Ride the Night Hard
and let the Devil have the Hindmost
"Motherfucker, you're a
cock-throated fuckback who isn't fit to suck the bloody
semen-encrusted shit out of Rock Hudson's ass. So help me God, I'm
going to make a necklace out of your teeth!" Welp, the evening
is shot to hell. I'm three seconds away from deadhanding this
motherfucker into a nearby marble statue and going home to sleep it
off. But how did it all go so horribly wrong? Is there any way I
could have prevented what is about to occur? Was there no love? Why
have I become so enraged? What did that fucker do to piss me
off?
5:00 post meridian.
Class is over and work is roughly
48 hours away. It is a glorious day to be alive. I swing by the local
dive and talk to the usual suspects who've been assembling. In a
bizarre occurrence more rare than a total solar eclipse our schedules
mesh. We're slick as gooseshit and twice as bold. To kick off our
festivities I splash a two-hundred milligram caffeine pill into a
Vault, let it dissolve, then pop the cap and allow the whole bottle
to rocket down my throat, as was the custom at the time. We call that
the Missouri wellspring, right there. [Note: No we don't]
5:32
post meridian.
Wasabi Vodka. Because normal vodka
didn't have enough of an edge on its own. If normal vodka is like a
cutthroat razor honed to slit a hair down the middle this is a rusty
rip saw dug out of the ground by a hobo. But we're trendy like a
motherfucker here. It's like drinking Goldschlager except you replace
gold with snobby Horseradish with airs. I hate Wasabi. God this is
shit. I grab the bartender, "You. Altius. Now." It's
nanobrewed in an undisclosed monastery on the continental divide by
native Coloradoan monks and chilled below freezing in a bucket of
snow shipped in by dogsled from the slopes of Mount Massive. It's
good. Damn good. Clean and balanced. I knock it back like a sober
Russian. Smooth. Screw you, Mendeleev. We don't need you no
more.
6:23 post meridian.
Time to switch. I turn in the
general direction of the bartender, "Stoli." Ah that's the
stuff. I down it and exhale through my mouth right afterwards to
knock off the bite. I can feel the glorious supercooled liquid slide
down my throat and then creep up the surfa..."Unbreakable
Union of freeborn Republics, great Russia has welded forever to
stand. Created in struggle by will of the people, United and mighty,
our Soviet land!"... splash across the surface of my stomach
and creep up my throat. The coldness turns to a pleasurable
alcohol-warmth. No intentional flavorings. 100 proof. That's half the
finest and purest ethanol and half the finest Russian factory
pipewater. Glorious.
6:43 post meridian.
[Evening went wrong here]
"Let's blow this clambake."
8:38
post meridian.
"Meat rocks!"
"Wooohooo MEAT!"
We appear to be in a meat processing
plant. Taking a tour. Wait, that doesn't make sense. Let me check on
that. Yep, I've been assured we somehow ended up in the 8:30 PM tour
of an all night meat processing plant, and we were not alone: Cub
Scout Pack 273 was also on the tour, presumably also learning where
meat comes from. It turns out meat comes from a factory assembly
line, just as I've always suspected. Upton Sinclair is dead to me
now. The building is staffed with many, many highly skilled
individuals with knives and we are surrounded by the erotic essences
of forked-line conveyor belt manufacturing and colossal machines
specifically designed to rip flesh. Sexy.
8:41 post meridian.
"[Sung to the tune of Punk
Rock Girl] Meat meat meat meat meat meat meat meat [...] meat meat
meat. Come on everybody, sing the meat song!" Aside from nervous
chuckles from the Den leaders, nobody outside our group joins in our
heartening song. I begin to question their commitment to meat. I'll
show the little shits the what's for.
8:42 post meridian.
"You're going to have to leave. Now."
"But we haven't drunken sausages
straight from the tap yet."
"Ummm... We don't do that on this
tour."
"Well, fuck man, I don't know how
you people expect to succeed in the tour business."
9:00
Pocket check:
I've got a lighter with Lenin on
it, a misfits shot glass, an uncooked sausage link, and a wallet.
Thing One has a meat pen, three tiny bottled shots of mystery liquor
with the labels scratched off, and a fork.
Thing Two has five
caffeine pills, one pill of undetermined composition, a cell phone,
and his entire left pocket is filled with an amalgam of peanuts and
pretzels. Missing: Car keys. House keys. Two wallets.
9:01
post meridian
We have consulted for these long
minutes and a cunning plan developed. Use the cell phone to call a
cab. Drink the mystery liquor. Eat the peanut- pretzels-pocket lint
amalgam. Poke each other with the fork. Use the lighter to cook the
sausage. Yes... excellent. It's all coming together.
9:02 post
meridian
Fork tossed into the middle of
traffic. Boot accidentally set on fire. Sausage ruined. Plan
ruined.
10:11 post meridian
We check into a semi-notorious bar
that will actually serve pre-drunk customers. Things getting a little
fuzzy in terms of reporting stuff as it happens so I'm just going to
make stuff up about the bar. This bar once served Paul Bunyan. Bunyan
was new to the area having come down from wild French-Canadia the
previous fortnight for no readily apparent reason. Coincidentally,
Pecos Bill, John Henry, and that one folk hero you've never heard
about were also in the area at the time. They all got to fussing and
a feuding, and suddenly Bunyan was in the thick of it cracking heads
like he was Jeffery Dahmer. None survived.
Drunk-thirty. post
meridian?
Denny's. It turns out the "Denver
Scramble" is no longer just a sexual position. We are
crestfallen and disappointed to say the least. However, we are happy
to report the "Lumberjack Slam" no longer involves a trip
to the emergency room. Goddamned lumberjacks, no better than swine I
say.
Including ourselves there are three parties of drunkards
lushes jackasses functionally-codependent alcoholics totally awesome
dudes in this room, six if you count the groups sitting on the inside
of the mirror. Nobody comes to Denny's when they're not drunk. It's
like a rule. Even the staff is drunk. From the back of the room we
here "Whhoooohhoooo, sausage." It is not coming from anyone
in our group. We turn to see a diminutive man brandishing a sausage
on a fork. As far as I can tell, he has no connection to the meat
processing plant. Fucking poseur.
Who the fuck cares? post
marinara.
"I do not believe this
bullshit I'm hearing."
"I'm just saying, Kittinger could
totally kick Yeager's ass."
"Kittinger was a fucking balloon
pilot."
"Yeager was a pussy. And he
crashed a goddamn Starfighter, the most pointy of all possible
aircraft."
"Yeager did it with broken ribs."
"Kittinger did it with a
malfunctioning pressure suit. His hand swelled to five times it's
normal size and his blood turned to sludge. And he completed the
mission. Do you know why? Because Kittinger was twenty-two tons of
hardcore in a five ton sack."
"Bah, they're both pussies compared to John Glenn."
"..."
"..."
A new faction has entered the argument.
Regrettably, this faction is demonstrably retarded. This new faction
was not raised in the Armed Forces and because of that a fundamental
misunderstanding about the unspoken dynamics of the argument has
occurred. This is an argument between two Air Force brats. Not only
was Glenn just a fucking Mercury Astronaut (making him no better than
Ham the Astrochimp), he is also a fucking Jarhead (making him no smarter than Ham the Astrochimp). Perhaps a case
could have been made for Gus Grissom and even the slightest mention
of Buzz Aldrin would have won the argument, but never John Glenn.
After a moment of dead silence long enough to convey that this new
position is beneath response the argument recommences.
"Test
parachutist. That's more hardcore than test pilot any day of the
week."
"Test pilot who broke the sound
barrier first."
"George Welch did it first."
"Motherfucker, you're a
cock-throated fuckback who isn't fit to suck the bloody
semen-encrusted shit out of Rock Hudson's ass. So help me God, I'm
going to make a necklace out of your teeth!"
Oh yeah, I
remember that. Ass-beating ahoy! Nobody insults Yeag... wait... Ah
shit, I'm in the bathroom curled around the toilet again, and I don't
think I laid the deadhand on anyone. Damnit! What foul potion would
give you the desire to club in a good friend's skull until the white
meat comes out and then rob you of the ability to do the same? Damn
you booze! Damn you sweet, delicious booze!
Seriously, fuck
Welch.