(Some names and locations have been changed, but the story is as true as I can remember.)

It was around 7:00 when I cracked my fifth Budweiser, sitting in Tim and Aaron’s dorm room in Miller Hall. It was the last one in the case, and I figured I’d savor this one before I figured out what else I was going to do with my Friday night. Tim and Aaron had already left for the bars and I was alone, re-watching the first season of Mad Men. There’s a specific quality about Mad Men that, to me, makes it the best show to drink alone to. Tim agrees with me on this. We think it might be because you kind of start to feel like Don is your drinking buddy as the show goes on and the two of you get progressively more shitfaced and inevitably depressed.

I was sipping the beer and watching Joan resist sexual advances from her lesbian college roommate, when I got a call from my hippie friend Sam. He told me that the local KGBA radio station was celebrating its 20^th birthday at The Palace, a bar downtown, and invited me to come along. Having little more to do, and no more beers after the one in my hand, I told him I’d meet him outside in 10 minutes. Maybe this would be one of the lucky nights that I could get into a bar without being carded and immediately turned out to the street like a leper.

I slammed the beer, put on a sweatshirt, and sprayed myself with axe, hoping that, even if my appearance were sub-par, at least my scent would be passable. Before leaving, I stole some of the Tim’s Nikolai from the fridge and mixed it together with some coke in an empty sprite bottle that was sitting on a desk. Patting my pockets to check for keys, wallet, and phone, I stepped out the door.

I met Sam and his girlfriend, Rae, at the front door, and greeted them with a welcoming “Yo”. They were both walking with bikes, which made me feel a little uncomfortable. I hate to impose on the two-wheeled by making them travel with a pedestrian like myself. They didn’t seem to mind, though, so we walked on towards downtown, talking the average, old “how you doing?” and “how’s your classes?” hoo-ha.

We walked across the footbridge switching shots of my putrid mixed drink. I always loved walking by the Clark Fork at night. Of course, it’s beautiful in its own right during the day. But on a warm, fall, night, the roaring white rapids ripple through the dark, black water, illuminated only by the orange street lights that follow the walking trails and the roads on top of the Arthur and Higgins bridges.

Whenever I see that, it reminds me of the first few weeks of my freshman year, sitting on logs by the river and smoking weed out of a janky pipe. Back when Missoula was still a magical new frontier, only 130 physical miles from, but a million miles separate from my hometown in Butte. The people here were different, not exactly better, but so much different. In a word, more Liberal, but not just in a political sense, in a social sense too. The difference was most apparent in times where the town gathered together on a Saturday night or first Friday to get drunk off their asses and blow off their weekly stresses for a few precious hours.

The relative quiet of the river faded away, bleeding in the roar of the bars in downtown Missoula. We polished off the bottle and crossed over Higgins to the west side of town. After weaving our way through the passing partiers and through clouds of cigarette smoke, we came up to The Palace.

The crowd spilled out of the bar and onto the streets. Smokers dipped out the doors to light up in peace, bums pedaled for change and drags from the darts the bar goers were huffing, a few hammered sorority-looking girls checked one another to make sure none of them were too drunk. We ran into Sam’s old roommate, a kindly Jewish dude named Gary, who was standing outside talking and smoking. He gave me a High Life from his backpack stash and mentioned something about the thirteen-dollar cover charge to get into the KGBA show.

Sam went in to run the merch table and listen to the bands. Rae soon followed him, but I stayed outside talking to Gary. I would have gone in, I like KGBA, and I respect the musical arts as much as the next guy, but a thirteen-dollar cover charge was too rich for my blood, considering that I don’t normally stay at places like that for too long. The way I looked at it was that 13 dollars was about a trip and a half to McDonalds, and that money could be better spent elsewhere. Like McDonald’s, maybe.

Gary and I talked to a couple girls as we sipped on the cheap beer. While we talked, a dirty guy walked past us with a mangy little dog following in tow. He stopped against the wall next to us, and talked to a nearby, also dirty, guy. The dog sniffed around, and I petted him for a while. One of the girls squatted down and nuzzled the pup.

Girls really like dogs. I mean, everyone likes dogs. Except for people that were bitten by a dog as a kid, or general assholes. But girls REALLY like dogs.

The girl took out her phone to take a picture of the dog but was stopped by his owner.

“5 bucks to take a picture of the dog,” he said. The girl puzzled at him.

“Yeah, five bucks or a beer. Then you can take a picture of the dog.”

This was a pretty bullshit price. Even if it was a particularly interesting dog, I wouldn’t pay more than 1 dollar just to take a picture of the thing. I was getting sort of queasy anyway, I had just drunk quite a bit of alcohol pretty quickly, and I offered him the last few sips of my High Life. He thanked me and immediately walked away. The dog didn’t follow him. I don’t think it was his dog. The girl didn’t even end up taking a picture of the thing, as, by this point, she had gotten over the whole ordeal. Unappreciated chivalry can really bum a fella out.

After a minute of standing there, I walked to the corner to separate myself from the crowd for a moment. There are always quite a lot of homeless people in downtown Missoula this time of night. You can’t walk a block in any direction without being asked for a cigarette. I suppose that’s not a bad strategy, though, when people get drunk enough, they can be almost irrationally generous.

I wandered for a block or so to settle my stomach, then a fat, dreadlocked guy in a dirty sweatshirt stopped me.

“Hey, man! You want some artwork?” he asked me.

I, being a connoisseur of the arts, said, “Sure I like art,” as I reached for one of the prints he was holding out. He drew them back.

“The price is 10 bucks…. Or some weed.”

I didn’t have any weed and was feeling stingy, so I declined his offer and walked away. At least some of the homeless folks in town had a spirit of commerce to them tonight. I have respect for folks willing to give some little thing back to society for its charity, whether it be overpriced art prints or photo rights to a random dog.

Across the street, I saw Tim and Aaron, who’s dorm I was recently sitting in, walking into the Top Hat, and I tried to follow them. There was a bouncer checking cards at the door, though, which was a problem for me. Tim was newly 21 and Aaron had at least 10 fake ID’s, presumably so he could have identification for whichever state he felt like being from that day, or maybe just because he’s a weird fuck. However, I was only 20, and had no way of proving otherwise, so I decided to play the “designated driver looking for my drunk friends” card to gain entry. This is a hard role to play when your breath smells like vodka, but my deck was pretty slim and I was drunk enough that I found whatever my first idea was to be the best possible one, and stepped in line for the bar.

CONTINUED IN PART 2