How can you expect a man to hit a golf ball between a chicken’s legs when he has a raging hangover and his wife has just left him for her life coach? I had no idea, and when I tapped my blue ball weakly up the ramp, it rolled past the fox’s paws instead, dropping into a position that left me with a two-putt to finish.

“Tough luck, chum,” said Brad as he easily lofted his dimpled little pink sphere up past the chicken, where it rolled down the chute to land right next to the hole. “We can play bisque if you prefer.”

I just shook my head and tapped out. As we walked up to the next tee, a hole that would have been straightforward if not for the giant pile of french fries in the middle of the fairway, I wished I had some Bolivian marching powder.

“Let’s Be Frank,” invited a sign towering over the hole, an anthropomorphic hot dog giving us the a-okay sign. Frank? I think his name was Dylan. Yeah, I’d like to be him, massaging my wife’s ego and God knows what else.

The hot dog hole was a haze; I got stuck in the spuds, and it was another Benjamin for Brad. The next hole offered a choice of targets, and I chose poorly. That seems to be a habit with me these days.

Brad knew better than to comment as he sailed his next shot up a ramp and into a hole in the O in the OUR in the stenciled phrase WHAT WE OBSERVE IS NOT NATURE ITSELF BUT NATURE EXPOSED TO OUR METHODS OF QUESTIONING. I banked my ball off the backstop and watched it drop into the O in EXPOSED.

I lost track of where it went after that, just like I lost track of last night after the Bryn Mawr warehouse party. We picked up a couple of well-tattooed women at Liquor Lyle’s, and I guess I thought we were wearing those Dockers ironically, because they shared their spliff and invited us to join them at a spot they saw in someone’s snap story. Brad bought the Uber—not an X, a black car.

That’s how Brad rolls. Me? I can’t putt a golf ball into a gumball machine. My shot tumbled lamely into the gutter, and Brad put his hand on my shoulder. He held the scorecard up in front of me, and ripped it in two. “Let’s call this one a wash, chum.”

A wash? I hated to welch, but the fact was that my debts were piling up. I needed to find a new apartment, I needed to find a new job, I needed to find a new wife—or maybe my old one would come back, if she got tired of patchouli. I needed to find my Dockers.

I squinted over the rest of the course: a curling rink, some Brillo boxes, a cemetery that looked like another false promise. “Let’s play the back nine,” I said to Brad. “Just for shits and giggles.”

– Jay Gabler

Tee times are available at Walker on the Green through September 7.