How did I used to live like this?
It’s around three in the morning and, for the first time in two decades, I’m hanging out in a lonely booth at a random Denny’s, nursing a cup of black coffee and reading a slightly-used book. This time, however, I’m not surrounded by goths, punks or other societal rejects that sleep all day and mope all night…all that’s here right now are a couple of cops on a dinner break.
Man, are things different now.
Once upon a time, there used to be Denny’s 24 hour restaurants littered all up and down Oklahoma City and the surrounding areas; the N.W. 63rd and May establishment was my own personal Zion where, in my teens and some of my twenties, I had a somnambulistic romance with the harsh coffee and harsher waitresses there, loitering until the cracks of morning began to show.