That’s what I was thinking as I walked along the concrete sidewalk, my eyes lazily flirting this way and that. I watched the water drip from an air conditioner and saw the torn and ragged canvas overhangs from abandoned and empty apartment windows.

“Get off the road, you drunk.” At least that’s what I thought when I saw the middle-aged guy in a stained wife-beater standing five feet from the corner yelling into his cell phone. The walk sign flashed, and as I crossed the street he clicked the phone off and looked at me like a long lost friend.

“Well how about that!” he shouted, “look at this weather!” And he spread his arms to the world around him, as if he’d just ordered a sunny day with 70 degree temps and little humidity on the side. I nodded and said quietly, “Yeah, it’s a nice day.”

I could never tell anymore if people were drunk or not. One day on the city bus I started talking to this crazed drunk Marine. Of course I didn’t know he was drunk. I probably figured he was crazed, but that didn’t stop me. By the time I realized he was drunk it was too late and he was jabbering about his favorite author, Mario Puzo, this Italian Shakespeare. The entire bus laughed to themselves at the kid foolish enough to talk to a drunk man.

Since then I’ve thought everyone who’s a little loud or a little crazy was drunk. Sometimes we’re all drunk. I watched wife-beater man walk down the middle of the street, gesturing this way and that towards a few other pedestrians, and I wasn’t sure if they were friends or acquaintances or just passersby.