When last we saw our boy, he had just gotten married, was three sheets to the wind, and was making an ass of himself with a borrowed electric guitar – which, by now, the crowd probably wished he had shoved up his ass.
Most of the post-ceremony festivities have been covered elsewhere. The only things I forgot to mention were: 1.) My friend, Sam Walker, was the one who gave me the CD of bagpipe music (I should remember that, as I balked like hell at taking it); 2.) A few minutes after the conclusion of the ceremony, Bro Tristan Sutrisno called to wish us well, and; 3.) At some point during dinner, I removed my Fruit of the Looms and hoisted them skyward on the business end of my faux-claymore, as my cousin reminded me.
Another thing I suppose I neglected to mention was the dance. Yes, you read that correctly. The dance. Shortly after mangling Rosie and the Originals’ “Angel Baby,” (using language that definitely would have gotten us kicked off the Ed Sullivan Show…) I actually danced for the first time in living memory. Mags had requested “If There Hadn’t Been You,” by Billy Dean, and my cronies in Our Band Can Kick Your Band’s Ass (hereinafter abbreviated OBCKYBA, and probably soon to be known as Our Band Will Kick Our Former Lead Guitarist’s Ass) dutifully learned and performed it.
(I don’t listen to that stuff, mind you. My taste in Country Music is restricted to the classics: Waylon, Willie, Hank Sr. & Jr., Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Johnny Horton, Bobby Bare, Don Williams, Ray Stevens, Jerry Reed, Boxcar Willie, Grandpa Jones, Roy Acuff, etc. In short: if they ain’t dead or ain’t appeared on Hee Haw, I probably have no use for ‘em.)
I’d love to craft many an elegant (and possibly “purple”) passage in which the evening and the events thereof were immortalized (and romanticized) for all time. Sure and I’d love nothing more. The plain truth, though, is that I was completely shitfaced by the time we left. Christ! I was so hammered; I was running around in a pair of ripped jeans and a red velvet Jacobean-era vest. At that point, I looked like a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie who’d robbed the “Gold Key” tent at an SCA event…
Being a stubborn bastard, though, I was determined to walk back to the hotel. This would have been a very bad idea, owing to my condition, which was essentially “code red (eyed).” Had I made it even a quarter of the way, I’d probably still be in the Douglas Country drunk tank -- if not picking up garbage along I-25 in one of those ever-fashionable orange jumpsuits. Luckily, I’d only made it to the corner of 5th Street when my entire central nervous system said, “Uh-uh. Chuck you, Farley. We ain’t goin’ any further," and pulled the plug on my muscles.
Actually, it wasn’t quite that dramatic. By the time I reached the corner, I realized that there were entirely too many streetlights. Blinking a few times, I noticed that this wasn’t a typical case of double vision. Au contraire, this was a case of – and I shit thee not, Gentle Reader – quadruple vision. Revolving quadruple vision, at that. It was so bad that for a moment, I fancied I was back in high school, watching one of those “safety” films like Angel Dust and Asphalt Don’t Mix. I mean; we’re talking Pink Elephants Meet Pink Floyd.
Diggest thou, Gentle Hipster?
Luckily, Tim “Bulletman” Brown and his wife offered us a lift. Tim, by the way, is the gent in the photo gallery who’s wearing the armor and allowing trained martial artists to land full-power blows upon him in order to test the effectiveness of their techniques.
Now that is dedication to one’s craft, by God! I know that said armor is essentially state-of-the-art, and very protective, but damn me if I’d want to be inside it. Back in the good ol’ days, when FIST gear (which wasn’t at all bad, protection-wise – just ridiculously expensive) was the big thing, I was, on more than one occasion, blown completely off my feet by a well-executed kick whilst playing the “mugger” role. It never “hurt” in the strict sense of the word, but the impact was often very jarring.
The very protectiveness of the cuirass was, I suppose, a contributing factor. The old FIST chest/rib protector was so resilient and shock-absorbent (the wearer – and I’m speaking from firsthand experience -- could take a full-power blow from a police baton and not feel a thing); one was tempted to rely upon the device rather than breathing properly, “shedding,” etc. when struck. With the modern gear, I’d imagine that the temptation to rely upon it instead of allowing it to “cover your mistakes,” as MacYoung says, is nearly irresistible. If so, its strength actually increases the risk of certain injuries, ironically enough.
“It ain't me, Bubbie!” as a certain syndicated columnist was known to remark…
For this reason, my hat’s off to the MA/SD world’s “crash test dummies” – the guys like Tim -- who risk personal injury whilst training, in order to keep the rest of us from sustaining said in real life.
Noting that none of Tim’s four identical, revolving vehicles sported half a foot or so of silvery padding, I assumed that he held a different attitude towards driving, and that it was therefore safe to accept the ride.
The Browns got us back to our hotel in short order (and in four pieces each), at which point we thanked them profusely, opened the doors, and fell out of their vehicle. The pavement seemed as comfortable a place as any to catch a few winks – Colorado concrete being smoother and more neatly poured than Georgia concrete, an’ all – but the wife (alas…) had other ideas. Without her aid, I wouldn’t have known which of the four, revolving Holiday Inns to enter, so I suppose I owe her a debt of gratitude, after a fashion.
Once within the safety of our room, Mags announced that she had to powder her nose.
“Now just stay right there!” said the four of her, each pointing at different and ever-chaning spatial coordinates, as they orbited their common center of gravity. “And don’t get into trouble!”
Grunting and nodding my assent, I did as I was told, to the best of my ability.
Now when a woman enters a bathroom, the “Rip van Winkle Effect” kicks in with a vengeance. Once the door closes, the space-time continuum is irreparably disrupted on the woman’s side of the barrier. Beyond it, times passes normally. Within the space it both defines and isolates, though, all hell breaks loose. This is mere speculation on my part, but I sometimes wonder if the entire female populations of Atlantis, Gomorrah, Pompeii, Dresden and Hiroshima might not have saved themselves by going to the john, only to emerge centuries after the cataclysms that destroyed the five had passed.
Suffice to say that I was in for a long wait, and knew it very well. I hummed a tune. I whistled another. I tapped my foot upon the floor until sheer fatigue forced me to stop. I smoked a cigarette. I smoked a pipe-bowl of Captain Black. I smoked a 12” novelty cigar a friend had given me some time ago. I smoked a few dozen Salmon – after walking to Alaska, catching them, and then returning to the hotel.
Granted, I’m exaggerating a tad. The wait was, however, of sufficient duration to move a normal (read: sober) man to call for an ambulance and possibly a SWAT team. As I bore easily, I found it altogether unendurable. Then, I noticed the refrigerators– all four of them – and remembered that they still held a few beers.
“Aha! Now them’s the tickets to Unknown Kadath!” I roared, leaping up and down for sheer delight.
Oh! But what to do? How to get them?
Then it struck me (as did an old shoe -- apparently intended for the yowling tomcat on the fence between our hotel and the adjacent lot. Why the hurler would scream, “Shut up, you barking moonbat!” at a cat is, I fear, still beyond me -- that missed its mark and flew through our window): I’d simply close one eye, thereby halving the number of choices!
My plan worked like a charm. Once I’d narrowed it down to two, it was child’s play to remove one of the twenty assorted cans and bottles from the cubic foot of ‘fridge. As I cracked it open, the nagging voice of conscience, cooing accusingly in a mix of tones -- “lace curtain” Irish pretense, Cavalier propriety, and primordial, Catholic guilt -- assailed me at once.
“For shame, young Master Bean! For shame! What would your poor, dear mother think?”
“Well, I dunno what she’d think, but I got a damn good idea of what she’d say,” I replied.
“You know that the fruit of the barley is the parent of wickedness, woe and--”
“Billions of dollars for Anheuser-Busch, Coors, Miller an’ that bunch?” I asked.
“That’s not funny!”
“Damn right it ain’t! Those ‘licensed’ assholes (and whom, by the way, do you reckon spends the time and money lobbying to restrict home brewers?) are a government-supported oligopoly! ‘Free enterprise,’ my ass!”
“Uh, well, that’s a good point, but…”
“But what? If I drink their swill, I’m sinning like Cain himself -- but if I brew my own, or – Heaven and hell both forefend! – go teetotaler, I’m depriving some slob of his livelihood and sabotaging the economy (which, I note, was quite robust until a few weeks ago, at which point the wretched state of the ‘sheeple’s’ ‘personal economies’ necessitated their pouring less into the local and national economies, which suffered in turn…) is that it? Sounds to me like I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t!”
“Forget economics and propaganda! The malevolent shadow of Demon Alcohol falls across both prison and workhouse, young Master Bean!”
“So why are you busting my balls, and in a Holiday Inn, no less? Go to the prisons and workhouses and give those poor, fermented-Kool-Aid-drinking bastards the speech. And ask the folks at the service desk if they have a bottle opener while you’re at it. I’m tired of using my fucking lighter.”
“You’re hopeless!” wailed the voice as it faded away – for all that I heard only: “I’m melllll-ting!”
A moment of welcome silence passed, during which I contemplated the bottle in my hand – and tugged at the inch of beard I’d grown since Maggie’d entered the bathroom. I contemplated its shape, its smoothness, its coolness (the bottle’s -- not the beard’s, mind you). I meditated upon its clarity, the perfection of its black-and-gold label, and the fact that it was still full of beer.
“Oh, what’s the worst that can happen?” I asked myself. “I’m already pickled to the gills, as-is.” Returning my attention to the bottle, I thought of a Taoist maxim: “It is the empty space within that renders it useful.”
“Damn skippy!” I said, kicking off my shoes, making my way to the bed, and finishing the beer in three or four gulps. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
In time, a splinter of light formed on the opposite wall, expanding into a vertical bar, then a rectangle, by turns. Maggie emerged.
“Well good evenin’ ladies,” slurs I, shooting for ‘suave and seductive’ (but managing only ‘lewd, lascivious, and lecherous,’ I’m afraid). “So which o’ the eight o’ ye’ wants to be first?”
(To be continued)
Well, my old friend,it sounds like you broke the record that you set at Bobby D's the weekend after 9/11, huh? I can't wait to read the rest!!!
J.R.
Posted by: J.R. | September 19, 2008 at 05:40 PM
ROTFLMAO!
I hope you're referring to the beer-count, Bro! The sad truth (alas and alack!) insofar as "doin' da nasty" is concerned is that I didn't nail *anyone* that weekend.
Granted, asking the "top heavy" blonde who saw fit to lecture me on *The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion* if she was into Isaac Bashevis Singer's short stories might have been a mistake of the "sweve-kill" sort. Mentioning the semi-ritualistic "communal boning" of Dublin's Scandi-slags by many a hale and hearty Son of Erin in the aftermath of the squareheads' well-deserved ass-kicking at Clontarf probably didn't help, either.
Beyond that, though, there were moral and practical matters to take into account.
Morally speaking, I might as well have struck a deal with Scratch himself, had I assayed to add an updated chapter or two to *A Rake's Progress*.
Practically speaking, I sure as hell didn't need you, Walt and "Fu Manchu" catching me *in flagrante* and posting the shots on the Internet! LOL!
All bullshit aside, I have a book or two you might want to peruse -- however jarring and discordant the note.
Love,
Mick the Knife
Posted by: Dave | September 20, 2008 at 02:31 AM
Anither year, around again
They're fairly fleein past
Sit doon tae muse an'celebrate
Fill up yer birthday glass
Older now and wiser
Yer wearin fairly weel
So here's to you
A special toast
My Cuz a worthy cheil.
Happy Birthday.
Matt
Posted by: Matt | September 22, 2008 at 09:35 AM
Go raibh math agat,a dhearthair.
Dia do beatha.
Jeff
Posted by: Dave | September 23, 2008 at 10:51 PM