Where it came from
Some nights never became stories fit for daylight.
Not disasters. Not exactly clean, either.
An old Benz idling outside. Heavy doors. Worn leather. The kind of car built before everything needed a screen and an explanation.
The city looked better through slightly tired eyes.
Upstairs, a record was already turning.
The Guess Who. Ace. Atlanta Rhythm Section.
Not a playlist. A needle, a little dust, the quiet second before the room fills with sound.
Someone always turned it up.
There were guitars within reach. Some expensive, some not. None of them decoration. They carried fingerprints, bad timing, unfinished songs, and the occasional idea worth remembering the next morning.
The nights had their own rhythm.
Women. Nose candy. Expensive mistakes made to look casual.
Nothing unusual for the hour.
One drink too many. One hour too late. A conversation that became philosophy without asking permission. Plans made with complete confidence and questionable handwriting.
Winning usually asks for a wager.
Bets get heavy.
Sometimes they pay double. Sometimes they take the house.
Mediocrity is still the worse bet.
Happiness was somewhere in the room. Or maybe already out on the road.
Not the optimized version. Not balance, hydration, and eight hours of sleep.
The other kind.
The brief, unreasonable kind that appears with the right song, the wrong hour, an empty road, and nowhere urgent to be.
Happiness kept moving. So did the headlights.
There was always a taste for excess. For speed, volume, beautiful objects, long nights, and the point where good sense starts losing the argument.
Hedonism never needed a manifesto. It was simply more interesting than behaving for its own sake.
Not every night was elegant. That would have ruined it.
Some ended with a sunrise reflected in the hood of a car. Some with a guitar leaning against an amplifier, still humming. Some with the same record playing again because nobody had found a reason to change it.
The coin came out of that world.
Not as an explanation. More like a token from it.
The idea was never to make everything clean.
Clean is easy to reproduce.
Character usually comes from somewhere else.
The records are still on the shelf. The guitars are still within reach. The old Benz still looks better at night.
Happiness is still somewhere up the road.
Bad hours. Good records. Loud guitars.
A little too much of everything.
That is the point.
Always.
Until the end.