The Meadow 145 Nathan J. Deer Buys the Beer Nathan Graziano A mouth-breathing middle-aged man with tufts of black hair on his knuckles told me to stand still and lift my chin as he snapped a quick Polaroid picture of my acne-splattered face, my head framed by a box on the left corner of a poster board background of a New Jersey driver’s license. Once laminated, I became Nathan J. Deer from Toms River, a 23 year-old drifter with no back story or arrests on his record. While he approached the liquor store counter, Nathan J. Deer who—unlike me—exuded confidence like a thin ocean mist at low-tide. He grinned as the cashier, a gangly old man who owned the store, placed the case of beer on the counter between them, and Nathan J. Deer handed the old man his ID without being asked. My friends waited in Darren’s car, parked behind the liquor store as I placed the beer in the trunk then we drank it on the train tracks and spiked the cans and spit at the half-moon. Later, I got drunk and cried about for no reason and wished on a shooting star that I wasn’t me.
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