“What the hell are you doing?” As the car screeched to a halt I held the bottle in the air, turning its nose toward me to hedge against the G-force that would otherwise slam the liquor through its neck, spraying the stuff all over the windshield and dashboard. “Do you know how sticky this shit is?!”
“The stop sign’s hidden behind that overgrown tree.” Chris turned down the stereo, looked around, then accelerated toward the bridge. “They need to prune that shit… It’s an accident waiting to happen.”
“I saw it fine.”
“Of course you did.” He rubbed his eyes and focused on the road. “It’s easier from your angle.” The explanation was nonsense, but I didn’t bother to press. Never question the driver… Just be happy it’s not you.
“Why’d you turn down the music?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why’d you turn down the music? That didn’t cause you to miss the sign.”
“I don’t know. It just seemed the proper thing to do.” Chris was partly right, and partly wrong. His reaction didn’t “seem” anything. He’d turned down the music out of fear… A fight-or-flight response – one of those senseless idiot tics we default to in an awkward or heated exchange, like darting your eyes around the room or saying “Excuse me?” when someone asks a question you don’t want to answer. He was buying himself a moment, to gird for police, ponder what he’d say if a patrol car pulled out of an alleyway and clicked on the sirens. “Can’t be too careful, considering…”
“I understand… Better safe than sorry.” I pulled the lever below my seat and slammed it back. “Here, it’s your shot.”
“Hey! What the fuck?” Martin barked from the backseat. “You just knocked the fucking bowl all over me.”
“We should smoke this anyway.” Stu held a joint in the air. “That thing’s all clogged.”
“Can you wait until we get there?” Chris snapped back.
“Why?” Stu flicked his lighter.
“So we’ll be able to speak to these chicks, for a few minutes at least.”
Chris had a point. Outside a Phish show perhaps, nobody’s ever gotten lucky based on the fact that he was really, really stoned. When you’re loaded you’re happy – a charming rogue of sorts. Whacked on hallucinogens you’re an explorer – strong enough to give up “control,” check out your inner wiring. That and you’re helpless, playing to the “Florence Nightingale” gene so many women hold. Stoned, on the other hand… Well, stoned is a different story. Blazed out of their gourds, most people are dull – deep in thought below, retarded on the surface. In the typical social setting, “hyper-baked” is rarely engaging or witty, and never charismatic. You’re slow and silly and chitchat seems impossible. And though you’d probably like to think otherwise, believe it, brother – there’s no such thing as “small-talk,” particularly with women. A smart one – the kind you really want to fuck – isn’t making idiot chatter. She’s testing you, kicking the tires… Seeing how fast you can shift from one subject to another. How well you’d relate to disparate varieties of people. Out-of-our-skulls high, most of us fail that exam.
In many ways, baking before you go out is deciding to not even attempt picking up women. You might make an effort, and you might even think you have a chance. And yes, on any given night, anyone can strike it lucky. But generally, globally, getting high is the last thing on the planet you want to do to land a chick. Think of all the stoner characters in movies or TV… Slater from Dazed N’ Confused? Spicoli? Do you recall these characters having girlfriends? Sure they’re ridiculous stereotypes, but they weren’t crafted out of thin air.
“You are such a fucking cramp.” Stu wouldn’t let it go.
“Humor me, will you?” Chris was getting whiny. “Just this once… I’d like to try to maybe, just maybe, get laid.”
“By getting all fucked up on Jager?”
“You think I’d do it sober?”
“You don’t have to hit it, Chris.” I tried to “split the baby” to end the dispute.
“If we light that, I’ll wind up out of my tree.”
That was always the problem with baking. When you’re bored, you want to be baked. Until there’s something better to do, when you suddenly don’t want to be baked anymore. Problem is, by then it’s too late. And nobody ever gets “just a little high.” It comes on sneaky, slow and lethal. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to be. No looming deadlines or people to see. You take a few hits. Then you take a few more. Then you start thinking, I should have a few more, just to make sure I’ve had enough. Every “few more” leads to another “few more”… Forty minutes later you’re watching an infomercial for “The Garden Weasel,” wondering if there’s ice cream in the freezer and it hits you – Shit, I’m retarded… a goddamn mongoloid. And there’s no way out. All you can do is deal with it.
Add a bottle of liquor to the mix and you’re cooked. From immigrant miners drowning the misery in Seagram’s and Lucky Strikes to hippies cannon-balling joints with rotgut wine to the modern day “Masters of the Universe” chasing Churchills with Johnny Walker Blue, smoke and liquor have been our national speedball since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Cigarettes, cigars, dope – they all taste better with whiskey. And the more you have of one, the more you want of the other. The “joint and shots” mixture is a crippling, incessant cycle. The tar burns the throat. The shot kills the burn. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Three or four in, you start feeling niiice – pleasant, careless and clueless. Seven or eight in you’re numb – lucid and coherent, but not really there. Ten or twelve in you’re Gone – bigger than your being, immortal and impervious, all knowing and all seeing. That’s the peak, of course, the ledge before the drop. Anything more than that that and you’re fried, blathering and staggering, in that helpless, wretched state where you find yourself picking up a candle instead of the bottle and filling the shot glass with melted wax. And then, suddenly – SWAK! – Here come the spins… Ohhhh… The whole room is moving… So fast… So dizzy… I feel like I ate bad fish… Somebody, please, stop it. Cry all you like. Bury your head in the couch. The more you close your eyes, the faster the revolutions.
“Shit, Chris.” Stu snapped from the back. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“What?”
“Let me know if you’re going to take a fucking turn that fast.”
“That’s not my fault. The road did it.”
“I just poured a shot on my forehead… It’s in my fucking hair!”
“So what? It’s just sugar and alcohol.”
“Exactly. This shit’s going to harden.”
By the halfway point, the whole car stunk like licorice-y cough-syrup, like a jelly bean on wheels, everything inside soaked in that awful Nazi liquor. I remember wondering, Why? Why is this so difficult? The plan wasn’t complicated. The route was two roads, rural and mostly free of police. Chris would stand on the gas and I’d do the bartending. If all went to plan we’d be on _____________’s campus in an hour and some change, faster than Randal, basking in our victory, hitting on this “Amy” girl and her friends.
Everything was in our favor. We had the easier liquor, the faster car and Randal’s team had Otto, the worst drinker of the bunch. Otto was young for his year, and he looked like he was fifteen, with a round baby-face and gangly, tenth grade posture. A cross between Ralphie from A Christmas Story and Michael Anthony Hall’s character in Weird Science, only loud, aggressive, with a dwarf’s liver and the “drinking maturity” of a cheerleader on senior week… The sort who got blasted on four gin and tonics at sorority cocktails and knocked over the hors d’oeuvres table.
I figured Otto would hold Randal back, get sick on the ride or force them to pull over to piss. Still, we couldn’t take a chance. Thirty miles from _____________ I threw the shot-glass out the window. “Why’d you do that?” Chris shouted.
“Excuse me?”
“The shot glass… Why’d you throw it away?”
“It’s bad luck.” That wasn’t really true. The simple fact is, you can’t serve shots in a Volvo, particularly on an old rural highway. I felt like a stewardess on a Tilt-A-Whirl, spilling more than I was pouring. With those rigid church pew seats and that stiff, taut suspension… The car rolled like a tank, but we felt every turn, bump and groove in the road. BANG! The frame would slam and shudder with the slightest divot in the blacktop.
“Bad luck? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You don’t want to get pulled over with something like that. It’s paraphernalia… Sends all the wrong signals.”
I had the right idea about getting rid of the shot glass. Once we started swigging it the Jager went faster, and whether it was consequence or coincidence, the trip went smoother. We knocked off the bottle with time to spare and pulled into Amy’s place ten minutes ahead of Randal, who’d taken a back route that looked faster on paper but was filled with traffic lights.
Amy was cute, and she had cute friends and a cute place – large enough that we could technically crash in the living room, small enough to invite the suggestion that a few of us would rather stay in beds. We were buzzed, happy, our team had won the bet and everything was going to plan, except for one nasty problem – Otto. He was shitfaced, plastered – out of his mind… Chugging wine he found in the girls’ refrigerator, stumbling about the home and “soft-molesting” the women – hugging them, putting his arms around their shoulders and petting their backs and arms. “I really liiiiike eeeeyyooouuu. Yooouuu’ve got a graaay place heeere. You nee sommmm-uhhh help cleaning anything up?” Otto could be awful in his cups – the sort who’d get in close and hang on attractive females, working that pathetic “friend” angle to cop some cheap, desperate feels.
“What the fuck happened to him?” I grabbed Randal in kitchen as we watched Otto guzzle from a bottle and fall sideways through a pair of French doors.
“Izzz alright.” He pulled himself on a table holding a fish tank, sending a ripple of water toppling over the front. “I juss loss my footing.”
“Don’t pull on that!” A pixie in a headband darted across the room and braced the table to stop the tank from shaking and tipping under Otto’s weight. “They’re extremely sensitive fish! They get scared and don’t eat and then they die.”
“He baked himself silly on the ride, I guess.” Randal cracked a Yeungling. “He was in the back, holding the sack.”
“Your friend’s awfully drunk, and uh… ripe.” I could hear one of Amy’s roommates commenting to Chris. It was true. I’d noticed Otto’s stench the minute he took off his jacket in the kitchen. For a small man, he smelled something terrible – one of those pungent, putrid body odors, as though his pH were askew or he was badly, fungally diseased. And it seemed to come out of nowhere, when there was no good reason for a person to reek as he did. It was the middle of a frigid January and Otto stunk like he’d just come in from a three hour soccer practice. Back at the house that wouldn’t be a problem. He’d blend with the surroundings. But here, now? This was a chick pad. These girls owned a vacuum cleaner. They washed their dishes and burned scented candles. Otto stuck out like a soiled sweat-sock in a basket of freshly cleaned sheets.
“He’s going to fuck this up, Randal.” I watched Otto grab the fish-tending pixie, all but putting her in headlock, half to grope the girl, half to gain his balance. “Yerr a cool chick…” He gestured, spilling a puddle of wine on the floor around them. “Have some zinfandel… Izzz like white and red… at the same time.”
“I don’t like zinfandel.”
“Why?”
“Can you please let me go?” She squirmed out of his grip. “I have to check the filter.”
“He’ll pass out.” Randal brushed me off. “We’ll put him on a floor somewhere.”
“If he hasn’t fucked everything up by then.” The women in the house were “proper,” an Anne Taylor and “bob cut” crowd… The sorts who got high, drunk and fucked, but followed all the Methodist strictures on the surface. Image was important, and Otto was killing ours. He was an oaf and he smelled and there was no divorcing him from the group. Otto colored the lot of us, like a drop of ink in water.
A road trip’s a statement. The people you ride with are proxies, reflections of the self – the types you chose to sit with for however long the ride. You’re a unit, parts of a shared consciousness, as strong as your weakest link. Like it or not, Otto was us. And we were him. As far as Chris was getting with Amy or any of us with her friends, we’d only get as lucky as Otto would allow. College women are rigid pack animals. Where a man would ditch his friends for pussy in an instant, women consider the group, subjugating their wants to maintenance of the social fabric. I could see the conflicted look on Amy’s face as she and Chris talked. If I hook up with Chris, Otto will probably wind up spending the night here. My housemates will have to take care of him. They’ll hate me for it for weeks. They’ll ostracize me.
I knew that look, and the machinations in her head going on behind it. I’d seen the exchange dozens of times before and I’ve seen it dozens of times since. How many conversations go on every evening at bars all over the world where women who want to do nothing more than run off with the man they’re talking to don’t because they’re with a group of other females or chained to an “adversely-gifted” friend? God, I’d love to cut loose and go to some other place with this guy. But what’ll I do with Carol? He’s got a friend with him, but that guy’s clearly not interested in her. They never are. Just look at him… He’s folding cocktail napkins into origami swans to avoid making eye contact with her. Dammit, I hate this… Why doesn’t she do something about that lazy eye? Get that mole removed and have the gastric surgery already? I can’t count the instances where I’ve observed the phenomenon, barely fighting the urge to pull one of these women aside and drop the obvious science. Look, if you all really want equality – if you want to be treated exactly like men – you’ve got to stop serving everybody else. Put Carol and her goiter in a cab and go for your own.
But I know, true as that advice might be, it’s not my place, and it’d only get me slapped. You can’t sell logic like that to the average tribal creature. They get bent, offended – pissed at the strength of the argument. We’ve all got our allegiances, and I guess in the end, as damaging as most of them can be, it’s probably not a bad thing. Nobody wants a guy quoting Nietzsche sitting next to him as their plane makes an emergency landing.
“Son of a bitch! Chris! Chris! Get over here!” It was an hour or two after we arrived. I was standing in the living room, talking to one of Amy’s friends when I heard the screaming.
“What the–?” We looked at each other then darted, with everybody else, in the direction of the noise. In a bedroom off the hallway was Amy, standing in the doorway, pulling her hair and shouting. Chris was standing behind her, one hand on her shoulder, saying “I’m sorry” over and over. In middle of the room was Otto, splayed across a long Persian rug, moaning, drooling, covered in vomit.
“The rug’s destroyed.” Amy snapped at Chris. “And the bed cover’s ruined! Just smell it. It’s disgusting.”
The room stunk of peptic acid and half-digested whiskey. The once white comforter was smeared with the usual mixture of red and green food particles, mucus, saliva and bile, with a trail of the mixture running down the side of the bed, onto the floor and the rug, then up the side of Otto’s jeans and all over his shirt. You could see the streams of it under his nostrils and the smears of it on his cuffs, which he’d clearly used to wipe his face.
“I sooo sorry. I had the s-s-spins.” His voice was cracking between a grunt and a high pitched whine. “I — I… I juzzz wanted to sleep for a second.”
“Get out. Just get out.” Amy had no forgiveness in her heart, and I couldn’t blame her. Use all the cleaners, soaps and solvents you can find – that acrid stench of vomit is impossible to kill. Otto might as well have bludgeoned a skunk in her room. “You all have to go. Now.”
“I’ll clean it up.” Chris assured her.
“No. Just go.”
“Hey. Hey.” Stu tugged at my shirt from behind.
“What do you want?” I barked as he pulled me into the living room.
“You want to smoke this joint now?”
“Do you have any sense of timing?”
“You’d be a lot less of a douche if you baked more, you know that?”
“God, you stink like licorice.”
“Fuck you.”
“…With just a hint of Nyquil. Excellent bouquet.”
“You can’t blame this on me–” Chris was still pleading with Amy in the hall. “I didn’t know he’d do that.”
“Come on…” She sneered. “How many beers has he had?”
“None.” A voice came from the peanut gallery. “He was drinking bourbon.”
“Thanks, Randal.” Chris was fiddling with his cigarettes, realizing he was dead in the debate, if you could even call it that.
“Thanks for that clarification.”
“You bring two carloads of drunk people and a twelve year old with alcohol poisoning into my house and expect to crash here?” Amy kept rolling. “That was your plan?”
“We weren’t that drunk when we headed out.”
“What?”
“Forget it.” Chris waved off her question. No use in discussing the “race.” That’d only make things worse.
“You didn’t think about how you’d get home?”
“Not… specifically…”
Think about getting back? What the hell was she talking about? There’s no planning in these things. There’s angst and boredom and wheels, the adrenaline of Just Going. Plotting the return? If you’re going to do that, then why the hell leave? The point of the trip was forgetting, for however long you could, that there ever was a Start, or somewhere calling you back. That you could simply keep driving, as far the engine would go.
But that’s just a fiction of course, and a fragile one at that – far too flimsy for the scene. These women had serious problems – real, concrete issues. They had stomach acid stains in a fine Persian rug. And panicked, terrified fish. We’d revolted and repulsed them, abused their hospitality. Mostly by association, the wages of one bad apple… But that didn’t matter much. The night was a total loss. No use in getting profound, in trying to explain the “purpose.” It wasn’t a linear thing. You have to understand… There’s no start or finish, only back and forth – forward and further and faster, but always round and round, a horrible, hideous loop… That’d never make sense. She’d only think me mad, probably whacked on acid. And anyway, Amy was right. We had to return – to our house, basement and routine, the rubber room for our kind.
We were ten miles out of town when the car suddenly swerved and Chris slammed the brakes, jarring me from a daydream. “What the fuck was that? Are you alright?” I’d been watching the pines rolling by, staring at the mountains and thinking. What kind of animals were out there? Bears? Foxes? Coyotes? What was alive and conscious in this cruel frozen night? Roaming, hunting or fleeing in that endless carpet of trees?
“I hate when that happens.” Chris was furiously sucking a cigarette, squinting at the highway and checking the speedometer.
“What are you looking for?” I turned down the radio.
“I thought I saw a cow.”
“A what?”
“You heard me. From a farm or something, walking near the road.”
“In the middle of January?”
“Probably a deer. Your eyes ever play tricks on you like that? You know… You see a shadow and then it looks like a person or animal running across the road?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s probably my contacts or something. I swore I saw a stick figure darting over a highway divider a few miles back. Happens a lot at night.”
“Right… Hey, ‘Licorice-head.’” I leaned back and slapped Stu’s leg. “Is there any of that joint left?”
“Oh, so now you want to hit it?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
To be continued…
Another excellent post there PL. Can’t wait for the next segment…
I have been waiting for this post for days… phenomenal, just what I needed on a hungover day at work. Can’t wait for part 3, or your book for that matter.
PL: Take a huge B12 vitamin – biggest dose you can find, and drink a liter of freezing cold water.
Or, if you can, have a Bloody. It’s past noon here… Presbyterian drinking hours.
Champagne also gets it done fast. The bubbles get right in there and kill the pain. If you can chase a B12 horse-pill with a glass of that, that’s the course to take.
Ah yes, the fucked up asshole who prevents everyone else from getting laid. We had a guy who pooped in some girl’s mom’s fancy hat. This guy was a walking fucking pharmacy, and he was the kind who couldn’t take pills unless he pushed ‘em on everyone else so he didn’t feel guilty about taking pills alone. He gave me so many bennies one night that I was completely out of control of my body, like I was operating a Rock-Em-Sock-Em robot from afar or something… we were at some girl’s house who I really wanted to bone, but I couldn’t even talk. When I got up to get a beer out of her fridge, I was so “relaxed” I knocked over a gumball machine she had in her living room and it shattered everywhere, creating an instant cartoon-like slip and fall hazard for whomever came running out to investigate, which was like 4 chicks from a back bedroom. Once they fell they also discovered all the broken glass everywhere… I just ran out of the house, off into the woods. Slept under the bleachers at a nearby little league field, as I recall. Good times.
PL: The “shitters” are bad sorts… rotten, evil people. Even those creative enough to use a hat.
Haha that sucks, I hope you guys gave Otto shit for that every day. The story’s hilarious and the descriptions are dead-on, I can’t wait for the ending.
PL: It shifts. This is a multi-scene piece. There’s about 500 miles more of road to go.
Brilliant. “Our national speedball” and “pissed at the strength of the argument” were just beautiful descriptions. Arguing with a girl is just a lose-lose because it infuriates you that she can’t detach from the blinding emotionality and it makes her angry that she really was created as an inferior being.
I’ve lived this night a thousand times.
A truer story has never been told.
Again, excellent as always. A great mix of the cereberal and the visual.
Yep, there’s always a couple of varieties of dummies that make up a crew. Lightweights, shitters, and my personal favorite: the punching bag. You roll into a party in another town, or at somebodies brother’s school and things go so smooth for so long that you just can’t believe your fucking luck. And that’s when it hit’s you, or in reality that’s when one of your boys just laid out his weak pimp game for some girl and between the loud laughing and the deathly quite it becomes rapidly apparent that he crossed the line with someone’s bitch and just signed his own fucking death warrant. Faster than you can say “lets beat feet”, your boy has just hit the floor and you’re faced with a choice:get in, get your downed man and get the fuck out, or suck it up and go get you some catch up.Even before fight or flight takes over, as you’re walking over to his still twitching body, you’re doing the math in your head: how big is the motherfucker who just punted pimpy the love puppy, where are the exists, where is your posse, who’s looking like their with this guy who dropped your boy faster than a caribbean sunset, and most important can you get in that one good shot to take him down or at least slow him down while you mass the troops.? Back in the day, we had a non-player who usually drank too much, smoked not enough,and always said the wrong shit to the wrong woman. We called him Double D, you can use your imagination as to what it stood for. I once saw him take a shot straight to the forehead that left a bruise in the shape of a of a fist, I mean perfect match, of the guy who thumped him, for over a month. Needless to say we didn’t need to discuss not taking him along on any roadtrips for the duration of that hematoma. The only consulation to any of his antics, was listening as he tried to explain how he got that bruise to his girlfriend!
Fuck the Ottos of the world.
I think this piece rang the truest out of any of yours I’ve ever read. The bit about weed preventing you from hooking up while *seeming* like a good idea at the beginning of the night is dead on. The parallel you draw between the male and female perspectives on “planning out the night” is perfect. I have had this night, been one of those guys, and known those girls. Kudos.
Phil would I be wrong in saying that you have a gonzo-esque quality to your writings? How much do you think Hunter S. Thompson shaped your writing style?
PL: Considerably. I read “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72″ some years ago and remember thinking, “yes.”
A lot of the voice, however, derives from someone I’m struggling to write something about right now – George Carlin.
Thompson had the amazing prose, but his message was muddy in spots. Carlin? Fuck. He was just Right. Always, on everything. Watch his last special on Youtube, “It’s Bad for Ya.” If Thompson was, as Tom Wolfe said, “the century’s greatest comic writer in the English language,” well, Carlin was easily the century’s greatest social critic in stand-up comedy.
Excellent. I can’t say that I have had similar experiences, but love your writing all the same.
FYI: Amazon just delayed delivery of your book. Fascists!
PL: Publishing’s like molasses.
Keep ‘em coming. Hope the book sells a million and you’ve billed your last hour.
Good move throwing the shot glass out the window, swigging is a much more effective method of car-drinking. I’ve also found that premixing soda and liquor (in the soda bottle, of course) is effective if the car owner isn’t comfortable with the swig idea.
That’s also the most spot-on description of my relationship with liquor and marijuana that I’ve ever heard.
Are you still working in your law firm, billing hours and (in Taibbi’s words) shoveling coal for Satan? You’ve been in this world for something like a decade, right? How have you not gone apeshit and stabbed someone in the eye with a yellow highlighter… or gone completely schizo?
I ask because I’m approaching that precipice myself.
PL: What is driving you nuts? I ask because I’m thinking of doing an “reader suggestion” thing where I respond and do some posts on topics readers select in between the serial pieces. And I think the discontents of lawyers can be universally applied to many offices and industries.
As to snapping, don’t. That’s them winning. Find a Plan B. As to me, I split into two people years ago, but I’m writing my way out of the hole. It’s hard, but fulfilling. Click on “Ten Percenter” and follow the link. That explains the rest.
How’s the book going to be categorized? Non-Fiction? Or a Klostermanesque 85% of a true story?
PL: Click the link for “Ten Percenter.” Non-fiction, listed as humor/biography/entertainment and some other categories. Not terribly Klostermanesque (I don’t muse at quite his length), but I appreciate the compliment by association. “Sex Drugs & Cocoa Puffs” is one of my favorite books.
Hey Phila,
I just wanted to write to tell you that your writing is great. I’ve been reading your your stuff since your blog days, couple of years ago – I think the first thing that I read was your post about the partner, Randall, being a sadist and handing out assignments on Friday afternoons.
I am also a lawyer, and I am close to moving on from law to an endeavor that I truly am passionate about. It took a lot of time (years) and effort, but now that I am seriously getting close to a day where I won’t have to think about anything legal but spend my entire day in doing things that I would do for free, I actually feel a little happy. It’s a weird feeling.
Keep writing. I will get your book when it comes out.
One final thing: don’t take this the wrong way, but I liked your version of Ten Percenter that you posted for the very first time on your blog years ago, the best. You know, the one where you described yourself as just another white dude highlighting Emmanuel’s outlines while explaining your meeting with Alex at the library. That version, in my opinion, was one of the most lights-out things I’ve read in my life and for a while, it was burned into my brain; I kinda wish I saved that somewhere. Now, I am not a literary dude and I don’t write like you, so what do I know, but please don’t edit your stuff too much.
PL: I’d never take your last comment as anything but a compliment. As to editing, there is a need to compress and this is a ruthlessly efficient medium. Some of those wild peaks I think you’re referencing are smoothed or lost in translation at times. It’s tricky as hell to write on the net and do a book simultaneously because in many regards they are identical, and in other regards, they are vastly different in terms of arc and focus.
But anyway, thanks for the support. And best of luck with your new endeavor. You won’t need it, since it isn’t really work if you dig what you’re doing, but I hope it meets every expectation you have.
Wow. Apparently a PL update is the perfect surprise in those drunken moments when everyone has left but you’re not quite ready to go to bed. I have nothing but good things to say about this one, but I’ll just say “thanks for the good times.”
PL: Have another. I am.
Ten Percenter, ChapStik, and a few other stories are no longer there. What’s up with that?
Love your shit man.
PL: Thanks. Follow the link.
So you gave us your 5 favorite bourbons in the last comment section, how about your top 5 beers here?
Great story so far, by the way.
PL: Five? Oh God… In no certain order:
Anyhting by Anchor Steam
Anything by Bell’s
Speakeasy Imperial Pale Ale
Budweiser 12 Oz Cans (I hate Bud out of bottles)
Anything by Dogfish Head
Anything by Samuel Smith
Delirium Tremors
Leffe
Chimay
Anything by Sierra Nevada
Amstel (It’s like “play beer” for when you have to socially drink and not get drunk)
The only thing that I can think of right now is, “Holy shit.” Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always thought that you were a good writer, but this post has just reached another level, one that I aspire to reach. You’ve just set a bar for me that I want to understand and surpass.
Do you have a must-read, or books I like list somewhere you could share like Ryan does? I’d be much obliged.
PL: I’ll do that with the forthcoming music list. That’s long and requires me to think a lot. I’m the kind of person who gives away or loans out books with no intention of reclaiming them once read. Right now I can say I am reading “The Myth of Sisyphus,” the end of “Fargo Rock City” I forgot to finish years ago and bits of a biography of Gram Parsons. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot more periodicals and newspapers than anything else. When you write, you tend to copy the style of what you’re reading, so you have to consciously avoid reading anything by anyone with any unique or dated prose.
PL: I looked on amazon a few days ago and there was only barebones info up, now it looks good with all the details. Tell your publisher to throw up some excerpts though.
ps- snazzy cover
PL: Thanks. But credit for the cover idea goes to Donika and the Bunny. http://donika.rudiusmedia.com; http://www.thebunnyblog.com
3 things…
1) God damn I love your writing! I can’t wait to get the book, pre-ordered a couple days ago.
2) How can I get an autographed copy?
3) Where’s the love from Rudius? No pre-sale announcement over on RMMB? Too early?
PL: Don’t want to shoot my wad prematurely. We’re working on all those things and will have answers shortly.
Fantastic. Just brilliant, fluid prose. I’m still young, gradtuated last year – and if I experience a life half as interesting and complete as yours I’ll consider it well lived.
Your stories are at once identifiable with and awe-inspiring. I’m trying to start writing now.
PS Us Brits get a blurb on the book description!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Happy-Hour-Amateurs-Decade-Profession/dp/0061349496/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215787033&sr=8-1
PL: Thanks. But I’m just a guy writing the fucking and drunk stories we all have, with a few important points in the mix.
If I might offer some advice since you raise the issue of how to live, live your life, and yours alone. Take advice and pay attention to people with years on you, but never follow a form. And never do something you loath or bores you just for money. In the end, the only currency that matters is on your wristwatch.
The beginning installments of your stories always leave me wanting more, and the end of your stories always leave me extremely satisfied. It’s like being blue balled one minute, then having a twenty pornstar gangbang the next.
I can’t wait to see where this story is going. You’ve set up a perfect storm of trouble, much like you did with Ten Percenter (are you sick of people referencing that story yet?), and I’m looking forward to the inevitable shit-storm.
Similarly, I’d like to thank you for the semi-regular updates, even though you’re working on a book. My biggest pet peeve with internet writers who land book deals is that they forgo updating their sites so they can work on their books. You manage to work on the book while simultaneously updating frequently enough to keep my interest piqued. Keep up the good work.
PL: Thank you. I think I can address the reason internet writers with book deals don’t continually write when they’re working on their books.
Writing a book is insane. To do it well, you must be immersed in it almost every spare moment you aren’t working. To try to update a site at the same time with quality material while dealing with the book’s marketing and editing is almost impossible. The best analogy I can offer would be an Op-Ed writer who goes on sabbatical to write a book. They do that because there is no way for them to pump out columns and write a book at once. In my case, there is bleed-over between the site and the book, but even in that scenario, I had to walk away from the site for several months.
But again, thanks for your patience and compliments.
“pissed at the strength of the argument”
Yeah, definitely gotta agree with that one. It’s one of the foulest catch-22s I know. Damn
by the way, what does Ne mangez pas l’acide marron- (i guess it translates to dont eat the acid chestnut?) have to do with your book?
PL: That’s close, but not the exact translation (or we have it wrong, or it’s one of those phrases that never translates 1:1 to English, either of which is entirely possible). It’s a famous quote.
it’s funny reading that one comment about gonzo journalism. i’ve described you as a yuppie hunter s. thompson to friends. i’m more reminded of thompson than carlin when i read your stories. i’ve never commented before, so i just want to take this time to tell you that i love your work and look forward to reading your book as soon as i spend my money on something other than pot. college.
PL: Thank you. Very kind. I think the reason writing doesn’t or can’t sound like Carlin is because everybody recalls Carlin for his unique delivery, with so many asides and pauses. Hard to recall anything he said as prose. And as good as he was with language, he wasn’t poetic. In his best works, Thompson was basically a poet pretending to be a writer. The “Gonzo” angle was as much about the way his words flowed as anything else. The “rip” of the language created a unique sense of, pardon my use of a word currently bastardized to a silly political definition, “urgency.”
You said you were thinking about doing a “reader’s suggestion”. This is a topic I was thinking about for a while, it’s rather deep, but if there’s anyone that can tackle it, I think it’s you. I find that no matter what you do in life and where you go, as far as friends are concerned, there’s times when you become MIA and start anew. Somewhere down the line you get flashbacks and you think about how far you’ve actually gone from where you were and how different or same the people are where you’ve ended up. It seems that no matter what we all walk the journey of life as alone as the day we were born. How do we(you) deal with the fleetingness(for lack of a better word) of it all? Do you ever think back or do you ignore it?
PL: I think it’s a worthwhile subject and actually will be addressed in a later piece a month or so from now. From a positive perspective. I think the idea you’re referencing dovetails into the idea of not giving away your only irreplaceable resource.
Thank you for being an inspiration, I look forward to seeing you in d.c. I still want that autograph, and offer still stands about that beer.
PL: Madam’s Organ and the Big Hunt still open?
Madam’s Organ will be open for a long time. More importantly, “Dan’s” in AdMo is still open.
Where else can you get shots in a ketchup bottle?
PL: Is The Round Table still open as well? It’s a hole in the wall where they serve bourbon and cokes by giving you a ten ounce glass nearly filled with bourbon and a Coke on the side.