“Level Five. Five in the morning, after unsuccessfully trying to get your money back at the tattoo parlor — ‘But I don’t even know anybody named Ruby!’ At this point, even the devil is going, ‘Uh, I gotta turn in. I gotta be in Hell at nine. I’ve got that brunch with Hitler, I can’t miss that.’ You and your friends wind up across the state line in a bar with guys who have been in prison as recently as that morning. At this point, you’re all drinking some kind of thick blue liquor, usually used to clean chromes. A waitress with fresh stitches comes over, and you’re thinking, ‘Someday I’m gonna marry that girl!’ One of your friends stands up and screams ‘We’re drivin’ to Florida!’ and passes out.
“You crawl outside for air, and then you hit the worst part of Level Five: the sun. You weren’t expecting that, were you? You never do. You walk out of a bar in daylight, and you see people on their way to work, or jogging. And they look at you, and they know. And they say, ‘Who's Ruby?’
“Let’s be honest, if you're 19 and you stay up all night, it’s like a victory. Like you’ve beat the night. But if you’re over 30, then that sun is like God’s flashlight. We all say the same prayer then, ‘I swear, I will never do this again as long as I live!’ And some of us have that little addition, ‘...and this time, I mean it!’”