gimme your lunch money, or it's curtains kid.

getting mugged doesn't help your nightlife. ALMOST getting mugged is ALMOST as bad...

...so i'm walking off of mission and up cortland ave to meet friends at the bar. it's friday, july 18th., my day off. i've been drinking vodka since 1 pm plus 8 hours. i'm on the phone, not paying attention to 6 kids with black hoods up

all

lined
up
against
the
wall

not talking, not doing things that kids do (or maybe i'm already out of touch at 25) but all grilling me, oblivious to the whole situation still on my cell phone. luckily, my drunk obtuse ass is hanging up, and all of a sudden i have two 14 year old toddlers trying to hem me up.
people, i'm a lover, not a fighter.
i ran into the street, one still hanging onto my sweater.
"HEEYYYO! AAYYY!" i yelled. "HEEYYYO! AAYYY!" it's the new club hit...
...and they ran back into the darkness. and yeah, it's that cliche. i was too drunk. my memory is fucked. maybe they weren't 14. maybe they were a drunken midget circus troop of gypsies running tourist's pockets for gas money. i mean, it is over $4 a gallon.
fuck it.
i don't care who it was.
it's sad that anybody thinks beating or robbing someone is entertaining.
corporation executives screwing shareholders and employees for money, ego driven deviant children ruining a drunk's night in search of the elusive

"cool"

we're all exerting power over one another in every instance.
nietzsche would agree.
then he might try to smack me in the face...
why not?

it's no easy chore staying alert to freaks and hipsters and thugs running amok in this city. up until recently, i've been serendipitously sheltered from things like car theft and stupid kids with nothing better to do. trapped in this complifuckation of a landscape, i can only come to one conclusion. inebriated is the only way i can travel.

carpenters in the forehead.

hermione is pretty hot when i'm drunk...

back in the day when i was a teenager...

tonight i'm staying home, no bars, no chicks, yes whiskey. jame-o's to be exact. it used to be protestant whiskey, but i've switched to the distillations of catholics now. i've read that tastebuds die and new ones are grown about every seven years, so maybe it makes sense. maybe i'm feeling my irish roots? i did end the last post with an irish cheer. either way, i didn't always drink whiskey by choice. beer was my gateway liqour. i've been thinking about one time in particular as one of my first memories of drinking, which is an oxyoron.

location: new wilmington, pennsylvania.
age: 14.
alcohol tolerance: zero.

new wilmington is 45 minutes north of pittsburgh. it's a well homogenized blend of white people and white people. my mom used to say the only diversity in the town was whether you were protestant or presbyterian, but a large amish population also inhabits the area. in new wilmington, there is an 11 o'clock curfew. nobody under 18 allowed out after naughty time...which is exactly what became of that time. new wilmington was also a dry town. for anyone trying to get liqour, it was either steal from your parents or drive 20 minutes and find someone to buy it for you. for the clueless 14 year olds, driving was out of the question. so...
the night in question, we met at "the tree." "the tree" was a large field surrounded by mostly trees, laying adjacent to the elementary and middle/high school. a group of us met around midnight planning to drink even though none of us had anything. i was staying with my grandparents for the summer. their house was close to "the tree," only a few fields in between, so my midnight sneaking was easy. it was pretty easy in general, because new wilmington had only one police cruiser. i arrived late, and discussion was already in progress.

"we should raid larry's dad's fridge in their garage. it's never locked. we'll just grab a case or two."

i don't think anyone ever considered whether or not larry's dad would notice. he did. he beat the fuck out of larry. larry wasn't even with us that night.

i didn't go with the group that broke into larry's garage. i stayed at the tree with my best friend at the time, smoking cigarettes and feeling cool breaking curfew. that does not excuse me from anything that happened to larry. i drank the beer when they brought it back. even though this began as a recounting of my first night of drinking, all that happened was some asshole yelling, "shutup and drink your beer, pussy." me puking. me walking not-so-sneakily home. as i said, a drinking memory is an oxymoron. but this is really about larry. we all shitted on larry's life that night. i never admitted sincerely to the suffering i helped create. larry will most likely never read this. does me writing "i'm sorry, larry" do anything? i don't know. sorry, larry. kids are cruel and uncaring, and so are drunken abusive parents. we're all shitheads. sorry for being in the way...

i will float until i learn how to swim.

My worst regret of being a lush: my small bladder. Living alone, no problem. Piss thirty times a night, nobody cares, flush every time and laugh hohoho. With roommates I’m waking people up at all hours of the night to piddle. My door squeaks if you don’t open it fast enough. The bathroom door squeals if you don’t touch it. I’d rather not subject someone right across the hall to me spending a penny with the door open, so I squeal that motherfucker shut. Then bliss arrives. Nothing feels more relieving to me than a freshly emptied bladder. It’s not just that organ, I sometimes feel a shudder and twitching of muscles like an orgasm or when the best part of a favorite song does it to your ear hole. Everything expresses freedom of movement, and isn’t that what America is all about? Freedom of movement: to pee where you want! Hmm…off track. Maybe not. A friend impressed me the other night by peeing while walking down a city street. That’s on track. But I digress from the fact of my pint-sized urinary dysfunction symptoms. It’s a medical condition. P-SUDS. It means I pee a lot. For every pint, I take a whiz. Hence the pint-sized. It’s a medical term. It’s not rocket surgery. But I digress from the fact of my P-SUDS. It annoys all the people I live with who hear me shuffling through the creaky and squealing hallways at night, the people at bars who have to pause their gut-spilling life moments so I can go take five minutes feeling awkward standing next to multiple assholes who probably think I’m weird for not being able to pee in public when their awareness of it only enhances my anxiety and THIS IS A PROBLEM PEOPLE! But I digress from my P-SUDS. I drink everywhere I go, and in public parks there isn’t always a restroom. I urinate in public a lot. It’s not a medical condition, but I think doctors should start prescribing medical allowances to those of us with bantam tolerance for libation. Let my pee be free!
…Maybe not.
Remember, I’m a proud (but shy) member of the International Paruresis Association. I pee because I have to, not because I want to. You can yell at me for being an alcoholic, but when nature calls, nobody can deny me. On that note...

regrets

I hear your voice, but it’s the TV

I
Tremor,
Moan
Bemuse myself
Cry
Desperately, you aren’t this.
I
Scream, shake,
Fuck
You,
Losing
Control,
You’re voice is soothing,
Me
Not
Some type of sanity
Some type of vanity
I
Will call you
But
I
Wont.
This is
My
Death,
Slow
Cursed
Wasted
On a bed with all regrets
Wishing I could give you these words.

your kiss so sweet, your sweat so sour.

In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

-George Best

it's been said that deep down in our reptilian brain we possess the fight or flight response, a mysterious (or maybe not so much) ability to determine when personal danger is imminent, telling us to stand up and fight, or make like mint jelly and be on the lamb. it seems to me that over the course of thousands of years of inebriation we have also developed a distorted, drunken version of this which can be labeled and the "fight or fuck response." this awareness (or lack thereof) in our brain allows us to discriminate in an instant whether we want to treat another person with no respect or class, or one becomes so enamored with another they regress to that drunken cliche of "I LOVE YOU, MAN! NO, NO, REEEAALLY. You're awesome..." and so on.
what i experienced last night was that the removal of the fuck from the fight or fuck options leaves little room for misdirection. when the booty calls disappear, it's either go home or start yelling obscenities at the unfortunate person who's been sitting quietly, perhaps politely, next to your drunken ass all night. poor suckers. they never know it's coming until you open your shitfaced mouth. then they are your crying shoulder, punching bag, and best friend, all at the same time. i hate doing this to friends or strangers, being the buzzkill in a house of buzz. the worst part? i was pissed off about not going home with a girl. mind blowing when one takes an objective perspective on the situation. i'd never met her before, and under the layers of silky drunken veils draped over my eyes, i was not even that attracted to her. i barely remember what we talked about. nothing real. she was from the OC, how would I justify THAT in the morning? nevertheless, when she departed for her bed, saying she had to get up at 7, i was broken, desperate...a sore loser?
it is a game. this makes me feel insincere in the long run (no pun intended, but worth noting), and i suppose any real connections i could make with other humans is slowly deteriorating in this ridiculous display of fakeness; my charm and attention in exchange for your loins. this becomes even more pathetic and misleading to my soul when i'm engaging someone i could give a fuck about but still want to fuck. maybe none of what i'm saying is new to anyone, but it's worth being honest to myself that sometimes i act like a sack of shit and screw with other people's heads for my own pleasure (so many puns intended...not sure about the sack of shit pun). but my mask gets heavy. being fake is depressing. so why do i do it? i know it's only lust. the ambrosia can damper my conscience, but i'm never in denial that my smile and innocent inquisitive eyes are fading when no one is around to tempt such a face.
maybe here and now i can make a tentative promise to myself. stop being such a drunken whore? no, i'd be lying if i said i would stop playing the game. sex is too much fun, and monogamy has yet to present any alluring qualities to me. maybe if I meet the right person i'll think differently...no...i promise to let raging hormones rage elsewhere from a good night of drinking with friends and potential lovers. they say seek and ye shall find. fuck them. that's a bold faced lie. stop searching. (BLANK) is always been in front of you. in other words, if you're always looking for sex, you're going to be fucked, one way or the other. enjoy life for what you've got, especially if a drink is in hand. Sliante!

Thank God for Christian Temperance.

if you need to add mixers in the first place, you need to ask yourself why you bother drinking whisky at all?