GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #259: THE SWAMPS OF BOLINGBROOK AND DARIEN

To be read to this song.


I don't go out to drink much anymore. It's just cheaper to drink at home or at a friend's home. Tonight I had plans to go out to my stomping grounds in Bolingbrook, to Tailgaters. But in going out there it brought back a lot of memories. A lot of memories I'm not quite comfortable with talking about here. Not yet, at least.


I loved a woman who lived down there. I would drive out there on a regular basis. She and I would go next door to a hole in the wall where they made White Russians with whipped cream. Sometimes we went to Tailgaters, but it was closer to go to the hole in the wall. I don't want to think about it too much.


I was early in getting to the bar tonight, so I stopped by her old place, just to relive some memories. It was difficult because everything looked different. Some buildings were gone. A lot of trees were gone. The apartments all had balconies now. The only thing that looked the same was the creek that ran through the area.


I saw the place where so much love and lunacy happened, but it looked nothing like it should have. I drove away having relived nothing. To top it all off the hole in the wall was gone. I think there's a salon there now. It was too dark to tell.


So I went out. I got drunk with my friends. I saw a great band knock out some great covers. I got plastered. It was fun, but as I got ready to hit the road I realized that it just wasn't the same. I think I might have outgrown the whole thing. I'm not sure.


I drove back through the swamps of Bolingbrook and Darien, the air chilly and the soft glow of alien lights drifting and fading throughout the empty space. The rotten husks of forgotten homes. The vast spaces where nature still reigned.


I thought about everything I went through with my friend and her daughter. Everything looked so different that I was certain that our ghosts no long roamed there, coloring the space we used to exist. Instead there is nothing. Nothing to remember us. No one will ever know about what happened within those walls except those who remember. And when we're gone, then we're nothing.


Youth fades and is gone.