The Long and Whining Road

Brad imagines a hike in the woods with flowers and pleasant scents, drawing on his summer-camp experience.

Ryan asks about the ethereal quality, then links damp earth and a nighttime sky to taking a pee, a swig and looking at the stars.

Brad chooses slot-machine gambling specifically: bright, stupid and a quick way to lose money. He reaffirms it after clarification.

Ryan recalls the old beer-pong days, especially fraternity parties rather than Curtis’s apartment.

Brad links the pretentious description to watching CNN and later jokes that Wolf Blitzer is immortal.

Ryan locks in a lazy river. Curtis connects its endlessness to the description’s immortality.

Brad pairs the wine with eating Taco Bell and drinking entirely alone.

Ryan imagines day-drinking around town, eventually discarding and accidentally breaking the empty bottle.

Brad describes feeling special while trying wines alone at a festival and later adds that he learned to make coleslaw.

Ryan recalls drinking in California at twenty-one with his parents and getting so drunk that he locked himself in a bus bathroom and forgot how to unlock it.

Brad recalls fraternity homecoming drinking and Ryan ending up in the bottom bunk of Brad’s dorm room. The story adds the unpleasant condition of the roommate’s bed.

After adding context to Brad’s story, Ryan is explicitly asked for his own Mad Dog story. He recalls sleeping on a park bench while waiting for a bus, then another year when a friend vomited into a couch and the housemates discovered it days later.