A twenty-one year old boy walks out the back door of his friend's duplex. The back yard is empty but for three exceptions. There is a brief porch of poured concrete, and the drop off from the porch to the uneven ground below is rather steep. It has caught more than a handful of inebriated revelers by surprise. A certain kind of ironic wit might even label that first step a doozy, and the comment would be on target. The three things in the back yard are wading pools half-filled with water, beer, and other substances. The sky is dark, filled with slow moving clouds that to the boy look vaguely menacing. This, understandably, has much more to do with his own personal mental state than with any particular quality of the clouds, which are cumulus and are otherwise garden variety.
It is half past midnight, and the boy has consumed a number of alcoholic beverages. In other words, he is not currently out to enjoy nature. He takes a few steps, careful to maintain the steadiness he always works so hard at preserving once introducing alcohol to his system. With no one watching, he takes smaller steps. The grass in the yard is patchy and sparse, in these respects similar to the boy's facial hair, which has not yet been able to make the transition into anything even resembling a full, bushy beard. Which isn't to say that anyone is really watching all that closely anyway, as they're all entirely too busy attending to their own personal bundles of perceived worries. This understanding eludes the boy, but then, his mind is clouded with drink and, well, clouds. He sees a malevolent face in the sky and shifts his attention once more to his halting steps. He's almost to the pools now. A peculiar habit has developed at parties and gatherings of this type. The boy has a marked tendency to eschew toilets and the yes majesty of indoor plumbing and all of its attendant convenience in favor of a base, semi-primal urge to excrete waste outdoors, often onto a wall or fence of some kind, often making an effort to spell something (typically his first name, typically in a kind of script that with a little bit of imagination resembles cursive) onto the territory being marked.
It is not difficult to predicate what happens next. The boy gets within range of the three pools, prepares, and lets go, emitting a low unintentional moan along the stream of waste. He closes his eyes and tilts his head upward, losing himself in the act, if only briefly. Is this the end he's always, pardon the expression, shooting at? A tiny moment of freedom, not necessarily clarity, from the slings and arrows (mostly perceived, some real, many imagined) of his misspent (it tends to seem that way sometimes, especially at the thought of another night and early morning of slurred words and foul language) youth. Is this all there is he says quietly, barely moving his slightly chapped lips. It's cold. He finishes and he's looking at the sky again, hoping to see some astral message of hope, understanding, or at least empathy. The world maintains its oblivious poker face. The boy zips up his pants, buttons his jeans, and looks at the tiny bubbles still floating atop the pools' surface. He made distinct efforts to add to all three pools, and was successful.
He goes back inside, opens another can of beer and soon forgets about the way he semi-stumbled and nearly pitched forward, head first, into the pools of stagnant and filthy water. A few weeks later the boy will learn that one of the residents of the duplex, a friend of his, got into the pools one afternoon on some strange whim or another. Remembering this, the boy smiles.
