Is that a shot of Jaegermeister I see before me, shot glass near my hand.

I am pretty sure energy drinks and Jaegermeister will be outlawed in the United States within five years. Energy drinks fall too easily into the hands of far too young drinkers, who have issues with their blood pressure far too young. I am pretty soon that elementary school class rooms will be flooded with boys and girls names Jaeger. The paternity might be as clear as those boys and girls who made it to earth, thanks to Jose Quervo. I haven't met any kids named Quervo yet, though. My waitress at the Old Clover Bar is dressed in a Jaegermeister tennis shirt, and tonight, it struck me as a good idea. She's probably a decade younger than me, and I am horrified that I am feeling a frisson to see how she has pushed up and together her love pillows.

My plans to get out of town fell through and I have the idea that I have burnt through all the possibilities of Muskegon by living here from Monday to Friday. So I am making my way back from the pick up point, realising nothing stands between here and home but Paddy's and the bowling alley, Crickets and the long smoking bench in front, and the Patio with its horseshoe pit backyard. I had dinner last night at the Shultz Haus, which has an appeal to me because a friend works behind the bar. I have had weekends where I've jetted off to Chicago, Greyhound out Muskegon and Mega bus out of Grand Rapids. It's my fault. I think life is elsewhere. Life is actually much closer than that empty shot of Jaegger awaiting my bar maid's pickup. Jukebox has slipped Bob Segar's Turn the Page onto the jukebox. I once drove twice weekly by his subdivision on one of the lakes of Commerce Township and bought dinner as carryout from a Matter of Taste, who catered parties at Segar's compound. How did I wind up in this delicious place at one of the end's of the earth. The first Jaegger shot didn't work and I am not trying another.

I remember a man in a small town west of Conklin who bought me three shots of Jagger in a row. He was a welder in Coopersville, and he wouldn't hear my refusals. Why should a man who makes one third less than I make buy liquor to inebriate my brains? There's something aggressive about buying a new acquaintance a Jagger shot. It's like saying, " Here's some oblivion. On me!" The mixture of Jaegger with an energy drink makes it into a Jaegger bomb, and these are usually lobbed at a male or female target down the bar.