Realizing that you're thirty but still acting out like you're eighteen can be a sobering reality. One that I didn't quite wake up to until about six o'clock Sunday afternoon while drinking super strong, fire to the chest margaritas, and chewing on a cold hamburger that was overdone on the outside while still being undercooked in the middle. Somehow I let the weekend bleed into the start of the new week, and when looking at all I had done there were memories that came back to me like an amnesia stricken victim catching glimpses of the past.
Friday was like any other day where friends got off, we all hooked up, started drinking around dark, but didn't stop until the bars shut down. Only this night, we hit a gas station for another case of beer just moments before they locked the coolers, and at the time, that seemed like a sweet idea. What am I saying? That was a great idea, one that led into the next. The one where we went swimming and jumping off a high dive till six a.m. while it poured down raining on us and lightning crashed all about in the distance. When the drunken hunger hit us we decided that Shoney's was our best option, and it remained that until we were full, feeling the greasy poo pains in our guts, and being asked to leave because one of the guys in our party wasn't wearing shoes. At least we got to force down enough fried breakfast food before ultimately getting kicked out, and having to run traffic lights so that we could play musical chairs on the one and only crapper in the house.
The sun came up far before I could get to sleep, and when drunk at that hour I always feel like I'm on something more than alcohol, but when I crashed out I knew that I had to be back up in a few hours to hit this brew festival that I was given tickets to. A buddy of mine went with me, and neither of us ate a damn thing before going. A hundred or shots of delicious potent beer later we were exiting the air conditioned confines of the convention center downtown, and stepping out onto the scolding hot concrete of the streets as the sun beat ninety degree heat upon our shoulders. It was a sickening feeling, but we hopped right in the roller, and headed straight out to our oasis away from home where the cheap beer flowed cold, the quarry water was the perfect bath temperature, and after a short while in the sun, I passed out on a rock to the sound of friends popping beer tops and crashing into the pool below me.
It felt like I was away for days, inside of my own mind as my thoughts rioted with one another, and the outside world kept on living, ticking like a clock that never needs servicing. I slept in silence as daydreams of another time, another place, and where the people had no faces carried on. I opened my eyes to the sight of hawks circling above, and the sun retreating back over the trees in the distance. "Here, take this," a friend handed me another beer and said as he saw my head raise from the rock that I slept upon. It was a continuation of the buzz that brought me here, the bender of the days prior that set me off course, and the drink that spun me out like the exploding tire at sixty-plus miles per hour. Where does one go from here? I chose to open the can, take a swill from its properties, and then let the wind blow me in whatever direction that it saw fit.
Photo courtesy of Damian Gerlach
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