6 posts tagged “fun”

Last night, the moon was dipped
into the retracting void
virus, emptiness sutured its wound
closed it to another side-- healed

This day, the beast did belch,
"Love, love, love,"
at the center of the only heart,
"Long, lost, gone."

It slows, the engulfing more,
To a halt.
To a hearth.
It slows, faces you, and chomp.

We don't remember where we're
going or where we've been.
Clang, clang.  The knocks to your
head.  The beating li'l heart.

It's no use, hide, hold on.
Sing along, art is hard.
It's no use, hide, and let go.
Cannot sing along, we.

This dad, I am not, but belch,
"I loved, and lost."
At the heart of my only center,
Beating, repeating.

I need olive oil, gloves, and you.
"I need a friend and hope, in you."
A grocery list of things, forever,
"You missed your chance, now cut the tether."

This is the complete frame for the story I want to tell.  Thematically I am displeased with myself, but at least I got this out of my system.

FLAMBIES: Zombies Aflame.

"I just needed to get some fresh air.  Away from him.  He just never stops."
    "Yeeeah,"  says Samantha, elongating and trailing her words with a sigh.  "Can't we just have a conversation?"
    "Exactly. Enough staring into a computer screen, Jesus Christ."
The cold punctuates their words.  As they push the words through the air, so exits warm moisture.  It is the driest, coldest November for the region.  On the West Coast, this is especially prevalent as wildfires encroach ever so slowly from the southern tip of California, north and east.  It is on the news nearly every day, but neither of these individuals are aware of it.  Miles away, the all-consuming fire is of little consequence to them.  So, so far away. 

    "I should really get going," she says, annoyed at the presence of Jake, their mutual friend, who is on FACEBOOK, a company that poses to "connect you" and make you "closer" to your friends, when really they're selling something out of the back.  That something is your information.  When you list information about yourself, it is leased to the highest bidder.  Once that happens, FACEBOOK allows the advertisers to link ads to your login, specifically targeting you.  Jake is still on FACEBOOK, having his soul siphoned out, hours after they leave.
    "Alright, yeah, I've really got to get up early anyway," she adds. 
    Cabel and Samantha put their cigarettes out together, both having finished within exactly two minutes-- inhaling an entire cigarette, burned. 

Scuttling
    "So, you still haven't told me why we're here, Fisher. Or why I couldn't come the first time," Kristopher hisses through his pearly teeth.
    "Ampulex compressa," Dr. Fisher responds.
    "The wasp?"
    "The wasp."
    "What about it?"
    "It evolved in tandem with roaches-- developed a toxin that it injects into their brains.  Inducing the toxin makes the roaches follow a scent back to the wasp's nest, where it becomes an incubator for the wasp's eggs, who hatch and eventually utilize more roaches for procreation."
    "Well, we're not going to find any wasps in a dark cave."
    Dr. Fisher grins with crooked yellow teeth. He cuts at the skeleton of a Fuji with a rusty knife.
    "That's disgusting."  His friend and more formally apprentice, Kristopher, sits on a damp mound of granite.  Staring in concern for his mentor, not friend, he iterates his point, adding, "You're going to get lockjaw or something."
    Dr. Fisher uses the force of a thumb opposite the rusty, though sharp blade, sliding it toward him.  "You know nothing.  Apples are good for you, clean out your teeth.  And I'll be fine."
    Kristopher continues to stare, annoyed.  He sighs and looks up at the sky of rock.  A drop of water drips.  Drips right into his eye.  Putting up with moments of eternity, Kristopher reminds himself this is worth it.  Misery and his mind wander to gold watches and beautiful women. "You know, we should probably be doing work. You've been carving for thirty minutes."
    "Twenty-six, and what's your hurry?  I could cut this forever, given the right sharpness. You can always get smaller pieces, if you understand how.  We need to understand how to find what we're looking for.   And we'll find it when we find it."
    Kristopher begins a retort, but the air is knocked out of him, as the granite stump gives way to his weight.  Dr. Fisher rises cautiously.  His understanding of caves shaken, just not as much as Kristopher's. 
    "What the fuck?!"  Kristopher belches angrily from within a sunken rock formation.  "That is not supposed to fucking happen.  Is this one of your tests, one of your tricks... I am so sick--"
    "Wait!"  A scuttling noise echoes, and Dr. Fisher continues over discontented whispers from Kristopher, "Do you hear that?"  Kristopher's hands push down on the outer rim of his accidental rock fox-hole, and he pauses.
    "Yeah. I do.  What is it?" he whispers, calmly excited.
    "It's what we're looking for."
    Dr. Fisher turns his helmet-light to full and Kristopher is blinded.  He returns the favor, but Fisher is already creeping down to a nearby pool.  "In there," he says, pointing through a hole in the wall.
    "What about in there?"
    "You're climbing in there."
    Normally one for confrontation, Kristopher trades his grief for anticipated glory and fortune. He begins to move himself forward in the crawlspace to the pool.  He promptly sticks himself the wrong way, and can't move forward.
    "I'm stuck!" he yelps.  Frantically shifting his weight, he continues, "I think I can get out, but I can't go forward anymore"
    "Wait! What can you see?"
    Kristopher stops panicking and remembers the new car he needs.  "Just a wall."  He turns his head.  The light moves with him, panning the wall.  Outside of the hole, Dr. Fisher paces.  Bites his nails. 
    "Anything yet?" Fisher ponders aloud.  Before Kristopher responds, Fisher gets his answer.  Light beams outward from the hole, enveloping Kristopher and startling Fisher.  He shields his eyes and asks Kristopher if he can see it.
    "Yes," he breathes, "it's beautiful."  
   
Consumer
     Cabel's iPod boombox blankets the noisy television in the next room, blasting her favorite song.  The speakers, busted, screech during the higher pitches, while the Media makes hopeless attempts to educate Cabel.  From across the kitchen, she sees shocked eyes on gaping anchor-faces, and thinks little of it.  Shit happens every day.  Every day, shit happens. 
    Bing, microwave ravioli is done.  She reads the nutrition facts.   Fourteen grams of protein, Eight-point-one grams of sugar, and Two-thousand-nineteen milligrams of sodium.  Eighty-four percent, she reads and thinks, Oh well, it's been worse. 
     Years ago, when Cabel is fifteen, she fails a drug test for the last time.  Unable to tolerate it any longer, her mother kicks her out of the house, changes the locks, and nails the windows shut.  For the next week, Cabel lives in a neon-pink and yellow Fisher Price tent in the woods.  The forgotten woods between a new apartment complex and ancient rail-road tracks.  The sewer water leaks through to the creek, and she lives off of fast food.  Her friends tell her she looks pale and malnourished.  Three things go through her fifteen-year-old head:  1) Burning those effigies of my mom in the back yard with my friends, our little arms beating it with lead pipes and sticks,  seems retroactively justified.  2)Maybe I should quit smoking pot.  3) Maybe I should quit getting caught for smoking pot.

     She never quits.  She is high right now, in fact. 

    Her Crest-whitened teeth take their first bite of the faux-violi. If it's better than it was, it's best.  She lowers the volume on her boom box and catches the end of shocked words from a shocked mouth, "Our prayers are with the missing Dr. Bernard Fisher and all of those suffering in California."  Cabel straddles her couch, flipping her left leg over.  She carefully lands on the cushions, facing the television.  She thinks about Dr. Fisher missing and is, inexplicably,  unable to cry as the news fades to commercials.  Pushing her lack of empathy to the back of her mind, she turns the volume up.  Cars overpower cheetahs and horses, victorious, even, over Earth itself.  Medicine cures the minor and embarrassing--  backaches and heartburn, flatulence,  anxiety and confidence issues.  Lose weight, follow our god, monitor your neighbors.  Beware.   A cyclical tale of kindness shows last on the screen-- everyone seeing everyone else lend a hand, and everyone continuing the cycle, until it returns to the first person.  Some music accompanies it and then the logo of a large company fades in and it says, "We care about you."   Cabel begins to weep uncontrollably.
    The news returns, ending the commercials. The ads continue, with a voice conditioned to sell ideas. "Now we return to our story on why breastfeeding may be harmful to your child."

    Later that night, she rolls a spliff and smokes it out of her bedroom window, alone.  Off in the faded black, she hears a train and thinks of her father, who used to take her to chase and photograph trains when she was younger, back before he left her mother.  A wailing metal ghost groans, for it is inclined to keep going in one direction, forced to remain on a set path.  The conductor of the ghost pulls its vocal chord, and it lets out a smaller and smaller call.  And then, when she can no longer hear it any more, off in that dark distance, she tries to cry.  She tries so hard, because she feels that it means so much.  So much now that it's gone.  And it's gone.  
   
 Flambies
     John Goh  lies face down at the foot of the forest.  His skin, stripped from his body, oozes out from under his retardant yellow fatigues.   The hair on his body burns, emanating a bad smell, and no one but the trees, engulfed in cones of fire, claim witness.  John's mind painfully wanders to the edge of sense, and he passes out, dead and still burning. 
   
    Earlier, John tells his compatriots of Buddhist Monks who, protesting the Vietnam war, doused themselves in gasoline.  They lit matches and sat, lips sealed, burning.  Like that guy who loads his shotgun and goes down to the ashes of the twin towers and hops the fence, John says.  Wearing a sign that details why he is about to do what he is about to do, he positions the barrel against his throat and pulls the trigger, splattering himself on the grave that launched a war. 
    John and his group of firefighters get off of their transport vehicle and gear up.  They stand gazing into the perimeter of flame.  Dwarfing them, it gradually advances its will across the California soil, stretching upward to burn a hole in the sky.  Stretching to reunite with the gods of fire in the night sky.  Fighting this fire is a constant struggle, and there is no sleep for those who wish it halted. 

    It is a moonless night, one of the firefighters notes, and John thinks of how maybe it is just a sunless night.  Either way the moon is out there, imperturbably lording some bit of fate over the world, its oceans, its fish and its fishers.  Somewhere higher than John and the firefighters but lower than the moon, fire and gravity play fiend to the group, and a branch, incinerated,  snaps.  It careens, inexorably, as a spear on fire, through the skull of Todd Jennings.  He drops to his knees, his eyes bursting with blood.  He throws up and lands in it. 
   
    The firefighters stand, paralyzed.  John begins to move in to check the body, no longer Todd Jennings, when the body writhes and squirms, launching itself upward.  John falters backward and falls on his ass, as the firefighters, their feet made of concrete or lead, watch in horror as Jennings' body stops flailing and stares, eyeless, through them. 

    John scrambles for his radio. 
    "DISPATCH!  We've run into trouble, CHRIST!" is the understatement he manages before the body begins acting up again.

  The body, with its antenna of flame and face covered in burst over-easy eyes and sizzling blood, stands more erect and hisses.  Then screeches and yelps.
     "This is Dispatch, what's wrong Goh?"
    It clicks and clacks its jaw and rushes forward, rearing his right arm backward.  With an arc of his arm and a claw of a hand, the body effortlessly punctures the eyes of Cameron Dollio and rips down and outward.  John, thinking of the madness on Black Friday, the crowds rushing and violently pushing and breaking eachother to get the better deal first, is unable to respond to the radio.
     Dollio's lip comes with the hand as the body continues to tear.  The body reaches around and sputters blood into Dollio's ear before eviscerating it with its teeth.  Though wearing retardant gear, Dollio's body soon catches fire from the increasingly engulfed body attacking him.  Dollio's corpse crumples to the ground. 

    John gets up, stumbles, and begins to run, as do the four others remaining.   Two bodies chase and catch them with ease.  One down, and fire is spreading more quickly toward the road they took to get here.  The road where more firefighters, from the last shift, rest and recuperate.  Two down, this time three bodies mutilating one, setting it aflame.  Three down.  Four down.  John can see the road ahead where firetrucks and lights and tents with coffee and food wait idly.  He begins hyperventilating, and removes his mask.  Sputtering, he collapses.

The Elephant
    Snuggled tightly in a cocoon of Thomas Lee sheets and blankets, Samantha happily watches a movie at midnight.  The IKEA lights dimmed behind an IKEA shelf, she peers over blankets, her eyes fixed upon her wall-mounted 60" Sony Bravia.  She is watching George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead. 
    Outside her window, down the alley and in the next yard, a man swings open a gate and slams it shut.  Hearing this and terrified of the undead on the screen, Sam cuddles closer to a favorite Beanie Baby.  A Beanie Baby that was fifty dollars, and the one she wanted most for Christmas one year. Current Value: six dollars or "priceless memory."
    The man outside takes a moment to catch his breath and gather his thoughts.  He stares at the ground.  Through the cracks of the fence, and off the walls of the cobble-stone alleyway, orange light filters into his mind.  He runs through the yard and up a flight of wooden stairs, spinning around to look over the fence.  A wall of bodies, aflame, rush through the beginning of the alley way, arms flailing outward.  
    All this commotion has Sam up and out of her bed, staring out her window.  She sees the man ripping up wooden steps and throwing them into her yard.  Her condensed moisture words smash against the window, "Fucking lunatic."  Assuming it is one of the city's ill-minded street denizens, she exits her room, the movie paused with the hero pressing a pea-shooter to his temple. 

    On her back deck Sam, oblivious to the fires several yards down to her left, yells across to the man, "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"  Un-phased, the man readies a hose over the railing facing the yard, leaving it on full blast.  He begins banging on the door, but these people are out of town.  He smashes his hand through the door and unlocks it.  Baffled, Sam turns to go inside to get her cell phone to call the police.  As she does this, she immediately understands the nature of the man's behavior.  Standing there, in the cold night air, with the encroaching fire there in front of her, she is unable to move.  Something about the sight of fire, whether vast or small but especially of this magnitude,  renders a human transfixed.  In awe.

    An inhuman screech comes from across the yard.  Crashing through a window is the man, hands gripping the shoulders of a flaming person.  He falls on his back and yells out.  With built adrenaline, he heaves the person up and through the railings of the deck opposite of Samantha.  He picks the hose up and douses himself, putting out patches of flame.  Finally he notices her.  He begins to say something when the wall of flame reaches the back of their apartments. The man's gate busts open, several bodies falling through to the ground, which, covered in dry brush, catches immediately.  In seconds, ten bodies pour through the opening and more climb over the fence.  Scrambling to keep up with the larger bodies, children run with the pack, their flame flickering like a strobe light.  The man directs the hose to them.  Hearing the water sizzle, he realizes the amount of water he can utilize is fruitless and begins to run back into the apartment as bodies attempt to jump the gap in the stairs or climb the pillars of wood.  This sets the deck on fire. 

    Sam, seeing several flaming bodies jump her own fence, runs back inside.  She runs through the apartment, which seems enveloped in daylight.  Reaching her front door, she swings it open and heads downstairs.  Outside, Samantha witnesses a condensed demonstration of human nature. 
    On the street several friends are running for a car.  The foremost friend stretches out his arm and unlocks his car ten feet away.  This allows he and all but one of his friends to jump in the car.  The leave him, halted by a horde of flaming zoo animals.  A fiery elephant slaps the hood with a crimson trunk and the driver crashes through the windshield, his body sailing through the air and into the fire.  The driver catches flame, and runs for his car toward his friends who are fighting each other to exit the vehicle.   
    "Over here," someone yells on Samantha's side of the street.  The yeller, "Tom" perhaps, struggles with a handful of keys, searching for the right one.  The left-behind friend, maybe "Fred," runs across the street.  Eventually Tom gets it and they enter, not noticing her, and drive away. 
   
   The car takes a right turn past a CVS and 7-11 where the lights are off.  They prematurely disappear from sight when the man from the back deck steps in front of her, saying, "FOLLOW ME, WE NEED TO GET IN THE BASEMENT!" as loud as he can.  Samantha pees a little and passes out in the man's arms. 

    "Shit," he says.

Answers
    Samantha awakens, her face smushed against cold slate.  She pushes herself up and rubs her eyes.  Her stranger-savior rocks back and forth, hands on his knees.  She looks behind him, where the ancient iron doors are sealed.
      "You can't begin to imagine the drugs they pumped into these things.  Hunger amplification, high concentrations of melatonin, I don't know what they were trying to accomplish," Kristopher shakes words from his bruised head.  "No, I didn't think this would happen." 
    Samantha contorts her face, puzzled.  "Isn't that the stuff in your skin?"
    "No," he responds.  "Melatonin is in your brain.  Regulates your rhythm, uh," he pauses-- straining his eyes in the darkness of the basement.  He continues, "Sleep patterns, dreaming, belief in the supernatural even.  Might be linked to the God gene, I don't know.  Melatonin is triggered at night, in our brains.  I remember when I was a kid, I got frightened by the dancing stuffed animals on the shelf next to my bed-- kids have a hard time discerning between reality at night because of melatonin and the developmental level of their brain."

    Samantha pouts, remembering the flickering children.   She thinks of something--How can insects have melatonin?-- to ask him to keep him talking.  She is comforted by his knowledge.

    Kristopher begins again, knowing that telling her something about how it started will release him of the burden.  The longer winded he is about how it happened, the longer he can keep from thinking how it is happening.  "Nearly all life has it, regulates the circadian rhythm, you know, the physiological cycle of day and night, night and day.  They first discovered melatonin in insects back in the seventies--in the compound eyes of crickets. And when inducing more than was 'natural,'" he says, using facetious air-quotes with his fingers, "their night activity increased substantially."  He chuckles, "Eventually eliminating day-time activity.  Not the case, here, though.  Not completely."

    Samantha brews.  At this point, Kristopher has run out of things to say to her.  He doesn't feel he can communicate on her level, which, for him, is much lower than he is willing to venture.  Able only to see dim reflections off his eyes and protruding cliff-face of a nose, she wonders aloud, "Why in their eyes?  Is that the only way we can tell whether it is day or night?  Can't we feel the sunlight or lack thereof on our skin?"

    At this, Kristopher perks up, remembering the gruesomely bloody candle-wax face of a body, dripping gaps in the face, six inches from his own face.  "They don't have eyes, he says."
    They launch into a verbal foray.    
    "You said you found these in a cave, right?"
    "Right."
    "Was there any light down there?"
    "No, we had these heavy fucking helmets mounted with lights.  You know, like Hollywood."
    "You were in California,"  she smiles.
    "Yeah, not twenty miles from the edge of the wild-fires."
    The conversation dies with Samantha's last, sleepy thought, "Will they ever burn out?"

    Kristopher begins to fall asleep as fire sweeps through the city, conforming the minds of all willing beings.  His last thought is of the helicopter, bursting into flame--fading into the clouds. With Samantha asleep, he removes a translucent box from the inside of his coat.  Within the box, a white mantis-like creature is stretched by hexagonal distortions on the outside.  Kristopher shakes his head as the inside of the box ignites and extinguishes several times.    

Abednego
    Cabel peers across an empty ocean.  Antarctica is supposed to be here somewhere.  It would be hard to miss, but it is missing.  One day, the flaming bodies collectively decide to rush for the oceans.  Every survivor of the immortal flame that were the mysterious bodies, now stands alone, against a tide of change-- across the face of their planet, they must soon learn to survive.  No longer will they subsist. 
    Visible gusts of air exit her lungs, and her lips begin to crack and bleed.  She looks to her right, to her father who stands looking out into the blue oblivion with her.  Words have yet to jump his perfect ivory gap.  Puffs of air cannot be seen coming from his mouth.  Cabel does not notice.  She just leans against the wall of the deck and rubs her gloved hands together and against her body.  She cannot remember arriving on the boat.  Her last clear memory is of the man who head butts her in an attempt to force her aboard a helicopter.  It happened so fast, she thinks.

    "Abednego, goddamnit!  Abednego!"  Cabel shakes a chain-linked fence with meat-hook fingers.  A security camera watches the sidewalk where she shakes the fence.  It pans to the surrounded parking lot. "HEY, HEY, I'M RIGHT HERE!  YOU LET ME IN YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" 
     "Yelling at the camera won't get you inside."  Two rows of perfectly straight pearly teeth meet her teary-eyed gaze as she spins around.  A man faces her, unreadable behind huge bug-eyed reflective lenses.  Red eyes and a pouting mouth mirror her own.
   
    "My father is missing, and they need to let me in here.  Now."
    "I understand," say the pearly teeth. A hand extends for hers.  "My name is Kristopher Elijah and I work here."  They shake hands.  Before she can introduce herself, he continues.  "What has your father told you about Abednego?"  He smiles for an answer.
     "It's our code-word.  When I was little, he gave us a code-word, for safety. He said if I ever needed him, I could come to his lab, and if I said Abednego, the guards would have to let me in."
    "Drag you in, maybe.  Who did you say your father was?" he asks her.
    "I didn't.  I'm Cabel Fisher."
    At this, Kristopher's smile evaporates.
    "Follow me," he says.
    Kristopher approaches a box on the gate.  He retrieves a key from his pocket and uses it to open the box.  He removes his sunglasses and hunches forward to place his eyes in front of the box. 
    "These things destroy your vision." 
    The gate creaks sideways, dragging itself on rolling wheels.
"I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but you should know," Kristopher begins.  "I saw it.  I experienced it.  Everything I saw profoundly changed me."  He laughs, "And your father, him too.  But he actually has one.  Or maybe one has him."
     "What did you see?"  Confusion strikes Cabel blind to Kristopher's actions.  They enter completely black room.  Kristopher paces to the back wall and plucks something from a rack.  It clinks the keys in his pocket, sounds like glass.  They exit and keep walking.
    "Where are we going?" 
    "To the roof?"
    The building seems empty except for a few rooms they pass to the elevator.  In one, Cabel glimpses a man strapped to a bed, his muscle exposed to the air.  In another room a man is pulling organs out of a body and placing them on a table.  The body squirms but makes no sound she can hear through the door.  She throws up a little in her mouth and grabs Kristopher's arm. 
    "What is this place," she says muffled, her hand over her mouth. 
    "We just wanted to make money off of suffering.  That's the human way."  Before she can respond, he says they have reached the elevator.  He enters, but she does not.  "Do you want to see your father?"
    "Yes."  She enters.  The doors slide shut as a clicking and screeching noise bellows somewhere in the hallway.  The crashing sound of metal against stone is the last thing they hear before the doors shut.  They look at each other.
    Kristopher presses 5 and says, "I saw everything beautiful in this world.  Everything right.  I got this feeling, in the pit of my stomach, that we, as humans once had it right.  The oceans were crystal pools on the face of a green rock. Before Prometheus, before the first revolution, we were not separate from this world.  I was stuck in this tiny hole down in a deep cave with your father.  We were looking to make money off of this new species we had discovered.  Incredible evolutionary abilities.  We're not even sure how what it does is possible, but we've witnessed it.  And, there I am, seeing into myself, my father, his father, our kind.  All our sins replayed in an instant.  In that eerie mirror, where only the light in my mind exists, I am overwhelmed with the horror I witness.  Our world burns as our moon tosses itself, crashes into our surface, shattering.  Splintering.  I see the lives of each person, each ancestor, played out and destroyed.  I scream and tell your father to pull me out, but he has gone.  I don't know where.  A few days later, he shows up here--"
    "But?"
    The doors open to the fifth floor, which is essentially a hallway leading to a ladder.   
    "Your father is waiting for you on the roof" is the second to last thing he says to her, pointing to the ladder.  The last thing he says to her, after she comes scrambling down the ladder minutes later is, "You have to go," right before head butting her.

    On the boat, her father begins to speak, slowly.
    "The bonding trestle of heart and mind.  If only you could see as your Leviathan sees, perhaps you would would understand as I do.  As gods do.  Your fractious construction of lineage, your muddled perception.  Darkened shadow compressed to brilliant diamond threads, all for you, undeserved." 
    "Dad."
    No response.
    "Father."
    Nothing.
    "Abednego"
     Nothing.
    She rears back.  "I don't understand."
    "You're not meant to understand.  You never were.  You are a flashlight in the dark.  We are the dark."

    A couple of weeks ago, my friend Gary has a party at his place, and it's pretty awesome until I downed a Jagerbomb and smoked a spliff.  I had been dry for a whole month before this party, and I took it to my low tolerance's limit.  When I left Gary's, there was no time to peace out.  My girlfriend, Lenora, led me to a bedroom where we sat and slurred our speech for a couple of minutes before I bolted out of the room and marched through the front door. 

    The first wave of puke rises and shoots from my mouth as I step off the stoop into the lawn.  I take several steps and puke on a tree.  Before I hit asphalt, I puke a third time.  I am fertilizing his yard with vomit.  I stagger to Lenora's red Honda and blow chunks right in front of it.  After puking four times, you would think you'd feel better.  I didn't.  This tells me that I am going to throw up more.  After about five minutes, Lenora comes out of the house, no doubt tromping through the fields of my regurgitation.  She steps around the fourth puddle in front of her car and sits next to me on the curb, swaying a little.

    At some point we hop in her car and roll out.  By hop, I kind of mean fall.  I don't remember much of the night, but I remember making Jeff(Horatio of old) promise me something. 
My hand on his shoulder, I look him straight in the eyes, and implore him to, "Promise me.  Promise me you will never drive drunk.  Man, you could die!"
He promises and Lenora adds that I made her make the same promise a long time ago.
I don't remember much of this night, but I remember this.  And I remember, while we are driving back, Lenora saying, "Hunter, I just want you to know," as if it was a good time to tell me, "that I am breaking my promise to you right now.  I just want you to know.  I have to get you home."  I get the impression that we might die.  Concerned with more important matters, like rolling down the window so I can puke again, I dismiss the possibility of death and begin to pass out. 

    Lenora says something, questioningly, either to keep herself awake or check up on me.  She does this intermittently and every time I respond.  Whereas getting to her apartment was, from my perspective, an instantaneous journey, from her perspective things were much more difficult.  She later tells me that, while she was driving, she was forgetting that she was driving, and she had to ask me questions to stay awake.  She had to talk, and she didn't expect me to respond.  But in my puke-addled haze, I always mustered the strength to blurt a half-assed, "Yeah" or "Cool," thinking I was contributing to our safety by doing so.  My other contributions include opening my eyes to see the road, getting car sick, and throwing up on out of the car. 

    When we get back, I fall out of the car, stand up and take a look at her car.  There are three distinct orange streaks trailing from the inside of the car, out, and back from the windows.  I say "Shorry," And tell her I will clean it up later.  We go inside.  I pass out on the bed.  I am awakened minutes later to food being stuffed down my throat. 
You have to eat this, she tells me. 
No, I tell her.  I take the food anyway.  It is an English muffin with cottage cheese on it.  It greatly resembles barf.  I down it as quickly as possible and drink some water out of a blue cup that is being pressed into my face.  I put the cup on the window sill.  I pass out again.

    Feeling victorious for getting us home safely, Lenora goes and fixes herself a plate-sized quesadilla.  She comes back and sits on the bed.  Through the veil of my blackout, I hear the sound of smacking lips.  Her chewing wakes me up.  Though I don't remember being pissed, I am apparently pissed. 
"STOP!"
"What?"
"CHEWING"
"Sorry."
"It's okay, it's just going to make me throw up."  It doesn't and I pass out again. Lenora passes out next to me.

    Imagine this next scene.  Try to visualize it with me.  My eyes open to the ceiling, my body shocked out of deep REM sleep.  My legs and waist are moist.  I look up and there is vomit covering my legs and my waist and stomach.  The smell is vile, and I see little salsa chunks caked in two spots on the bed.  Paralyzed by sheer amazement, I am only able to observe my surroundings.  I look to my right, where there is retch splattered on the wall like blood from a gunshot wound.  Something straight out of Hollywood.  

    To my horror, the story does not end there.  There is a trail of puke leading to the bathroom, where Lenora is now taking a shower.  I take my clothes, which are covered in quesadilla, off and join her.  We clean off and then strip her bed. I clean everything up that I can with my three-AM hangover handicap. I take down the dust ruffle from her window because it is tainted.  Hidden behind the dust ruffle is the crowning achievement of the night.  There, on the windowsill, is a blue cup overflowing with gooey, chunky throw up.   Not thinking, I dump it into the sink and not the toilet.  The next couple of days, the sink is clogged. 

    In the aftermath, Lenora is passed out on her completely stripped bed, with her completely stripped body wrapped in three different towels, one wet, as blankets.   Yellow, pink, blue.  And the memory of orange streaks on white walls, and orange streaks on her red honda.  And the floors, two blankets, the bed covering, the curtains, and dust ruffle. After everything that had happened, she is passed out and I am on the corner of her bed, finishing the last fourth of the humongous quesadilla, stuffed with salsa, beans, an inordinate amount of cheese, sour cream, and a shit load of hot sauce.

Post Script
Awesome party, by the way, Gary.  Sorry I had to leave so early and couldn't help lead the Blackout Brigade. 

III

Boop.  The next customer is a blind lady.  She is black, and acts as if I, a white boy,
am her best friend.  Absolutely no inhibitions whatsoever.  I find it rare that race
matters when I work in the store, but I can tell she is beyond genuine.  She is a mind
that truly sees.  I ring her up and she asks me to call her a cab, so I go to customer
service and do so.  

The reason I started working here was for people like her.  People that need. Because we
are all in need.  In need of something. People,
really.  Just people.  My last job was in an office, on a phone.  I was like a telemarketer,
but not really.  I called parents to let them know their kids had an appointment with
the company.  School pictures is what they did.  I didn't feel connected to the voices on
the phone at all.  And most of the time, I am no more connected to the faces I see than the
voices I heard.  And that's all this woman has-- voices.  

My voice leads her outside as she lightly touches my left arm.  In my right are her three
bags of groceries.  I struggle with the weight on my right side, as with work I haven't
been able to take care of my fitness.  Work is too time consuming.  The only weight I lift
now is of the grocery variety.  Balinda, that's the woman's name, climbs into the back of
the cab and thanks me.  

"Thank you, Carter," she says.  
"How did you know my name," I ask her.
"Your identification."
"My what?" I ask.  Maybe she knows my soul.
"Your nametag.  Your name tag is on your shirt."
"But how can you see that?"

Her cane retreats into the cab before she shuts the door.  As the cab pulls off, her eyes
smile
behind her sunglasses.  She was the universe.  And I was done working for the day.  
The week.  The month.  The year. The now.  Because the now is all I have and know.  I
unclip my nametag-my "identity"- and drop it on the asphalt.  I exit the parkinglot and
begin to walk down the street.  

Transcribing Knowledge Of The Smoke : PART I

So, recently I went home and had a good time smoking with one of my best friends ever--Jeff.  In my stories, for continuity, he is known as Horatio.  This entry revolves around the night we smoked, using quotes from the voice recorder.  I wish I could upload the audio, but we went with the cheap version.  In hindsight that was a bad idea.  There is no USB output and thus, I must transcribe it.  Here goes:

We sit in his car, something he has named the "Goldsmobile."  Guess it's color.  Slightly Stoopid plays in the background.

Talking about some guy named William, who is a compulsive liar.
A car passes us, I tell it to fuck itself, because I am the Doctor Doolittle of Cars:
Jeff: He's goin' to 7/11
Hunter: Ha, I love when people come out of Sheetz and go to 7/11. It's like, "Uhh, yeah, flashing lights and cool music isn't going to make me want to come to your store... I want shitty tacquitos."
Jeff: I do want shitty tacquitos!

Jeff: Man, I love the mirror system.
Hunter: Yeah, mirrors are kind of ingenious. 
Jeff: It's like, "We're gonna get a huge chunk of metal and have it fly down the road, and we're gonna put mirrors on it so you can see."
I then geek out at the prospect of video replacing mirrors. Jeff says we can discuss that after he takes his next hit off of the gravity.  We never do.  Instead, Jeff loads the gravity and realizes we have alcohol:
Jeff: This is crazy, but we do have vodka.
Hunter: Really?
Jeff: Yeah.
Hunter: Well, uh, cool.

A car passes and it looks like a cop, but isn't.  He takes a massive hit and sputters the smoke after a few seconds.  It rolls across the ceiling of the car.

Jeff: Ah, shit, that cannot be allowed to float around the car.
Hunter: Do you have Fabreeze?
Jeff: I have drive-breeze.
 
I laugh and tell him I love slamming words together.  This is why the German language kicks ass.  Compound words are key.  We talk about language briefly, and Jeff announces, several times, that he is "really high." He lists off his GB intake over the past couple of days.  He says he had one, then two the next day, and should now have three.  You can see how it becomes necessary to smoke more and more if you do it often.  That's why I love moderation.  We agree on three each, and I'm in for some high times, as I haven't smoked in months.

Jeff: Dude, I love being ambidexterous.
Hunter: ... I like having hands. Period.
Jeff: That's a good call, because not everyone has hands.
Hunter: Yeah, some things don't have hands. Some things have, like, tendrils.
Jeff: Well, no, like people.
Hunter: Yeah, and those people suck.
Jeff: Haha, I feel sorry for those people.
Hunter: Mmm, I don't. (pause) Actually, no, I'm a liar. I feel sorry for the stupidest shit.  I feel sorry for fat people, even if it's their own goddamn fault. There's this guy that sits in Larrick, the dining center next to my dorm, alone.  All the time.  He is definitely fuckin' obese.  This kid is not jokin' around with his fat.
Jeff: Hahaha, aww.
Hunter: I always feel compelled to sit with him but never do.

Jeff loses focus for a second.

Jeff: It's not caching, sooo, uh, I guess that means there's something in there.  But yeah, I saw the fattest dude in CVS today, and it was really sad because he was buying vaseline, which you know was for his bed sores--shit, not bed sores, but you know, like fat sores that you get from having too much fat--CHAFING!
I laugh for like 30 seconds.
Jeff: Yeah, I realize that was convoluted as shit, but I am high as shit.

Somehow we get on the subject of tattoos, probably because I go, "Dude, I was thinking about getting a tattoo." Jeff tells me that's pretty cool, but then I tell him, "I mean we're talking a really hack tattoo"  He goes blank and asks, "What?" in that monotone voice that indicates disappointment.

Hunter: A yin-yang.
Jeff: Don't do it.
Hunter: Dude, duality is fucking cool. I believe so strongly in duality.
Jeff: OH! That reminds me, I reread your... VOX thing... the entry that was deterministic in nature, and I was thinking, those comments were really good.
Hunter: Yeah, they were, I really appreciated them.  They were good. Wait, you read the actual VOX post right?
Jeff: Yeah.
Hunter: Okay, yeah, those were really good.  The one with the logical proofs I didn't quite understand.
Jeff: I didn't really get that one either. What I was impressed by was how logical these people are, though.  Like, when I read your arguement, I liked it, because it was good writing, but like, there was something wrong with it, but I couldn't put it into words, and these people were just like bam!
Hunter: Yeah, when I write I don't really think about what I'm doing, I just channel.
Jeff: No, I know what you mean.  I left a great story as one giant block of text for two weeks.  No paragraph breaks.
Hunter: Yeah, I remember that shit.

We segway to talking about the college experience, and Jeff asks me if the song playing is Glassjaw.  I tell him it is, and that I put it on the custom CD we are listening to simply because of the effects in the song.

Hunter: I love this effect.
Jeff: Dude, I have yet to play guitar high.
Hunter: Deeyew Deeyew deeyew.  You need a huge effects set-up.
Jeff: Dude, effects make or break music.  That's actually kinda why I like classic rock, because it's not the effects that make the music.
We begin to move out of the parkinglot we're in.
Hunter: Uh, where are we going?
Jeff: To air out the car.

Thinking he had forgotten about me, I point to the GB, then me, and back to the GB. He laughs and reassures me that we're going to stop in a second. I point out the voice recorder set up and tell him I like it.  He says he has forgotten about it. "Yeah, I-- I haven't," is my response.  I am not high enough at this point for a glowing red let at headlevel to just slip into the background. The real background, outside, is beautiful.  The trees are turning with the changing temperatures.  Fall has begun, and back home, twenty or so minutes from where I currently live, it is absolutely beautiful.  Jeff says, "See, that's what separates us from a soul-less, urban 1984 society."  I haven't read the book, but I know the gist of it, and he's right. 

I notice a huge Trailer Truck parked in the vacant lot.  We're surprised we didn't notice it before.
 
Jeff: Oh shit, dude, Mr. Krane did the craziest thing in Creative Writing today.
Hunter: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.  The biology teacher?

He tells me he teaches psychology now.  I am pissed, because when I was in highschool, psychology was forbidden on the premise that sex factored in to a human's thought process.   We continue driving and pass a car of young girls.  Jeff inflects out loud:
Jeff: Holy shit, do I know those girls?
He doesn't. We pull into our spot.
In a news anchor voice, I say, "Here we are, back at Smoke-Central-Station."  Jeff proceeds to slam his hand into the dashboard repeatedly.  This is the only form of laughing he can communicate.  I know this because there is a huge smile on a face gasping for air.
Hunter: I love that about high people. I can't deny my love for beating the shit out of something because it's funny.  Wooo (slam, slam, slam), thaaaat's hilarious.  It's like reverting to a lesser state.
Jeff: But I love reverting.
I reassure him that I do too.  I begin talking about the "allies" mentioned in Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, but he isn't listening.  The reason for this is he is attempting to pack the GB and it is requiring all of his mental focus.

Jeff: Hunter? I am entirely too high to pack GBs.
Hunter: But you're not too high to hold the GB for me--
Jeff: That's right.
Hunter: --because that's what I did for you.
Jeff: Haha, come here, GB, give me a hug.
Hunter: Man I can't see shit...
I get out my phone and use it as a light to pack by.
Jeff: Oh shit, we didn't use the crack lighter.  Oh, we've gotta raise some GBs with the crack lighter.

There's some silence between us, but Glassjaw is just now finishing up their song.  It's a good thing too, because the end of the song is not something to listen to high. It's caustic.

I go for my first hit, and Jeff whips out his "crack lighter."  I ask him as judicially as I can, "Is that the fuckin' crack lighter."  He lights it, and it is.  The flame ripples in waves towards the ceiling of the car.  It is nearly four inches of deadly blue and orange flame.
Hunter: Oh, NO WAY. No, I'm not using that shit.
Jeff: That's a fuckin' horrible idea, thank you.  Thank you for double checking that, we're in an apholstered car.

In the background a new song is playing.  "Parole Atale," by Meg.  Very moody music--in Italian.  I figured I'd test run the song high, but it flopped and turned out whinier than anyone would ever want to listen to high. 
Jeff: Is that phone-off-the-hook sound coming from the song?
Hunter: Yeah, you're fine.
Jeff:  I know, it's just fucking with my head.
Hunter: Hahaha, dude, does your cellphone have a hook to put on?
Jeff: Yeah, exactly.
Hunter: You are high.
Jeff: Exactly.
I take my first or second hit, and it is gargantuan. I never cough when smoking, but I almost heaved up a lung right there.  I was in for a good time.
Hunter: One second, fuckin' cotton mouth killer.
The car starts rolling.
Jeff: Oh my GOD, this car's still going!

DING DING DING.
The car is turned off and back on. I ask him to hold something while I chug some Pink Lemonade.  I offer him some, because it's a 2 liter, but he remembers I am sick.  We then talk about listening to the voice recorder high, and how we're not going to do that tonight.
Hunter: We're not going to listen to it tonight.
Jeff: Because we're really high.
Hunter: And that's scary.  Remember when we did that, uh--
Jeff: And never listened to it.
Hunter: No, no.  Do you remember listening to it high?  Because I remember that being scary.
Jeff: Oh yeah!
Hunter: Hearing myself on a device was scary.
Jeff: You realized the whole Native American, stealing of soul thing is true.
Hunter: Yeah, because it's true.
We laugh.
Jeff: I like that we acknowledge that.
Hunter: Yeah, it's true.  Your "soul" is stolen when you place it on a cold-- Like, no, seriously, what you are, your soul is everything that comprises you.  And if a machine can transcribe it and replicate it more efficiently than you can... it has captured a moment in your soul, in time of your soul--physically captured it.  Everything's physical.

Jeff: Yeah, that's true.  You just reminded me about the story I was going to tell about Mr. Krane.  He showed us this video with people wearing white shirts and people wearing black shirts, throwing basketballs. And you had to count the number of times the people in the white shirts passed the basketball.  So, the video's like twenty seconds long, he stopped it and goes, "Okay, raise your hand if you didn't see the gorrila."

Hunter: Isn't it crazy? Focus the mind on one thing and it ignores another.
Jeff: Yeah, and you rewatch it and there's just a guy in a gorilla suit on the screen like[Jeff dances].

I cough again, expelling more smoke into the car.  An Airbase song comes on--"Spin." 
More confidently than anything I've ever said in my life, I go, "This song I kept on the remix, because it's only two minutes long(whereas most are 8 or so), and it's a good Airbase song. So, I figured 'Why not?' Mix it up a little bit in your mind.  Like, those are two pretty good reasons."

We go back to discussing psychology, and I tell him how I love that there's a whole science behind how humans operate.  I say, "understanding the self is the only way to obtain any true sense of power."  He tells me if he doesn't become a teacher, he will be a psychologist.  Inevitably, we get around to talking about majors, and how they don't really matter.  At the time of the recording, I was seriously considering switching my major from Psychology to English, which I now realize would be a waste of my time.  Jeff gets pensive about college, explaining all the shit he has to apply for, all the essays he's writing.  Hell, I barely even tried to get into college.  It was more of the next, inexorable step for me.  I really respect the fact that he's trying, and I hope he gets in where he wants and then enjoys it.  Also, I hope he goes to a big party school and fits in... so I can come visit.

Jeff stops mid-breath at the sound of "Sacrifice," by The Expendables.
Hunter: No, yeah, no I had to keep this on the CD, this is a high classic. How could I forget this song?
Jeff: This song is just... YES, I get to listen to this high!
Hunter: In fact, we get to listen to this high, turned up.
Jeff: This is why being high in cars with sweet sound systems is awesome.  Have you been in one?
Hunter: Dude, the kids down the hall have speakers taller than this car.
Jeff: Oh, you totally told me. Such a sacrifice inside, ooo, oooooo.
Hunter(singing to the tune): Taxi cab goin' by. What if that was my ex girlfriend coming to kill us
We make shotgun and machine gun sounds for a few seconds.
Hunter: She's got like a tracking device in me.
Jeff: Is she really that crazy?
Hunter: Mmm, no, but that shit's funny.

We start talking about comedy.  Apparently my delivery of "No, but that shit's funny" spurs this thought in his head.  I'm sweet.  We talk about a comedy club I've mentioned, one that my friend Sean introduced me to.  He wants to go, and I tell him he should come sometime.

Hunter: Dude, you have no idea how high I am right now.
Jeff: A lot? Is the answer a lot?
Hunter: Do you remember planet Sieben?
Jeff:  Oh shit.
Hunter: That's how high I am.
Jeff:  You see, I realized that back when I had a place in my head, a planet that I went to... I got really high then.
I can't stop laughing.  I throw the GB out the window as we leave our spot.
Hunter: I'm making the executive decision up there on that dark road... after... all these fucking lights are gone... Like right here. 
The GB makes a hollow clunk as it roles and slows, stopping-- dead.
Jeff: Doo DOO DUKE!
Hunter: Hahahaha
Jeff: Dooka doo doo, dooka dooka doo doo.(he sings with the song, which is "40oz to Freedom", Sublime)
Hunter: Hahahahhaa, reality is sweet.  Wow, I feel like the car is going faster than me.
Jeff: The great part is, right now, your internal organs are moving at 30 miles per hour.
Hunter: Yup. Damn it's cold.
Jeff: I've learned to ignore it.
Hunter: Yeah, me too, but then a breeze of needles hits you in the face. And you're like, "Mm, that's cold."

I proceed to laugh my ass off at Jeff's driving ability:
Hunter: Hahahaha, as we creep, hahaha, ever so slightly, hahaha, up to the curb.  That was fucking classic man.  Vvrrrr, pulling into docking bay one.
We are in the Sheetz parkinglot eating cold pizza and he wants a drink.  He is going to go inside, but I feel too high to do so.  I will lose my shit in front of the officer on call and laugh at his shiny badge.  Jeff wants cottonmouth killer.  I suggest the alcohol in the back and he scowls at me. "Fuck that," is all he says.  He concedes, though, that beer and pizza would be amazing. 
Jeff: Have you ever had just like... two beers... instead of...twenty?

I tell him no. And then here it comes, Jeff's oration on life, and what it is to be a stoner:
Jeff: I realized why being a stoner is not acceptable.  You are not supposed to have this much fun.  Think about it, you can go out and do anything and it's fun if you're high.  And that's just not natural, you're not supposed to have that much fun.  You're supposed to get that much fun out of life.

I laugh in his face, but say he's somewhat right.
Jeff: Think about it, if you cannot get that kind of fun out of just living life, there's something wrong with you.
There's a slight pause as the bass picks up and Bud Gaugh lays down a tempo change.
Hunter: Or.  The chemicals in our brain are different.
Jeff: Exactly, but you shouldn't need to put chemicals in your body.
This goes on for awhile, but ultimately we make fun of stupid people, like this girl from my English class who tried to argue that sodium ions aren't what help cause thought.
Jeff: Oh, I love the comment from that girl--"SALT DOESN'T CONTROL OUR THOUGHT!"
Hunter: Yeah, somebody actually said that to me.

The periodic table is mentioned and we see blue lights flashing across the four lane road in front of us.  Someone just got pulled, which is a really strange thing to see when high.  I call cops "Enforcers" now, because of that.  That's what they are, but that's my high terminology for them, because I think it's best to have different words for the same meaning, so as to take yourself out of a conditioned mindset about things.  It helps expand your view.  Maybe that's bullshit, but it helps me see things differently.

. 

    A great night of drinking gone horribly, horribly wrong.  I don't know what great thing Karma has in store for me after all of this, but it better be good.  I am running on two hours of sleep, I am hung over, I just slammed my hand in the bathroom stall, and I have officially lost my license. This is that story, totally raw and uneditted, though I may do that later.

    My night began when two blonde girls came stumbling into my room, imploring me to join them outside.  I had just finished talking to Theft online, and he had given me the invite to join what seemed, to me, like a pretty fun group.  So, here I am, invited three fold to go drink. I have driving school the next day(today, as of writing this), but three reasons to drink overwhelm one reason not to. With this logic, I put up the weakest fight of my life:

Shortblonde stumbles into my room, followed by TallBlonde, and announces that she is a little trashed.  She staggers over to my bed and slouches on it, putting her right hand on my left shoulder.
ShortBlonde: "C'mon Hunner! Come drink with us, we've never drank together before!"
TallBlonde: "Yeah, it'll be fun, come with us"
Hunter: "But I have to go to driving school tomorrow."
ShortBlonde: "It'll be fine!"
Hunter: "Weren't you the one trying to get me to go to the doctor's, and now you want me to drink?  You are trying to kill me.  That makes you a bad person."

At this point, she pulls that faux-offended tone.

ShortBlonde: "HUNTER! That's mean!"
Hunter: "I know, but it's true, you're totally going to end my life.  This makes me sad."
ShortBlonde: "I am not."
For much of this conversation TallBlonde is just reafirming whatever ShortBlonde says, because she doesn't know me as well and therefore doesn't have much to say to me.  At least until later.
ShortBlonde: "Buuuut, you should come with us, our group is meeting outside."
TallBlonde: "We're taking a break, but we're going back to Nielsbohr's room."

I promise to meet them out there and they leave.  Two minutes later they're back.

TallBlonde: "AREN'T YOU COMING?"
Hunter: "Jesus. Yeah, one second."
I start putting on shoes.
ShortBlonde: "Haha, he doesn't have shoes on!"
I don't know why this observation is funny, but she is drunk and anything goes.
They leave my room and I think I can take my time.  I am wrong.  Seconds after managing to put pants and shoes on, I'm being hustled out of my room.  I leave it unlocked even though I doubt I'm coming back.  ShortBlonde informs me that they waited because they need me to insure that they don't get raped on their way down the stairs, out the door, and 20 feet to the designated smoking area where everyone waits.  I laugh and tell her that I seriously doubt the validity of that fear.  But, hey, then again, I'm deathly afraid of zombies and spiders with gigantism.  We need to be prepared for that shit, I am so damn serious.

    Outside, I am the only sober person.  This destroys my ability to permeate the social bubble.  I do get the "It's HUNTER!" greeting, but my novelty wears off quickly.  This is normal.  After awhile, I'm playing the Hokey Pokey of conversation. I put my foot in, take it out, and repeat.  At some point this guy, "Solo," comes out with a delicious concoction of gin, whiskey, and cranberry juice.  (Aside: I call him Solo only because that's his self-applied image: A Han Solo type badass who is, at his core, a Star Wars nerd. It's cool, I am too, but this guy pulls it off flawlessly.) He shares his elixer with Theft, Shortblonde, and myself.  Alcohol induces happiness in my soul, and I'm conversation-ready. Theft, Solo, and myself somehow arrive at the subject of tattoos, and, in the background, Psych starts rambling about her cousin. No one is listening, but I make the fatal mistake of eye-contact.  Now I'm committed to her rant:

Psych: "My cousin had a tattoo that said 'Death Before Dishonor.' He was a war vet.  Lost his legs and all of his fingers.  He was in a war, can you guess which one?"
No one guesses, and she doesn't answer.  Shortblonde, who is sitting next to me, positioned in line of sight between myself and Psych, turns my way and mouths "Oh. My. God." I give her the subtle, "Yeah, I know" grin.
Psych: "He was in a war and died before I ever knew him.  And THAT is why I want to get a tat that says 'Death Before Dishonor' to commemorate him."
She goes on to sing about her desire to have, and I quote, "lesbian sex."  I mean, cool, whatever, as long as your dissertation is over.  I am never drunk enough for sob stories. There was never a point in my drinking career when I've said, "I'm getting drunk and looking to have some fun, let me listen to you bitch and moan about someone who died. FOR THE NEXT HOUR!" YES, totally my idea of a great night.  Not even Greez(from Drunk People) will pay attention to her.  He stands several feet away smoking a cigarette, talking to another girl.

    I take some time to talk with Nielsbohr about drinking with the group, because, after all, he(and his friend) purchased most of the alcohol, and, hey, I'm not one to just join up and expect shit to be given to me.  I make my way over and start talking to him and Somegirl from Drunk People.  They tell me how awesome I am.  I tell them how much I appreciate verbal felatio. I'm good to drink, as long as I run it by "BadDeal," a guy who was recently in a bad drug deal or something and got shot in the ass.  He's the other guy who bought the stuff, and he says they bought plenty and I'm welcome to join.  So I do. 

    Within minutes, I'm upstairs in Nielsbohr's room with Theft and Solo, drinking.  I can tell these dudes are going to be my friends, because they have, along with myself, engineered the move back to drinking-- the purpose to the night.  They understand priorities. The group outside slowly realizes said priorities and begins to filter back inside.  With every knock, someone bounds for the door to make sure it's not someone on call. I want that kind of drunken alertness, so I begin drinking twice as fast as everyone else. They have been drinking for a solid hour, and I want to catch up.  Minutes pass and the room is full of people.  Neilsbohr hands out 40's and sarcasm. Two of the girls don't understand his jokes.  Three if you count Psych, who is curled up in a ball on the floor.  Her face rests on my foot and I feel uncomfortable at the prospect of her puking on me. I nudge her off my feet. She is roused, stands up, and starts staggering around what little space is left in the room. I trade Solo my beer for a 40.  He doesn't want to get too drunk. I do. 

    At the far end of the room, a girl dances with the refridgerator.  She dances like a stripper.  Another girl joins her.  Neilsbohr announces that this is awesome.  Several guys agree.  Somegirl sits across from me suckling on a 40 all to herself.  She looks like a toddler with a giant bottle, it looks so improportionate.  Her intoxication is visibly growing by the second.  To my left TallBlonde starts talking about something and I make some comment I can't remember.  She says I'm another Theft.  I like to think I'm a unique person, but she continues to tell me I am not.  She says she, Theft, and myself have very similar personalities.  I reassure her this is the reason we're hanging out, because we're so awesome.

    There's a knock at the door.  Five new faces wait awkwardly in the hall.  The door opens and immediatey Theft is on the case. He leaps upward and body-blocks the entrance. He's probably the most sober person, and therefore has a responsibility to talk with other sober people.  Sobriety becomes a language barrier after awhile.  Theft negotiates:

Theft:"Okay, you guys gotta turn around.  You, you, you, you, and you, you're out.  Turn around and leave, there's no room for you here."

    Everyone in the hall has just had their feelings hurt, and I can't help but laugh at them. In retrospect, though, I think they caused our downfall.  Not to mention Psych.  Shambling back and forth, she manages to knock EVERYTHING off of ANYTHING within reach.  She causes a loud CRASH.  I think it was TallBlonde who calls Greez(again, from Drunk People) to come get Psych.  He does and they leave, her trashed, him pissed. They're seriously like an old married couple. Not ten minutes after they leave is there another knock on the door.  The guy watching out for the door says he doesn't recognize the girl at the door.  This is because he doesn't live in the dorm.  Neilsbohr goes up to the door, looks through, and opens it. It's a Resident Assistant, but she's not wearing the standard issue red shirt and that is cheating.  She interrogates Nielsbohr, asking him what we're doing:

Satan the RA: "SO what's going on in here?"
Neilsbohr: "We're just hanging out"

I'm almost certain his sudden control over himself has come from a surge of necessary adrenaline.  But, despite his control, certain unchecked factors were out to fuck us over:

Satan the RA: "So what's that?"
She points to an empty Natty Ice.  These bastards don't taste good enough to get us caught, it's not fair.
Nielsbohr: "I don't know, it's empty.  I don't know how it got in here."
A flimsy defense, especially considering there are cans openly cluttering the room.
She gives him two options.
Satan the RA: "You can either gather up all the alcohol and let me watch you pour it out..."
Fear strikes my heart and I begin hiding all the alcohol I can get my hands on.  Under the bed, under a hoodie, in a backpack.  I'm out of sight from her, and I am not about to let this shit go to waste.
Satan the RA:"...or I can call the cops on you."  Which she of course does anyway.
Nielsbohr: "Okay, we'll pour it out.  We'll pour it out. Come on guys, let's get all the shit out of here, anything you can find."
Somegirl looks directly at me and I can read exactly what she's asking me.  "Do we offer up what you've hidden?"  I shake my head. I text my girlfriend and tell her she needs to come counter-act my buzz kill from getting caught, but she has already left to party with her friends. She tells me she'll message me when she's coming back.

    Most of the group has left to pour out the alcohol and eventually make their way downstairs for further questions(and to get written up.) The room is gripped in near silence.  The shock disallows any sort of leadership.  I jump into action!  I tell Somedude2(ANOTHER from Drunk People, and who will henceforth be known as "Toilet") that he should go downstairs to his room.  TallBlonde and Somegirl second this, telling him he can't get caught again.  The night before, I had stayed with him for two hours in the bathroom as he grappled a toilet for dear life.  A dark, viscous brown coated his left arm, the base of the toilet, some of the wall, and the floor.  He had been caught for underage drinking before, was on the verge of getting kicked out of college, and was in a bad place.  In spite of my ability to put myself first, I could not leave him in good conscience(I might write about that night some other time).  So, everyone agrees, Toilet should run downstairs and seek refuge in his room.  He does, but for some of us, the party must go on.  I announce that we still have alcohol and are going to escape with it.  Theft is in.  Solo is definitely in.

    We chill in Solo's room for awhile, backpack full of alcohol.  Solo tells us to brainstorm while he goes and takes a piss.  All I can do, though, is gawk at all of his Star Wars paraphernalia.  Alliance and Empire insignias checkerboard his bedsheets. He has Super Star Wars for the SNES and a Darth Vader belt buckle.  Later, I learn that he was in a short-lived rap metal band called the DL44's-- the type of gun Han Solo used and modified in Star Wars lore.  He comes back and says,
Solo: "So what's the plan?"
Hunter: "Dude, I was totally checking out your Star Wars shit.  It's incredible."
We sit and think some more, Theft goes to take a piss.  He has broken the seal, and will now suffer his bladder's dominion over him for the rest of the night.
Back home what me and Horatio(one of my best friends ever) would do is he would go up to his room, throw the plastic handle of vodka into a backpack, and drop it out his window where I would catch it.  I suggest this, mentioning that I'm great at catching alcohol, because it's like my child and I care about it.  All the alcohol is in glass, so we feverishly pack the bag with clothes so as to pad it.  Solo appoints Theft Resident Bag-Dropper, while he and I head downstairs to snatch up his vehicle--The Millenium Centra.  Exiting the building, we see Nielsbohr and ShortBlonde sitting with Satan the RA at a round table.  They are so utterly fucked.  ShortBlonde attempts to make eye-contact with me, but I shake my head and mouth "don't make eyecontact" for the alcohol's sake.   In Solo's car, we realize the cops have arrived.  We drive passed, and I call Theft.  We decide dropping it out of a window is sketchy as hell and we should probably get together and brainstorm again.  The thing about making plans while already a little intoxicated is you may find yourself needing more than one mind at work.  That is unless you're very drunk, in which case you just do whatever comes to mind first.  I call this Auto Pilot.

    The next thing I know, the three of us are walking outside with a box of Funyuns.  A box of Funyuns, not full of Funyuns.  No, this box was packed with alcohol. We make our way back to the Millenium Centra and hop in.  I, of course, get shotgun, because I have mastered the art of calling shotgun. Shotgun is the seat of power second only to driving.  It doesn't matter who you're with, what you're talking about, or where you are, the shotgun seat insures that you will be involved in everything-- you're up front, and people's voices project forward.  You win, is all I'm saying.  And yeah, I am good at calling shotgun. I have, by accident, socially engineered many people into making it a competitive sport. Seriously, there's an official handbook on calling shotgun, I own it.  I can't make this shit up.

    We wait in Solo's car for awhile, Somegirl joins us and so does this guy, who I guess I'll call "Pipes," because that's what he always has, a pipe.  Like Sherlock.  I didn't learn much about him that night, because he was pretty quiet, but it turns out he's cool as shit.  Group assembled, we head off into the night towards Shortpump, a 20 or so minute drive from Richmond to where Solo's parents live.  Solo needs gas, so our first stop is 7/11.  I have been drinking heavily since we left, and I have to pee.  Theft and I race to the bathroom.  I get the first place prize of the men's room.  Theft goes in the women's bathroom because he has terrible bladder control.  I get out first and, through the door, tell him he has a vagina.  "Fuck you," is his only response, and I can't really argue with it.  On that note, he steps out and we all return to the gas pump where Solo waits.  I call shotgun, no blitz.  It is uncontested.  Solo has filled his tank with five dollars in cash.  I have ridden with him a number of times since this night, and I realize that he keeps his tank basically on "E," filling it up only a handful of dollars with every brief trip.

    On our way to Solo's residence, I drink more while, in the back, drama ensues between Theft and Somegirl.  Pipes stays relatively quiet and Solo plays the role of Disk Jockey, playing brief bits of songs with heavy self-commentary.  It's cool though, because random trivial knowledge is, while useless, pretty interesting.

    The trip ends and we pull into the driveway idle and dark.  We go inside and start smoking.  At some point, I begin a conversation with my girlfriend.  She says she's coming back to the dorm in fifteen minutes and that I should come to her room. I understand the implications, but I am twenty minutes out.  This is a problem.  I go to the group:
Hunter: "Guys, this is fun and all, but there's the possibility that I may be getting laid tonight, and, you're going to have to take me back, Solo."
Solo: "I totally understand"
Hunter: "Yeah, no, I mean, like 10 or so minutes. She's coming back in 15."
Someone says that we're twenty minutes out.
Hunter: "Yeah, I know.  That's what I'm saying.  And, don't get me wrong, you guys are all cool, but hanging out with you does not equate to sex."
Somegirl looks at me like I'm an asshole, and I go and pee behind a bush.
I come back and Solo says he understands and can get me back in time, because, as he says, "I'm fuckin' Solo."

Just as a side, here's some of the text messaging that went on between my girlfriend and I throughout that night:
Me: Drinking in dorm BAD! Caught
Her: No way! Are u in deep shit?
Me: Maybe probably not
Her: Good cause that would suck
Me: Come see me this buzz kill
Her: I cant ive left! But ill visit when i get back :)   (Take note of the smiley)
Me: Yeah thats what i mean
Her: Ooh yea right on

(later on)
Her: Im gonna be back in like 15 mim. You should come to my room
Me: K no idea when ill get back atsome random house in short pump will call you
Her: Boo you whore. But cool

(after my talk with Solo about getting me back.  I am high and drunk.  This is my favorite line, because it's so typical and so random)
Me: Headed back pink floyd kicks ass
Her: So good

(these next few I send when I get back. I don't receive any response)
Me: In your room?
Me: Let me know when youre back

    I get impatient and call her.  It turns out she's there and has been messaging me to come upstairs.  I go up.  And most of this we'll just leave undisclosed because I'm not about to be a complete dick and post a detailed account of things.  But, speaking of dicks, that night a condom exploded on mine.  Let me break it down for you, free condoms are the bane of my existance.  I don't care if they're banana flavored, they're free and suck.  They're totally small and constricting, and some, like Durex, do not have lubricant.  I can only liken using Durex to fucking a doctor's glove.  Anyway, I put on one of the free ones we have laying around and go, "This actually feels alright, are you sure it's free?"  And then, looking down, realize it has totally exploded and only a small ring is at the base of my shaft.  FUCK free condoms.  Not to fear, there were legit brand names to be used, but still, I can't wrap my mind around free condoms.  If you can tell me who finds them useful, please do, because I would love to laugh in their pathetic little face.

    She and I are doing the whole post-coital cuddle business when my phone buzzes.  I finally receive her later texts:
"Yea just come in" and "I am bAck.just  come up here."  I like the second one because it shows some sort of frustration behind the words.  Her roommate comes in and, at the time, I don't care if it's awkward for her that I am basically naked in her best friend's bed.  After all, I was drunk.  I would feel bad for her later, but only briefly, as nothing could overshadow my excellent night.  Except losing my license.

    Two or three hours after falling asleep, my girlfriend wakes me up.  She says, "Hey, you, get up.  You have to get up."  I tell her thanks as I stumble out of the room while putting pants on. I rush downstairs and grab a mountain dew out of my fridge to help wake me up.  My dad calls. He's waiting outside and we're running late for my appointment.   I grab a sheet of paper, identification, and a pen.  I'm downstairs, in the car, and we're gone.  I make it on time.

    Totally hung over, I go into the Marriot where I'm supposed to attend my class.  The Dutch woman at the front desk looks at me like I'm retarded, telling me she has no idea what I'm talking about.  With her thick accent, she says I can attend the War Vet's Convention or the Siminar For the Blind.  I tell her I am neither a weapon of the government nor visually impaired. And thank god not both at once.  I am not happy, and I tell her this on my way out.  "Fuck the Marriot, I've just lost my license."

    (The moral of the story is sometimes you might fuck yourself over.  And other times, when you think you're fucking yourself over, you realize it was always going to be out of your hands.  I attribute this life lesson to the Marriot.)