I Drink for a Reason (16 page)

You seem to have only one story for each vice applicable. There’s that drug story of yours. Your “drunk” story when you went
camping in senior year and drank so much hunch punch that you threw up while you were trying to make out with that girl from
Spanish class and you passed out on a frog and killed it and your friends had you convinced that you were supposed to go on
a road trip to Vegas and it was your idea. And your “crazy sex” story about when you met that “totally hot” hippie girl in
Vancouver who said she was a witch (the good kind) and was on her way to go to clown college the next day and she dragged
you into the walk-in cooler in the hotel kitchen, but then she wouldn’t let you go down on her and then cried after you fucked
her. Yep, heard it. Thanks…

I’m just asking you to be a little more judicious with your stories. At least mix up the range of emotions and excitement
a little bit. Please don’t
always
pause and look away from us at that one part in the story where you describe the feeling of complete and utter irrelevance
with your place in this world as you stared through the train window leaving Barcelona and you thought about killing yourself
and how you’d do it before you ultimately snapped out of it and made friends with the African woman sitting next to you and
how you should really make an attempt to get in touch with her. That’s all. Just please try not to do at least that.

Thanks for you time and consideration,
David

I
’M ALWAYS AMAZED AT MY OWN ABILITY TO GET BORED
. I
T SHOULD
be almost impossible in this day and age. Jesus, even if I ended up living on a chunk of ice floating just off the Greenland
coast I would have, at the very least,
memories
of thousands of TV shows and movies and video games etc. etc. And that’s on top of my real-life memories that have nothing
to do with stupid little stories. How lazy am I that I actually toss my game controller aside, step over a pile of candy-coated
magazines, click off whatever hilarious website making a witty point about whatever celebrity is in trouble for flashing her
beaten snatch today, and stand arms akimbo looking out my window to Avenue A and pout like Donald Trump, shouting “I’m bored!”
to the beautiful heavens above? There’s no excuse, young man (me)! Get out and make something happen! Put down your “graphic
novel” and get out there and make your own fun! Seriously! Here are a few ideas to get you (me) going:

• Murder someone who deserves it. Try it. I bet it’s
  way
  harder than you think. You can’t leave a trace or you will be living in fear of every knock on the door, every phone ring
  or fax noise. Although, come to think of it, you probably would never be bored again. Maybe I’m starting off too advanced.
  Let’s step it back a tad and rethink this. How about these ideas:
  
• When an employee at a store (the Gap, or anywhere where you are hounded as soon as you enter by someone seeking a commission
  as a supplement to their minimum wage) comes up to you from behind and asks you if you need any help, act completely startled.
  Jump a bit and say, “Oh! You scared me!” and laugh a little but to yourself. But don’t stop laughing. That’s the key. Laugh
  for about a minute and a half, always looking to the employee for some assurance, and then, in as smooth a transition as possible,
  start crying. Cry softly for a minute and then fall to the floor and take a nap, crying yourself to “sleep.” Then refuse to
  leave until someone brings you a glass of warm milk. Buy one sock. Immediately return it.
  
• If you are on a long flight, bring onboard one of those S & M black leather, one-piece masks with no eyeholes and just
  a zipper for the mouth. Wear it, and when someone inevitably complains, explain that it’s your “sleep mask” and you would
  appreciate not being disturbed. Try to do this in an aisle seat and keep your head as far out into the aisle as possible.
  At some later point, order a glass of wine and drink it with the mask on through your zipper hole. Then, with the mask still
  on, complain about how the movie is not “family friendly” enough. Also fart and get frustrated at not being able to smell
  it.
  
• Wear an iPod or any mp3 player (or a CD Walkman is even better) with big, noticeable old-school headphones, but don’t
  have anything playing. Walk into a shoe store (or again, any store where you are annoyingly followed all around the store
  by an employee) and slightly bop your head to the “music” and hum a little and then every once in a while sing something about
  “getting shoes” or “shoe store.” When the employee starts to strategically align him- or herself so that they can ask you
  if you need any help, pretend you don’t see them and try to get them to follow you through as much of the store as possible.
  But always be enjoying your “music.” As the employee gets farther away (but still when in earshot) start singing a little
  louder and completing more verses. Pick up shoes, considering them, while singing “lazy motherfuckers in the shoe store. Need
  to get my shoes, but I don’t know what to do. Why can’t I get no help? All I want to do is get a new pair of shoes.” Etc.
  etc. Keep doing this until the employee, now confused, comes over and taps you on the shoulder. Make a big deal about being
  into your song and not noticing at first. When you do notice, turn your iPod “off,” and take your headphones off as well.
  Smile and acknowledge them. When they ask if you’d like any help, just smile and say, “Oh no, I’m just killing time while
  my girlfriend is trying stuff on.” Then, put your headphones and iPod back on and start singing even louder about how the
  “dumbass shoe store clerk don’t know how to help me. All I want is these Rizzeeboks in a size ten and a half. Can I get some
  goddamn help here?”
  
• Make a sandwich at the store. This is inspired by the opening of a Joe Namath movie I saw when I was a kid, and I thought
  it was the coolest thing ever. The movie was called
  C.C. Ride
  r, I think, and like most great movies of my generation, it was based on a novelty song. This is something that I’ve actually
  done before, and again, it’s ballsy without being dangerous to anybody and has a mild, yet satisfying “fuck you, Mr. Corporate
  Suit and Tie!” quality that I would hope even the most uptight supermarket manager would be able to objectively appreciate.
  The title says it all; it’s pretty much self-explanatory. Just walk into the supermarket and head to the bread section. Grab
  a split roll, go over to the condiment section, squirt a little mayo or mustard or whatever you like (some people like capers—me,
  not so much), then head over to your lettuce and tomato bin/aisle place. If you want tomato, you’ll have to grab a plastic
  knife from the cutlery aisle. Take what you need (but
  need
  what you take!!!) from there.
  
• When attending a Major League Baseball game at any park where they sing “YMCA” during the break where the grounds crew
  comes on and tidies up the playing surface (I know they do this in at least Yankee Stadium as well as Ted Turner Field), turn
  to the people in your section and, with a big smile, shout out about how this song celebrates anonymous gay sex. “That’s what
  you’re singing about right now! Do you know why it’s ‘fun to stay at a YMCA’? It’s because gay men can anonymously engage
  in anal and oral sodomy! That’s what makes it soooo fun!!” Then mention how you are going up to the men’s room into the third
  stall from the left, the one with the smoothed hole at about cock level, and you will be masturbating if anyone would like
  to re-create a fun “YMCA” moment. But sternly point to a young boy and say, “Not him, though. He’s too young.”
  
• Next time (and every time) you are in a hotel/motel/Holiday Inn (say what?!), take the Bible and inscribe, “Best Wishes,
  [Your Name Here].” Then make notes randomly throughout the book, circling passages and writing things like, “WTF?! Is this
  for reals? Bullshit!” etc.
  

I
SUPPOSE WHEN MY FUTURE CHILDREN
(H
AMISH
,
8
,
AND
Dartagnan, 4) put down their holo-bears long enough to spend some time with their G.O.D. (Good Old Dad) and get around to
asking me their inevitable and predictable questions, like “Dad, when you were a kid like me, what was it like?” or “Dad,
was water ever free?” or “Dad, what was a
polar
bear again?” I suppose that I will smile, trying not to belay my weak fondness for nostalgia, pick them up, gently place
them on either knee, and say, “Kids, your father had the privilege of living in the greatest time of cowardice this country
has ever known.” I will then take them to the “End Justifies the Means” Monument in Washington, D.C. and show them the majesty
of the hundreds of thousands of lumps of hard, carbonized charcoal which represent the lives lost in the “Global War on Terror
Part II: The Reckoning”
^©
rising skydomeward that form the statue. I will stand with them as they view its majesty and explain: “Kids, on 9/11
^®
America was attacked. After a brief nap our president eventually addressed his nation and urged the citizens he was sworn
to protect to go shopping. Which is how we came to have the extra double-wide freezer downstairs.

Anyway, as you know, that date, 9/11, became known as the “Day America Lost Its Innocence.”™
^*
But kids, some clouds will occasionally have a silver lining, and this cloud had the most glittery one, for although America
did lose its innocence, it simultaneously gained its ignorance! And that’s no small feat. Can you imagine how difficult it
must have been? For the world’s (then) only superpower to move decidedly backward in thought and deed in such a time of serious
and tangible progression was almost inconceivable. It would take a volatile and complex combination of state-induced fear,
willful ignorance on a mass scale, an awakening of base intolerance, and a lolling, passive handing over of the basic civil
rights this country once prided itself on as what separated us from almost every other nation on earth, thus increasing one
hundred-fold the power assigned to the very same authorities who didn’t do their job of protecting us in the first place.

I would explain to young Shanice and Grillith
^†
that for America to gain its ignorance in such a speedy and life-changing way, it would take nothing short of a revolutionary
act. Because this country was formed with the specific and then-revolutionary concept of religious freedom, as well as the
rejection of the kind of secretive autonomous authority we find ourselves under, accountable to no one but a couple of Saudis
and the Federal Reserve. So you can see, dear Autumn and Scooter, why a one hundred and forty degree shift was such a surprise.
America had been fiercely and proudly fought for, it was a country with ideals so just and right and based in unwavering absolutes
of fairness and concern for all human beings regardless of race, sex, creed, or class. But, as you both know, on that fateful
day, a revolutionary act
was
committed by a group of men from Saudi Arabia, who hated America for previously well-articulated reasons. Part of the problem
too was that they believed in a different Book than we did. The Book they read was much different from the Book we read. Both
Books are very, very old and are interpretations of old transcriptions of anecdotes that had been verbally passed through
hundreds of generations over the years in languages either dead or foreign to us. For example, it seems strange that, according
to one of the multitude of authors of the New Testament, that God would want us to eat cow poo, but it states clearly in Ezekiel
4:15, and I quote, “Lo I have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.” So there you
go.

I watched from my computer as this country, led by TV, proudly pulled itself up by its imaginary bootstraps, which if not
imaginary would most likely be manufactured by outsourced labor in Sri Lanka, or China, or Honduras or anywhere else the great
gift of child labor is. But don’t get upset, little Warwick and Ginnifer, child labor is illegal in America. You have communist
unions and crazy liberals to thank for that. We would never stoop to such an uncivilized and blatantly un-Christian ideal.
Nor would we ever condone it. Ever.
Ever!
Anyway, kids, that’s when we collectively made a concerted effort to decide to go ahead and lose our innocence. We knew how
hard this would be. What I mean by this is we were obligated to become an angry country. Our past history shows that America
has never been angry or alarmist unless it was absolutely warranted. We were forced out of an idyllic reverie and made to
see an ugly, brutal world that lay just beyond our beautiful, well-fed borders. How could people act so crudely? So insensitive
and barbaric? And according to the prevailing winds, these were just the French! The French had had the audacity to agree
with the rest of the world who disagreed with us. What happened to simplicity? What happened to simple folk doing simple things
and thinking simply? All of a sudden we allowed ourselves to be divided into two groups, those who were either against us
or were for us. The Red States vs. the Blue States. We proudly drew up lines of battle. The Red States, being the fattest
and most illiterate,
^*
steeped in a proud, hundreds-of-years-old tradition of intolerance and piety, which ensured their obesity and stubborn ignorance
for generations, found themselves in the position of having to defend their leaders from questions of incompetence, lying,
collusion, graft, treason, and, even worse, being
too
Christian, from the Blue Staters, a loud, ineffectual, humorless group of braying know-it-alls who didn’t know all that much
actually, who were equally as ignorant, albeit about different things than the Reds. The Blueys thought that wearing a T-shirt
featuring a pun about President Bush with a word that sounded like “fuck” but wasn’t actually that word was a terrible, crude
affront. Yes, it was truly a ridiculous time, I will tell sweet innocent Jovanda-Mae and Wee Willy Whistfield. And then, after
I’ve laid them gently in their pro-biotic chamber pods, I will whisper into their tender ears the words of the late, great,
Rodney King: “Can’t we all just shut the fuck up?”