Jazz Catfish Presents: Back to the Shower

     So when I was a young Navy lad living with my grandpa in Manassas, Va., I palled around with a couple of Soldiers from up the road at Fort Meade, Rick and Dan, who were Army photographers and videographers. Through them I met Rick's brother Tim and a nice military couple, Jake and Laura, who were married and lived in Crystal City. The place is neat; it looks every bit as sci-fi fairytale crossover as its name implies.
     I would go out with this group of friends to places around Washington, D.C., usually courtesy of the metro. Rick had somewhat of an Indie streak in him, and a taste for dive and gimmick to accompany it. One night, he told me we were all going to 80's night at the Black Cat, and that I should dress accordingly. Raz and I had been on a Back to the Future kick for the past few months, and I was prepared to go full-blown Marty McFly. Raz loaned me a blue vest similar in design with the orange one Marty wore in the first movie.
     There are pictures of the whole thing somewhere, but at the moment, I can't find them. I can tell you this about them: in these pictures, I am sweaty, and I am HAMMERED. A weekend or two before, I was introduced to the Long Island iced tea (forgive my lack of APA style-checking, I'm in a hurry to get this up before midnight,) and I had several of them in the course of an hour that night. I remember having a "pass the imaginary dance vibe/boogie ball" game to some dance song, and just fucking going for it. I must have looked like a total asshole.
     A totally awesome asshole.
     There's a picture somewhere in which I'm shooting gun-fingers at my friend Gale, who's returning fire and my shit-eating grin while her boyfriend Carlos appears to be about to slap me, mouth open in a yell. It turns out Gale had been pointing behind me, at a pretty girl who'd been trying to get my attention, and I'd misinterpreted her gesture as "hey man, you're pretty fucking alright." I went home alone in a taxi that night, and it's just as well; I was plastered. I'm pretty sure Tim got me in the thing and then told the driver where to take me.
     Back in the barracks, I went about crossing off items on my Drunk Idiot Checklist: make noise, check; get food, check; eat too much food, check; somehow mess the whole fucking place up taking my clothes off, double check; and finally, sit in the shower with the water on me for half an hour or so. I feel the last item helps with nausea, and hell, if you're going to throw up anywhere, at least this place has a drain. So I got in the shower, and after what I had thought was reasonably about half an hour, I got out and toweled off. In my room, the curtains were drawn, but a shaft of bright light was coming through the window. I thought it was too bright to be moonlight, and the parking lot arc-sodium lights were orange. Could there be a helicopter directly overhead, shining a searchlight down on the barracks?
     I opened the curtains wide and was smacked in the optic nerves with broad freakin' daylight. Somehow I'd spent seven hours in the shower. I guess I was in a state between awake and asleep. I remember being glad I didn't have to pay the water bill. When I told Rick the story, he insisted I had time-traveled in my shower, and he wrote a short movie on the subject, which myself and Jake starred in. We shot it in Jake and Laura's apartment in Crystal City, and in the mall on the first floor of their building. Rick is the future guy at the end.