Control: A Night Out…

I, Dalton Lewis, went out last Friday night — after all, it was Friday night and I didn’t have a good fantasy novel to read. The day started when I got my walk done around nine am. I didn’t have shorts at first. I was forty-three and didn’t have shorts so I did what any sensible man should do — I complained to my mom.

“I’ll wash some,” she said. “You can have them in an hour.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m going out with Philip tonight.”

“What time?” Mom asked. “That might affect my dinner plans with Dad. We might go out to eat.”

“Five thirty?” I guessed. “Red top plaza?”

She nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “We decided not to go on vacation for the weekend.”

“I’m sorry your convention was canceled,” I said.

She wanted to go to a mystery writer’s convention but failed due to the super psycho death virus.

“Yeah,” she said.

I slept for an hour and then had shorts. I walked outside. It was blistering hot outside. I walked my normal walk — I walked for an hour, with regular breaks of thirty seconds to one minute along the way. I walked through Grayslake, thinking about my experiences, thinking about my daydreams. I walked to the forest preserve — which is actually a savannah without any trees — and walked to the ugly pond there and turned back. I sat at the bench at the ugly pond and daydreamed. Then returning home was exhausting but felt like something that helped me — made me feel better.

I got home and played some computer games. I play Magic: the Gathering: Arena because my favorite game, Starcraft 2, is bad — I have to boycott it because its company, Activision Blizzard, had a sexual harassment scandal. I played some games and made it to platinum but not diamond.

Then in the afternoon I made my way to Red Top Plaza’s store that sells wargaming miniatures. I bought a book about one of the primarchs that lived in the fictional year 30,000. Philip walked into the store after a few minutes.

We walked to the parking lot and towards his car.

“Where do you want to eat?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I need to go to Home Depot,” he said. We entered his car and he programmed in a route to Home Depot.

“I need a container for my film supplies,” he said. We looked at one. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I want it.”

He didn’t buy it. We went to Olive Garden.

The salad didn’t have salad dressing at first — we had to ask for dressing. Then the raspberry lemonade tasted like barely flavored water. The entrees, however, tasted delicious.

“Want to see Free Guy?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“We have to go now to make it,” he said.

We went to his car in a hurry, but I couldn’t do it: my mind started to race. I felt the voices in my head start a revolution, to pound into my skull, to tell me that everything was wrong, that I was in trouble, that something had gone wrong, that I was in trouble, that I had done something wrong, that life was broken and wouldn’t be fixed.

“I’m sorry,” I said in the car. “I need to take my meds. I don’t feel well.”

“Fine,” he said. “Of course. Let me just pull over somewhere and we can call your ride.”

I rode home in an Uber in silence. I couldn’t finish the night by watching a movie. I had to go home and take my meds. I took said meds and immediately felt better. They made the voices bother me less. They made the world feel more okay.

That was my Friday night.

Thanks, and take care, friends.