For one reason or another, I spent most of the weekend drunk. Friday night's Brooklyn Lagers melting into Sunday afternoon's Budweiser tallboys in a wash of dizzy fun.
My life has been lacking a certain amount of release. No drugs, no sex and no money make for a dull boy, and I am a *very* dull boy.
Most of the world seems content in running away from their thoughts and problems, as if they could drown their sorrow in spirits and cocktails. Their problems wash down every night and come back throbbing every morning.
Life is the worst kind of hangover.
I exist only in my thoughts, I dream of my problems, I breath my sorrow. I don't run from anything. I internalize, analyze, contemplate and dissect every element of my present and my past. I know that I should make an effort to run away from all those touchy life-issues once in a while, to try and avoid my internal monologue. This weekend was that effort.
Friday night had a few choice friends sitting in front of the television drinking six-packs of Brooklyn. Sandy split at eleven to watch the dailies of our footage fresh from Technicolor. Those that remained switched to Budweiser tallboys.
Sleep called the weak ones away until eventually my recent drinking buddy and I were left alone, watching "Dick" in the living room. I laid on the couch, we talked, we drank. She played with my hair all night, tugging at it, twisting it into oily spikes.
I like attention. I miss attention.
I finally gave up and went to bed at about 4:30 in the morning. I offered to drag the guest bed out from the basement, but she declined. I offered her more comfortable sheets for the couch, but again she declined. If nothing, I am a good host.
Saturday night we gathered in greater numbers to celebrate the "New York Life" of Fritz as he nears his exit to Chicago. I put sixty-five dollars of liquor on my credit card, sixty-five dollars that I don't actually have. Escapism is expensive.
Two hours later then we suggested, all the regular fools began to arrive. We greased our social wheels with Tequila shots and followed them with frozen margaritas.
Sto arrived with chums in tow. We all congratulated him on his write up in Time Out Magazine. Strawberry daqaries began to flow like water until everyone was drunk. Wobbly drunk.
Loudmouth drunk.
People danced, people drank, I climbed around like a monkey. We showed everyone the tiny book of psalms that someone hid in the ceiling many years ago.
At some point Sandy fell down on my recent drinking buddy and injured her bottom, so I kicked him in the ass. Hard.
Very hard.
Aline and Fritz joined in and we had a grand old time calling him an asshole and kicking him in his rump. I don't know if she appreciated our retaliation as much as we enjoyed exacting it.
I know that I dreamed of us doing that once, but Deja vu doesn't bother me so much anymore.
At some point I stumbled off into sleep. I woke the next morning at the crack of noon with the odd sense that I'd missed something. Like I fell asleep in the middle of a film. The ending to be forever recounted in hazy anecdotes and drunken flashbacks.
Bill came to get me for band practice, but Sandy wouldn't come inside. Apparently he did more naughty things and had to be removed from the party. Something about pouring Jim Beam all over the floor and trying to wrestle with one of the other guests. He waited down the block with an ashamed grin on his face. So very "Sandy".
We stumbled to our rented practice space, bought two six-packs of Budweiser tall boys and started getting loaded. Three hours later I was beating drums with my tennis shoes and sandy was knocking over all the folding chairs.
Bill was doing other naughty things. "No-comment" things.
I think I needed this. I haven't felt this disgusting in a long time. I haven't smelled this awful in any recent memory, and the potential of liver damage seems completely worth it. Not once this weekend did I think about money, the future, my past...the transgressions of women. Not one plaguing thought to sink my brain into blackened depression. Pure escape.
My hands are blistered and cut from drunken drumming, our floor is sticky, and my body has a certain odor that isn't washing away so quickly. And on the back of my hand, I see the remnants of a word written by a drunken girl. A word that inspires everything to make sense. Completely out of context, faded and upside-down...
