralose-flavored swill like I would a Diet Rite. Which is to say, with a scowl on my face and a neck-to-shoulder shudder. The bottle warns I might experience “Niacin Flush,” a proper noun I didn’t even know existed, which is (apparently) a hot feeling and skin redness lasting a few minutes. I don’t experience this. Just the feeling, minutes later, that my heart might grow hands, then claws, and tear itself out of my chest from the inside. I fill my glass from one of the three plastic pitchers of Coors Light dotting our tiny table and head for the patio.
There I’m met with a gust of crisp autumn air and the muffled sounds of Saturday night at Fado and Sing Sing wafting across the square block of parking lot between venues. I feel instantly better, though it isn’t because of the oxygen. It’s because of the bright-green AstroTurf beneath my feet, which is so…soft. Curiously comfortable. Were I not currently in the throes of intense palpitations, I might lie down on it, make a synthetic grass angel or two. Instead, I head back inside, refill my glass and try to focus on the five college football games playing on hi-def televisions all around the place.
Try as I might to care about the games, I can’t concentrate. I don’t know whether to blame the vitamins B6 (20 times daily value) and B12 (83 times daily value) or the 1,870 milligrams of “Energy Blend,” but sitting still just isn’t going well. Heart throbbing aside, I find myself slamming cold beers and eyeballing the breathalyzer machine by the bathrooms. I make everyone at the table promise to remind me to test it out before we leave, but end up too drunk to do it. I’m like a kid at a carnival with the Sloan Waterfree urinal and XLERATOR high-speed hand drier in the men’s room. I keep scanning the rooms, hoping to spot one of those toy claw machines.
It’s almost as if I’m not just predictably beer drunk, but also on uppers.
Odd.
