The house on Mulberry street

     Empty bottles others half full scattered around the house on Mulberry Street. A trail of clothing leading to a bedroom where two strangers ended up. Morning light and sounds from outside where ordinary people are living their day wake a woman who looks around the room and who is sleeping next to her. He is snoring and by all accounts just a guy. She takes a moment and allows herself to feel bad, but that passes quickly as her main objective is to find her clothes and leave.

     He woke to the sound of a vacuum cleaner and his college buddy singing to a song on the radio. Slowly he began to move putting his feet on the floor and scratching a three days growth of beard. She left, that's good, he thought to himself. He wasn’t anything special, so it seemed he usually ended up with someone the same. Pouring a cup of hours old coffee, he lit a smoke and wondered what today would bring? There were still a few hours of daylight left, maybe he would go to the park and shoot some hoops?

     The house on Mulberry Street was older than anyone could remember. It was donated to the fraternity by a wealthy benefactor way back in the 1940s. It looked the same as it did all those years ago. It was made with brick that never required a coat of paint. Not correct for the trim which peeled off decades ago, but nobody cared. It was a party house and will continue to be for who knows how long? The fraternity wasn’t one of the popular ones it was kind of known as the losers’ house. But where there looser, more losers will come to party.

     Years after college was in the rearview and most of the residents of Mulberry street had lives, some would meet for coffee and remanence of the good old days when nothing else mattered but getting wasted and laid. Yes, those were the days one of them said as he calculated 10 percent of the tab and paid with a hidden ten-dollar bill, he kept for emergencies. He gave his buddies a kind of high five and got the attention of other patrons, one yelling that he was probably a guy from Mulberry street

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