La Raison de ne Boire pas

My apologies to all my non-existent, avid readers. Upon closer inspection, it would seem that my drunken self delved more to the pitiful. C'est la vie and all that jazz. If we have learned anything, other than my tolerance for Jameson has waned, it is that in the twilight of drunken hedonism one should not blog. Or, for that matter, interact socially, as I believe I also attempted to call my exes for some sort of depraived masochism.

Which brings to mind another festive night, well three nights come to mind, but I figure only one drunk story per month is probably appropriate. And it's fitting that tonight also happens to be New Year's Eve, a notorious night for the drinking and slovenly groping of strange bar skanks. But that is neither here nor there; this is about me and that is all that matters.

During college, as with most young adults, I was no stranger to alcohol-induced debauchery and merriment. I would not say that I was an alcoholic, but I was quite well-versed in the varied beers, liquors, and spirits of the world. I could enjoy an IPA or a shot of 151 as easily as a Chardonnay or single malt scotch neat. The one thing I never cared much for was tequila, but I often found myself drinking it when around a certain crowd.

One night during the break between summer sessions, my roommates and I were drinking heavily and enjoying copious amounts of Halo. And things were steadily progressing, as anyone would guess, toward a night of perfect, blissful stupor and What-a-Burger taquitos at 4AM. I should say that I hold my liquor very, very well. Being of German and Irish descent, I pride myself on how well I can drink. So, it was about 3 o'clock and the drinking was still going strong. Unfortunately, earlier in the day, I had stepped in an ant bed (I'm deathly allergic) and had taken Benadryll to offset the prospect of early death via anaphylaxis. By the time we had begun drinking, around 10PM, I figured the meds were out of my system sufficiently and that I would have no ill effects during our evening.

Sadly, I was wrong. The Benadryll was still raging through my body and began to combine with the alcohol. Somewhere around 3AM, I fell into a brownout. I would say it was a blackout, but I can remember some of the things I did and the rest of the gaps my roommates filled in for me. Anyway, around the time I browned, the last thing I remember clearly is smoking a Parliament on the back porch and walking in to the apartment and taking a 10 second chug from the Jack Daniels bottle on the counter. And then the world went hazy...

3.20AM

(and this is a filler provided by my roommate) I began spinning in circles in the living room for no apparent reason other than, he tells me I said "I'm recapitulating my childhoods." I continued in this manner for approximately 10 minutes until I fell over the back of the couch and shouted "Damn it!! Who put the car in the washing machine?!" After this, I stumbled to the refrigerator and took out the mustard and a bottle of vodka because we had no more chaser drinks. I proceeded to pour a shot of vodka and half mustard, claiming it was original and couldn't possibly be that bad.

3.45AM

(this I recall) I drank the shot and spit it into the sink forthwith. I wanted to get the taste out of my mouth so I told my roommate I was going to go pee. And I did, I went down the hall and peed and crawled back to the living room. Still thirsty, I hunted for something else to drink. I remember grabbing some expired orange juice.

3.50AM

My roommate stares blankly over the back of the couch as I openly proclaim "I'm peeing!! I'm peeing!!" Fearing the worst, he runs over to me to make sure I'm not really peeing on our floor. I am not, but I then chug some orange juice and spit it back out on to the carpet like a fountain. My roommate cleans up the mess and throws me out on the back porch...alone. Probably not his best idea, but he wasn't really all that cheery at the moment.

4.00AM

I'm standing on the back porch, kinda confused and wondering where everyone else went. At that moment, I spied the swimming pool. I was hot and decided that a swim would be a great idea. I scaled the 8 ft wrought iron fence and dove in. Sadly, I was fully clothed, shoes, pants, the whole nine, including my wallet, car keys, cell phone, and iPod. The water was freezing so I jumped out immediately and ran back to the apartment. My roommates apparently heard my flailing and thrashing and jubilant laughter, as they came out to see what the hell I had gotten myself into now. One of them ran inside and threw a towel at me so I could dry off and get back inside lest I get arrested.

4.30AM

I brown out again, my roommate tells me that I complained over and over that I was A) going to have a seizure, not all that uncommon a fear since I am epileptic and B) I was never going to get married so what the fuck was the point of living. Somewhere in there, I asked for a glass of water because I was thirsty. I took said water and, according to roommate, placed the full opening of the glass in my mouth and started gargling the water inside the glass before actually drinking some. I took another few swigs and began to exlclaim that I wanted to vomit. I took a drink of the water and spit it into a trash can that had been placed by my bed, satisfied that my vomit was chunk-free and didn't cause me any pain coming up the old esophagus. I then began singing a nonsensical song and fell asleep.

A Conflict of Interest

As a general rule, rarely do I bother speaking of truly personal matters. The things that hide within my cerebral cortex tend to, quite frankly, scare and enrage others when spoken aloud. Not that I feel ashamed by that, in point of fact I'm rather proud that people place so much stock in the ideas that I have that they would let me affect their lives. And if I'm being honest, I enjoy pushing buttons. I have always found it entertaining to take people to the brink of sanity and jerk back quickly, leaving them foundering. Many people cannot understand that I am joking, a select few get it and have stuck around, God bless them.

Throughout my existence, I have very rarely taken anything seriously. Life is a lark so why not enjoy it. There are, however, a couple of things I take very seriously, and when something or someone comes in and fucks with those things I tend to get become very aggressive. And while the things and people I care about are the catalyst for my aggression and passion, I have to admit that any of my actions serve as self-preservation. I look out for my own interests first, and others second. Not to say I don't care about others, I do, but I love myself ever more so. And such has been the case of late.

June

June was busting out all over, the early throes of summer harkening forward and the promise of a fruitful season was on the horizon. At the time, I had been allowing my kid sister to take up habitation with me in order that she might educate herself without the worries of paying rent or bills. As a former poor college fledgling myself, I knew how difficult things could become and I was glad to help. The understanding being more beneficial for myself in that I essentially had a live-in maid and cook, so life was pretty posh. Round about this same time, a demon entered in the form of a spineless, archaic, waste of humanity. My kid sister began fucking about with a less than reputable fellow whom it was learned was called...

John

He was, supposedly, an electrician with his own company. This seemingly upright homosapien began to poison the mind of my young kin, filling her mind with fantastic stories of happiness and joy. I had no qualms with this as the two of them were, as I was told, friends who frequently would Skype back and forth as this John character lived well south of our location. One night, I discovered things were not as they seemed and caught my sister in a lewd act of self-gratification whilst in the midst of a Skype session. Fine by me, I'm not one to stop others from doing something they feel like is necessary. But I began growing evermore suspicious of this lecherous bastard and initiated an investigation to satisfy my curious nature.

Due to the nature of my financial gain, I have certain privileges and connections which I quickly put to use. Come to find out, this wonderful specimen who had to this point convinced my sister that he pissed happiness and came gold, was a full 12 years more senior than he had previously led her to believe. In fact, while he was claiming to be 26 he was actually a mere ten days from his 39th year on this earth. Additionally, it was brought to light that he was the father of 5 children from 5 different women. He was not allowed near any of his children save one that he was in custody of because of restraining orders by the mothers for domestic abuse and child endangerment. The real cherry on top was that this asswipe had done stints in federal, state, and local incarceration facilities for domestic abuse, fraud, and conspiracy to manufacture with intent to distribute.

July

One quiet night at the old homestead, there comes a tapping, as if someone gently rapping, rapping on my chamber door. My sister bolts past me, shoving me into the refrigeration unit, to get to the door. I had been on my way out to pick up some food and take a quiet drive in the country. The door opens and in walks this sunken-eyed, pallid, hulking figure who looks as if he has just finished smoking a lightbulb. The guy looked like a depressed badger. I shove off past him, and the small island he had brought with him by way of a woman, and continue my quest. Not a smart move on my part, as God only knows what this fuck bag would steal from me in my absence, but damn it all I was hungry.

Upon my return, my departure cut short by the fact that some meth addict was in my living quarters, I find the apartment desolate and abandoned, and all my sister's belongings have been removed. This asshole had come to my house to remove my sister having talked her into his lies and convinced her that she should move away because her family was a useless bunch of unsupportive garbage. The requisite phone calls to the parents, who live down the road a way, were made to inform them of the goings on.

Later

A couple months pass, and kid sister is somewhat in contact with the family, mother and father, complaining about how her brother and sister will not speak to her. And that she is going to continue living her fucked up existence, which now consists of a modern Chuck Manson harem. This John fellow has begun amassing women in his brothel. I hear from mother that there are no less than this guy, my sister, the mother of one of the other children he has spawned, and a couple other bitches all living together. None but my sister work to support all this as the rest sit around smoking, drinking, fucking, and planning God knows what. In addition, sister is now knocked up with a devil child.

My mother begs and pleads with me to do something, speak to my sister, almost daily. I continue to inform her that the only sister I have is happily married and in South Carolina, that if this bitch who has upset me so much after housing her for free to get an education and a good stable job wishes to speak to me that she can find me face to face and apologize and maybe we can start working on something. That's not to say that I do not care about her or what is going on, I do. I actually hate it because I care for my sister, but if she does not want to act rationally or be a part of a family that has been there for her for so long, why must I be the one to put out any effort. I didn't do anything to fuck up, that whore did. Bridges have been burned, relationships broken, and I am not going to cobble up anything new when it is not my responsibility to do so.

Needless to say, I have been and am still conflicted. Part of me says fuck it, that's the part I like. The rest of me knows I need to do something, but the only thing I can come up with would see me rotting in prison and this fuckbag is not worth that to me. I would rather see my sister fester in her own shit than offer help to someone who repeatedly curses her own mother for caring and will only contact her father if she needs money because this bastion of upright and moral decency has blown all her income on booze, titty dances, and meth. I am doing all I can to remain rational and calm, but the more information I find on this piece of shit and the heresy from my mother about the situation is beginning to overwhelm that. I care, but I don't want to anymore.

Bicycle! Bicycle! I want to ride my bicycle!

This is a story about a boy. This is a story about a boy and his bicycle. A story about a boy and his BLUE bicycle, and also his testicles.

Long ago, round about the time I was just beginning the blossoming, burgeoning tour through the pubescent landscape of inconceivable horror, I was very much into sports (baseball, football, street hockey, etc, etc) and along with that I had an indescribable attraction to riding my mountain bike at any chance I could get. There wasn't a day that went by that I wasn't out jumping off mountainous rocks, speeding through valleys and sandpits, or building dangerous obstacles to climb over on my bike. I loved that thing, I felt free out in the hills behind my house doing whatever I pleased on my mountain bike.

One day, much like any other, I was out riding and hopping through the muddied waters of Moss Creek, a disgusting and foul tributary that hoboes often defecated into as they made their way westward toward California or certain death. I had ramped down over the rocky pathways of "Mystery Mountain", a rather large hill behind my neighborhood that a few friends and I had once found a bloody hatchet, and was careening haphazardly toward the flatbottom and the adjacent sand pits that ran under the interstate. I spent the entire afternoon throwing myself down the hill, climbing back to the top and doing it all over again trying to get as far as I could across the creek without pedalling. It was kind of like my own version of the long jump but much cooler because of the threat of injury and illness from the creek water.

After the last jump of the day, just before dark was setting in, I splashed through the creek for the final time and fell over in the now-wet sand that I had been trudging through for the better part of the afternoon. I picked myself up and rolled my bike out of the pit, onto the hardpack trail and began riding home. I lived about a quarter mile from the pits, if you cut behind the bowling alley and the elementary school. I rode along the trail until I reached the fields of the school and ramped over a few boulders out to the street where I began picking up speed on the smooth road. My house was on a street about halfway down the side of the hill the school sat atop and I loved the speed I could garner pedalling franctically and without regard to my own safety. On a regular basis, I could easily reach a cruising speed down the hill of about 22 mph. I know this because my father had a road cycle with a speedometer which I had filched from his cycle and fixed to my own bike.

The wind brushing my face, and the sun setting to my left, I steered out wide coming down the hill to cut the corner onto my street, a move I had done at least 234,569 times before and perfected so as to conserve my speed and not have to pedal all the way back to my house. Fortunately there was never much traffic so I never had to worry about looking for cars. Unfortunately on this particular day, there was a Diet Coke can in the gutter where my tires usual ran smooth through. Rather than change my path and risk having to pedal, I figured my speed and weight would allow me to crush the can with little resistance. I could not have been more wrong.

I hit the damn can at a weird angle as both my bike and myself were at probably a 45 degree angle lean coming through the corner. Instead of running it over and continuing on, my tire knicked the tougher bottom rim of the can tossing it into the air where it got caught in the spokes of my front tire. At the same moment, my foot slipped off the foot pedal and my calf took up residence on the flywheel and the chain pushed down pinning my flesh to the sprocket tines and ripping my calf down into the deep tissue of my gastrocnemius. It looked like this in the aftermath:

But that was not the only injury I sustained, oh no. As my short life flashed before my eyes in the brief second before impacting the asphalt, I became aware that I had separated from my bicycle. My body crashed carelessly to the paved surface at a queer angle, my torso split in twain by the gutter with my head landing in a cactus that the old woman on the corner (who would some years later be my geography teacher in high school) had in her front yard and my leg still attached to the sprockets of my bike. And, as luck would have it, the can that set the whole thing in motion had come to rest in the gutter as well, right where I was coming down. I crashed horrible to the earth and the can was perfectly laid in such a way that it was there to catch my testicles in its tangled, mangled, aluminum death trap. That shit hurt. I felt a familiar twinge as something jagged impaled me, not unlike a syringe.

I lay crumpled in a heap for a moment, not wanting to move for the world was trying to kill me. A car or two drove past as I lay there in agony, writhing in pain that was much intensified from having smashed my newly acquired odds and bobkins full force into a soda can. I finally managed to pick myself up and take stock of what all was mangled, cut, scratched, bleeding, and/or god forbid missing. Everything seemed in tact, just in need of some minor first aid, some bandages, and a bit of ice cream. That was until I looked down my shorts. I had waited to do that until I got back home, so that I wasn't dropping trou in the middle of the street like a pervert. I hobbled into the bathroom down the hall, fully aware that there was a stream of drying blood emanating from within my loins and down to my knee. I stripped down and observed there was a gash roughly an inch long down the left side of my swollen ball sack.

I had no desire to let anyone know about it, who wants to tell their parents they ripped their junk? So like any industrious Boy Scout in training, I stole my mother's sewing kit and patched myself back together again like Humpty Dumpty, or a deranged scarecrow and iced everything to get the swelling to go away so I could walk halfway normally again. To this day, I have never had anything to do with Diet Coke. I won't drink it, I won't buy it either for myself, my mother (who loves the stuff), or anyone else. I harbor deep feelings of hate for the stuff, I often walk through the aisles of the grocery store with a safety pin and poke random cans and bottles of Diet Coke to take my silent revenge.

So...this is Christmas?

Apparently today is Christmas, or so I have been informed by at least 30 people in last hour that this is true. That's all well and good, I rather like Christmas so that makes today fairly exciting. Not as exciting as it used to be as a child, of course, but there's still a fair amount of competition for emotional jubilance. And inevitably, a vast plethora of people are opining the joys and wonders of Christmas; brow-beating and hassling everyone they meet with the spectacular nature of the holiday, and regaling unwilling participants with their laundry list of asinine, over-priced, needless, thankless presents.

As a child, I must admit that my desire and longing for Christmas was purely selfish. I greatly desired to garner as many presents from Santa, mother and father, and anyone else who wanted to buy my love. And why not? The concept is fantastic when you're young -- if people love me, they will give me shit. And Santa, that mythical, magical creature of ambivolence and omniscience, well that fat bastard was a burglar but at least he was the good kind who left things for you instead of taking everything. Bigger was better as a child, as I needed to be kept occupied for the entire day lest I drive my parents bananas with my hyperactivity and endless questioning. Christmas was the shit as a child.

I think that's the way it is for most children, though. The idea of Christmas is directly related to this notion that love equals presents. This is completely weird, and it often strikes me as hilarious that this theme is strongest in the Bible belt. Oh, did I forget to mention, I grew up in the Bible belt? Well, now you know...(and knowledge is power!) No matter how well parents raise their children, regardless of religious preference, I have always found it particularly interesting that children of the Bible-thumping culture tend to be the most greedy. Isn't that one of the deadly sins, greed? I'm not sure where I was going with that thought, it just kinda popped up...weird.

Anyway, I like Christmas but I have always had some fundamental problems with the notion that a magic baby popped out and all these sheep herders came to give him a copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a brick of gold, and a grandpa named Murray. I can't say that I'm religious because despite my upbringing in a staunch Christian home, I have had this problem with being cursed with a free-thinking mind. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't say I'm atheist or even agnositic, I just have a desire for relationship rather than dogmatic innoculation. And because of this, I have often questioned everything, especially as it relates to religious matters. For instance, why the big to-do over Christmas when the idea of a celebration for this Jesus fellow is based on ancient Paganism? I won't delve into the details because that would make this a far longer post than it already should be, but my research and that of others has shown that the "Christian" holiday of Christmas is an adaptive Pagan ritual designed to sucker Pagans into conversion.

Back to me -- the best thing about Christmas, to me, is that I get to really reconnect with my family. Granted we have always been close, but just getting to spend uninterrupted time with them over the holiday harkens back to the childhood days when we all lived together. I like that. And of course, I love my own personal tradition of watching "A Christmas Story" on TBS for 24 hours. I have an unnatural connection to "A Christmas Story", possibly because it came out the year I was born, or because Ralphie looks identical to myself as a child. I don't actually know the reason, but I've always been drawn to it and I love it. This has grown to be far too long. I suppose to sum up my Christmas feelings, I should refer you to one of my favorite songs by the wonderful Tim Minchin --->  White Wine in the Sun