Blame it on the A-A-A-A-A-Alcohol

12:30am.
January 2, 2010.
Atlantic City Boardwalk.

Don't know what the place looked like about 24 hours earlier, but the day after: a ghost town.

"New Year's Eve" weekend in the Little Egg Harbor house, cooking meals and playing an endless string of games that incorporated alcohol shots as both a reward and penalty. Thursday through Sunday, but each day the equivalent of about 3 nights of hard drinking...

Frigid winds rolled in off the dark Atlantic waters. Half the party was gambling in the casino. I escorted "the kids" down the dark, desolate boardwalk: the Filipino, the Burmese and the Korean. All hovering around 20 years old yet projecting the lighthearted air of 10 year olds. Three exceedingly enthusiastic young men, not in the least bit concerned with acting "cool". Laughing and snapping pictures of each other and asking me to snap pictures of the three of them. I'd won their respect by beating them in a game of Monopoly earlier in the evening.

[Just as an aside, a game of Monopoly takes about 14 hours to play through. It requires someone constantly consulting the instruction booklet and the final stretch of the game is almost always a demoralizing affair for all but one of the players.]

Though nearly everything on the boardwalk was closed, none of them seemed particularly disappointed. I took some pictures of a self-rocking "Granny" figure in the window of a closed Horror Shop (above). The three of them asked me questions about being a writer and seemed genuinely interested in everything I told them.

Boardwalk being DOA, we eventually set about reconnecting with the gambling half of our party. Out of nowhere, the Burmese ("Bacon") asked me, with complete solemnity:

"What do you think are the pros and cons of a dictatorship?"

Arguably the most introspective of the lot, I didn't know what moved Bacon to ask this question or why he wanted me to answer it at that moment. But I didn't question the question. I responded to it honestly and he offered me his own carefully considered perspective on it.

What it boiled down to, I think, was that he was happy to be in America. Grateful for all the opportunities the country offered, for the things most of us have the luxury of taking for granted. All three of them were born elsewhere and seemed so grateful to be here. Even on a freezing night on a dead Atlantic City boardwalk.