Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Pornopalooza

(Originally posted April 2006, the events depicted here took place late that month, after the events of A Night At The Reverb. As usual, names have been changed to protect the innocent -- and the sluttily detestable, because everyone deserves a second chance.)

So the Captain called me up back in the summer, on a Saturday when I coincidentally had nothing to do (being gainfully unemployed and generally too lazy to do anything worthwhile, like post new stories). Turns out "Leetha" (from A Night At The Reverb) was hosting a party at a friend's house, and she'd specifically invited both of us to attend. Evidently, despite her assertions that I was "angry" and "scary" and what all else, she enjoyed my company and wanted me to partake in this soiree. I was puzzled, but not entirely displeased with this development; despite what I might say, I really do hate it when people don't immediately love and/or worship me on sight.


Upon asking the Captain what the vibe for the evening was to be, the following conversation ensued.



Cap: They're calling it "Pornopalooza".


Al: (pause) They're calling it what?


Cap: Yeah, I know.


Al: What is entailed in a "Pornopalooza"?


Cap: Basically it's an excuse for Leetha and her slutty friends to get together, dress like porn stars, and get raving drunk. And I have front-row tickets to this drama of decadent debauchery, dude. What the hell would you do without me?


At this point, Caligulic images of drunken, scantily-clad co-eds cavorting in time to Earth Wind and Fire jams and licking various edibles off one another, with Ron Jeremy's daunting manhood and Jenna Jameson's ample bosoms dominating the television screens, were dancing in my head.


Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to the Captain once again, we have the makings of a winning night.



Cap: Oh, and another thing - Leetha's been talking up the fact that you're a musician ... the girl running

the party is a huge Big and Rich fan. They want you to come wearing nothing but your guitar.


Once again, my modest musical expertise has its intended effect: to make that which is otherwise mediocre inestimably more attractive. Though no-one, anywhere, ever needs to see me wearing nothing but a guitar, I agree to bring it with me in the hopes that its siren song will net me one or more of the aforementioned Big and Rich co-eds. Save a horse, ride a cowboy indeed. (I just had to say it)


The Captain and I swiftly made arrangements to meet up at my place for some pre-drinking (I never learn) before the party, and shortly thereafter I received a phone call from an old and dear high school friend, “Marsha”. Back in the day, Marsha and I hung out together in many of the same wrong crowds, so to speak, and to this day I’ve met few women who can match my biting wit and burning cynicism pound-for-pound. It also helps that Marsha is very attractive, in that classic, thumb-through-your-dad’s-Playboys kind of way. When she asked if I wanted to hang out, I promptly invited her to Pornopalooza.



Mar: They’re calling it what?


Al: Yeah, I know. But it sounds like it might be a good time.


Mar: I don’t know…sounds a little creepy at best, and conceivably lame at the worst…


Al: The Captain’s bringing free booze.


Mar: I’m in.


There are reasons Marsha and I get along.


Al: So you know the dress code, right?


Mar: I’m guessing Slut Couture is the order of the evening.


Al: You got it. Think you can find something appropriate?


Mar: To whom the fuck do you think you are speaking? You know me better than that. I’ll see you in

two hours.


True to form, the Captain and Marsha showed up simultaneously shortly thereafter. The Captain came bearing his traditional gifts in the form of Olympian bottles of rum and gin, and Marsha came bearing her traditional gifts of good looks and poor attitude.


Marsha had decked herself out in what can be best described as Dominatrix Marilyn Monroe, with an amusingly ironic accessory: a large, somewhat gaudy silver crucifix hanging around her neck. When I asked about it, she merely replied “I figured Jesus would offset all this leather”. Beautiful.


The Captain, too, had taken the leather route, donning a thin strap of a tie over a teeshirt that read “I might be wrong, but I doubt it”, and leather pants so tight I was surprised he wasn’t speaking in a falsetto. He certainly looked the porn-star part; being that he’s the Captain I was reasonably sure he could pick up and take home at his leisure. The only problem I foresaw for him was the almost insurmountable obstacle of the pants: it would take the Jaws of Life to scrape him out of those things, particularly while drunk. The things we do for fashion.


I quickly realized upon seeing my friends in all their whorish resplendence that I had precisely nothing to wear to an event of this nature. In the end I settled on a 70’s era dress shirt, jeans and a fur shawl thing lent to me by Marsha for the occasion. Topped with a pair of those ridiculous gigantic sunglasses that cover half your face (the ones favoured by the Hollywood elite when they try to walk around sub rosa in public), and I was transformed into a reasonable facsimile of - if not a porn star - at least a porn aficionado.


When we arrived at the designated address, the first red flag went up: this was definitely not what I’d call ‘student living’. Situated in a reasonably middle-class suburban neighbourhood, the house looked like your run-of-the-mill Cleaver home, complete with little picket fence and a station wagon in the driveway. This didn’t at all resemble the sort of seamy college dive I was expecting for an event called “Pornopalooza”. I decided something was amiss, and turned to the Captain for clarification, but his face remained impassive and he refused to make eye contact.


We walked in, unannounced, through the side door and entered a well-appointed and entirely-too-clean kitchen, where we were greeted by a jubilant Leetha. She was wearing what amounted to suspenders attached to a glorified belt, both of which barely covered her naughty bits, coupled with stiletto heels that thrust her midgety form precariously into the air where she was currently swaying and skittering to and fro while endeavouring to run towards us. She enveloped the Captain and I in a sloppy, breast-popping hug which nearly bowled us both over as we tried to steady The Amazing Stilt Girl before she nailed her pug-face on the counter.


Lee: I’m THHOOO happy you guyth could make it! Thith ith going to be THHOOO much fun!


Bear in mind this girl is next to impossible to understand under sober circumstances: throw in a goodly amount of whatever she’d been drinking, and it was like trying to comprehend a drunk Newfie with a mouth full of marbles. Stilt Girl tap-danced her way back across the kitchen to rejoin her friends, which was the first time I actually noticed that anyone else was present.


There were a total of six girls sitting at the kitchen table, with what appeared to be a small mini-bar (read: tiny bottles of girly liquor) set forth in front of them. My eyes swept casually over the “slutty friends” the Captain had mentioned, but I was distracted from my appraisal when my ears caught a sound I hadn’t heard since middle school, and had fervently hoped I’d never hear again: the sound of mocking girlish laughter.


Anyone who’s ever walked the hallways of a high school with toilet paper stuck to their shoe, or an unbeknownst “Kick Me” sign plastered to their back, will be acutely familiar with this fiendish noise. It is the bane of nerds, geeks, dweebs, dorks, and other social misfits everywhere. It begins as a titter; a Bacchian giggle barely noticeable to the untrained ear, and quickly escalates into a full-scale Harpy cackle, usually accompanied by finger pointing, conspiratorial whispering and faces contorted in exaggerated disgust.


Now, given I was a bona-fide theater geek in high school, my ears are more than attuned to catch even the slightest inkling of this esteem-murdering pubescent barrage. What I couldn’t figure out for the life of me was why six grown women would, alcohol notwithstanding, revert to junior-high gum-cracking cheerleader mob mentality. So I reappraised the Sinister Six in the hopes of coming to some conclusion.


Which is when I realized that not a girl at the table was a day over 18.


The red alert klaxons immediately started going off in my head. My first coherent feeling was the intense fear of jail that two seasons of “OZ” has instilled in my heart, as I realized that when the police were inevitably called to break up the underage booze-fest, I’d likely be arrested on-sight just for being here and looking significantly older than I am. Leaving aside the fact that I definitely would not be picking up this night (I have some morals), there was therefore a very real danger of imprisonment on suspicion of pedophilia, and I know what they do to dirty old men in the lockup. I ain’t going out like that, I decided, and so turned to leave.


The Captain grabbed my arm, having seen the look of dawning terror and the desire to flee in my eyes, and was very nearly in stitches as he pulled me aside. One look at his face told me all I needed to know: he had known the whole time that this party was a veritable Lolita-fest. The whole time, and yet he’d still subjected me to what might conceivably my last night as an anal virgin, if things went south and the five-oh showed up. There arose in my breast at that moment an intense desire to kill, maim or otherwise severely damage my good friend, who was still wiping the last tears of laughter from his eyes.


Al: You - you - you - YOU MOTHERFUCKER.


Cap: Dude, just calm down.


Al: Man, the cops are gonna come, and they’re gonna think I’m a goddamn pederast, and they’re

gonna throw me in a cell with some dude named Bubba, who’s gonna -


Cap: RELAX, asshole. These girls are all eighteen or older; they just look young. The most that would

happen if the cops showed - and they won’t - would be they’d bust up the party for underage drinking, and

that means they’d be asking everybody for ID. We aren’t that much older than these girls, so they wouldn’t

think you were some creep trolling for the just-come-of-agers. On top of which, the term ‘pederast’ refers

to somebody who likes to sleep with little boys.


Al: (awkward silence) …How did you know that?


Cap: (awkward silence)


Al: Man, regardless - what the hell is this about, anyway? You know I’m not going to take any of

these - these cheerleaders home, and you sure as shit know I’m going to have piss-all in common with any

of them…why am I here? Why am I wasting my life on this?



The Captain didn’t respond. He merely produced the bottle of gin he’d brought and poured me an

extremely large drink, which he handed to me with a wink and a grin. I snatched the booze out of his hands

with fire in my eyes, and proceeded to pour myself the largest gin and tonic known to humanity.


By the time I turned around, the Captain was already mingling (read: shamelessly flirting) with most of the women-in-training and he’d drawn a sizeable crowd of impressionable tweeny-boppers to his side (several more had shown up in the interim), so I decided to watch the show while desperately trying to calm myself down (read: drink as much as possible in a very short time span) and keep from walking right out the door. As I watched, I saw pretty much what I expected to see: the Captain doing his thing and doing it well. What I couldn’t understand was why he was employing the full force of the Captain Game on girls that needed no more cajoling into sexual escapades than a Mike’s Hard Lemonade and a half-assed promise to be their boyfriend later.


It took me a minute to pick up on the fact that what I was viewing was not, in fact, the full force of the Captain Game, but rather a bizarre approximation tailored to netting high-school girls. Where the Captain is normally suave and debonair, the vibe I was currently picking up from him more resembled Robert Romanus’ character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High (the one who knocks up Jennifer Jason Leigh). If we were at some club downtown and the Captain tried to pull off some of the lines he was using right now, he’d be going home very much alone - mostly because not even I would be seen with him after that - but since we were currently hanging out with the Babysitter’s Club, every bit of his bullshit was being eagerly sucked up by his crowd of adoring fans. Seriously, it was like he walked into a chemo ward with a dick that could cure cancer.


Of course, it helped that the sum total IQ present in the room, excepting the Captain, Marsha and myself, probably hovered somewhere just above the double digit mark. Here are some gems:



Slut #1: So, like, what do you, like, you know, do?


Cap: I’m an environmental engineer.


Slut #1: Oh, that’s SO great! I, like, totally respect people who try to build new rainforests and, like, help

the little animals and stuff.



Cap: (to a girl wearing “BootyliciousTM” hot pants, a lace bra and six-inch stilettos) Hey, I really like

your outfit, it looks great.


Slut #2: Oh, thanks! I borrowed it from my sister!


Cap: Must be nice to have an older sister to share clothes with, huh?


Slut #2: Oh no, she’s my younger sister. She’s fifteen.


Seriously. This had nothing to do with having game: this was like Free Sample Day at Costco. I was, in a word, horrified. This was a bona-fide All You Can Eat Buffet, except the table had been picked over by - I’m assuming - everything with two legs and a dick in the Greater Toronto Area. The combination of stupid and STD I could almost tangibly feel in the air was too much for me. I expressed this to the Captain by shaking my head very fast back and forth and pointing to my crotch, mouthing “Your cock will fall off if you throw it in anyone here”.


Either the Captain didn’t hear me, had no concern for the well-being of his genitals, or had no interest in associating himself with the shady half-drunk dude frantically pointing at his own junk. The “women” around him paid absolutely no attention to me (which I’m used to) and continued fawning and ejecting stupid-air from their mouths. I decided I had had about as much as I could take, and so I took a powder, barely acknowledging the Sinister Six as I fled to the deck for a cigarette. To this day I’m sure I could hear their emasculating giggles following me out the door.


As I lit my cigarette and began aggressively sucking back my second Jumbo Gin And Tonic, Marsha joined me on an opposing deck chair. She too had been amused by my miniature freak-out in the kitchen (which Leetha and the Fembots seemed to have missed entirely – go figure) and had come to impart some cynical wisdom to her former drug-buddy.


Mar: Dude, I think you’re missing out on a prime opportunity here.


Al: To do what? Babysit a bunch of drunken pre-sorority whores while what’s left of my self-respect

curls up in a bottle of gin to die?


Mar: No…but I have been reading your blog recently, and it seems as though the best way for us to turn

your frown upside down and start making something worthwhile out of this truly bizarre night - thanks for inviting me, by the way - would be to start feeding you as much booze as possible, and then we’ll spend the night totally fucking with these people. What do you say?


In spite of myself, I felt my lips begin to curl upward at the prospect of taking some measure of verbal revenge on the sort of people who made the sober portions of my high-school career singularly unbearable. That, and I’m kind of a functional asshole anyway, so any excuse to mock and belittle those most deserving is an excuse I’ll jump at.



Mar: (catching my grin) Come on, you know you want to…


Al: I just can’t stay mad when there’s debauchery afoot. And revenge is a dish best served drunk.



Finishing my Big Gulp Gin and butting my smoke, I walked back inside to refresh my drink. It seemed in

my brief absence that the “party” had begun to fill up: there were at least five or six more Slutty Spice

disciples crowding the kitchen, most of whom were drinking coolers or light beer, with the exception of a

few self-styled bad asses that had hit the “hard” stuff - in this case referring mostly to Amaretto or peach

schnapps. I also noticed, to my amusement, that the gender divide was starting to close: several young men

were now populating the miniscule spaces left between the bony hips of the whores-in-training, and if it

was possible they looked even more ridiculous than their female counterparts. Everywhere I looked I saw nothing but skinny white-boy breastbone peeking out from absolutely ridiculous faux-tuxedo tops over top of jeans tight enough to qualify as skin grafts. Toothy grins stuck in the middle of faces not yet mature enough to grow anything more than patchy facial hair, were topped by absurd EMO-boy mop haircuts. I felt like I’d been transported into somebody’s idea of a bad joke.


Now, for those of you that read my stories (you know, all three of you) you must know that what lay before me was akin to a blank canvas, upon which I could paint a veritable masterpiece of mockery. It is my favourite medium, after all. Unfortunately I have to admit that, thanks to the Captain pulling this whole preschool surprise on my unsuspecting ass, I was still more than a little off my game. Fortunately for me, while I was aggressively lubricating my palette of rage with Beefeater-brand hate juice, Marsha was prepping the easel with a brilliant masterstroke of her own.


From the time we came in, Marsha had been attracting all kinds of attention, and not just of the pubescent puppy-boy variety. Seems the Sinister Six has put their thimble-heads together, pooled all three ounces of their combined grey matter, and decided that Marsha was the coolest thing since the Bratz cartoon hit syndication on YTV. The Tweenie Tribe had chosen their queen, and they approached their unsuspecting monarch with all the deference of amateur KISS groupies coming to pay homage at the Altar of Gene.


Now, I’m not trying to belittle Marsha’s character at all because I think she’s great, but if I’m going to be realistic I have to say that young, impressionable girls could probably find a better role model by visiting your average rehab clinic or unemployment office (it’s not as harsh as it sounds - I mean, really, does anybody see me winning any Youth Counselor awards anytime soon? Or ever?). Let me illustrate my point.


After several awkward moments of starstruck ogling, a pop tart wearing what I estimated to be seventeen percent of a Catholic schoolgirl uniform finally approached the elected brood mother.


Tart #1: Uh, uh, Marsha? Can we ask you a question?


Mar: Sure.


A titter of fangirl glee rippled through the hormonal harlots and they eagerly gathered around my friend, the newly-appointed High Priestess of Poon.


Tart #1: So, we were wondering…where, like, did you, like, get your costume? It’s, like, totally the

shiznit!


I often wonder whether white teenage female hip hop fans have ever actually listened to Snoop’s lyrics, or whether they mindlessly repeat these marketing-tool phrases completely out of context. Oh. Wait.


Mar: What costume? I dress like this all the time.


Tarts: Really? Like, where do you work??


Mar: Oh, I’m a stripper.


A palpable silence fell on the room. The only sounds I could make out were the simultaneous flaking-off of cheap caked-on makeup as the collective eyes of every slut-in-training present widened to the size of dinner plates, and the creaking of tight denim as erection after erection sprang to life in the pants of every eager skinny white boy within range. Personally I was on the edge of my seat, waiting to see where this was going to go. I mean, did I mention Marsha is a computer tech analyst? Of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the response.


Tarts: THAT IS SO COOL!!!


I have to give Marsha credit - in the ensuing cacophony of awe and excitement, she never lost her poker face. I, on the other hand, shot gin out my nose. That burns, by the way, but I was laughing so hard I didn’t notice at the time. But Marsha didn’t stop there.


Mar: Oh yeah, it’s a great job. The money’s good, lots of men pay attention to me and tell me they’re

in love with me and stuff, and I hardly ever have to give blowjobs to customers. Plus, it makes me feel really attractive, and that’s, like, the best thing ever!


Tart #1: Oh yeah, you’re totally right.


Tart #2: I wish guys would pay that kind of attention to me!


Tart #3: That sounds soooo romantic!


Tart #4: So is your club, like, hiring?



Evil, thy name is Marsha. I can’t hold a candle to that kind of shit. But I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to try.


So Marsha and I, joined by the Captain, once again retired to the deck for a smoke, promising her newfound litter of aspiring exotic dancers that we’d only be a minute. The Captain was suitably impressed with Marsha’s performance and through tears of laughter we congratulated her on tainting an entire roomful of somebody’s daughters. At that moment Marsha fixed me with a pointed stare, lips twisting smugly.


Mar: Okay Al, I just set the bar. Think you can top it?


Cap: I don’t think anybody is going to be able to top that one, Marsha.


Obviously they were in league in the “Call Out Al” camp. Not to be outdone, I slammed back the remainder of my Giant Gin (must have been my fourth or fifth by that time; our main bottle was draining fast) and got unsteadily to my feet.


Al: To whom the fuck do you think you’re speaking? Stick to the whoring, woman, and leave the

abuse to the experts!


Cap: It’s about time - lock and load, here we go.


I walked back into the house, nearly taking the screen door off its track in the process, and began searching alternately for more booze and my first target. All around me, a bizarre comedy was unfolding – it was like an episode of Degrassi Junior High with less clothing. The more rampant sluttiness and awkward advances I witnessed, the more incensed I became. Unable to locate my gin, I wandered back to the kitchen table to see what I could scavenge from the Sinister Six’s mini bar.


I noticed that Slut #2 had gotten herself separated from the rest of the harem, and she was currently lording it over the mini bar, drinking heavily from a glass filled with viscous brown liquid. I realized that I would have to get past her to score any of the remaining liquor, so I decided to be the bigger man and play it sweet.


Al: So, what are you drinking?


It turns out that Slut #2’s copious binge-drinking had let loose all the animosity she held against her daddy for not buying her that pony when she turned seven, and it so happened that yours truly was standing directly in the event horizon of Hurricane Bitch when it struck without warning.


Slut #2: I’m drinking AMARETTO you fucking asshole, what’s it to you? Seriously, why are you even at

this party? It’s called Pornopalooza, and you’re not even dressed like a porn star, not like anybody would want to see you naked, ‘cause you’re so hairy and fat and everything. Like, oh my God, why did Leetha ever invite you? Your friend is pretty cute which makes you look even worse standing next to him! Go find your own fucking booze you LAME-O!


Al: …Wow. I always wondered what it would be like to be verbally owned by a fifteen year-old.


Before she could reply, I walked away from her, swiping a mini bottle of gin on my way, and headed back out to the patio. Somehow the Captain had beaten me inside, found my discarded glass and refilled it yet again, so when I sat down with a bemused expression on my face, he had something to hand me.


Cap: What was that all about?


Al: (taking a deep drink) I don’t know man, but that girl is now my target. Before night’s end, with God as my witness, I vow I’m going to make her cry.


Cap: Dude, God has so little to do with what’s about to happen.


And true to my word, I went to work on this girl. She couldn’t find solace anywhere. I rode her the whole night and didn’t let up for a minute, but here are some exchanges I remember.


When she went to get another drink I was waiting at the bar:


Al: You know, you and alcohol are like Popeye and spinach. Except Popeye gets strong: you just become an even bigger whore.


When she went to the bathroom I happened to be next in line when she came out:


Al: Don’t forget to take your birth control. And apply your herpes cream. (to the guys in line) What? I just did you a favour. It’s like G.I. Joe says – Knowing Is Half The Battle!


I caught her shamelessly flirting with some under-age EMO boy near the front door:


Al: Damn girl, you don’t take long to recover, do you? (to the guy) By the way, if you kiss her and

taste something salty, you might want to ignore it. Just puttin’ it out there brother.


The best part about this constant barrage was that it had a curiously double-edged effect: predictably, all the girls at the party steadily began to hate me more and more as the night wore on, but the guys in attendance thought I was absolutely hilarious. Actually I was being more of a drunken prick than a comedian, but I guess it doesn’t take much to amuse inebriated teenagers.


The piece de resistance came later in the evening. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Marsha had departed due to an early work day the following morning, and as a result I was outside smoking with a bunch of the aforementioned guys that had attached themselves to me. I was regaling them with stories (one of them had asked me how I got the scars on my forehead, so I had to recount the Stair Night) and they were loving it, when Slut #2 came outside and sat down on the bench opposite me across the table and started taking over the conversation. I shut up almost immediately, mostly because I am acutely aware of the inherent value of keeping my mouth shut until I’ve got the right thing to say. Sure enough, the opportunity presented itself rather quickly. Slut #2 was talking to a few of the boys about her outfit, the one she told the Captain she borrowed from her younger sister.


Slut #2: But, like, you have to realize that me and my sister are, like, nothing alike. My mom says we are

but we so totally are not, you know? Like, we’re totally different people! UH!


Load all weapons.


Al: But didn’t you borrow that very classy outfit of yours from said sister?


Slut #2: Duh, she gets her fashion sense from me!


Target in range and locked.


Al: I weep for the future if that’s the case. But then obviously you must be at least a little alike, right?

I mean, if you both want to look like low-rent Spice Girls?


Slut #2: NO! I’m telling you, we are, like, TOTALLY OPPOSITE!


Fire at will.


Al: Then I must conclude that your sister must be attractive, intelligent, chaste, thin, and both of her

eyes must be pointing in the same direction.


Let me explain briefly: this young woman was not at all unattractive (she had too much paint on her face, but that’s a personal preference on my part), nor was she anything resembling heavy-set. She was stupid, yes, and a wanton strumpet, and she did have a barely perceptible lazy eye, but I was much harsher than I needed to be. And for what it’s worth, I did feel kind of bad for bringing so much force to bear on such a small target: I mean, over the course of the night, my treatment of her was akin to using napalm to kill an ant colony. But after years of suffering mental and emotional abuse and anguish at the hands of girls just like her, I felt at least initially justified in totally cutting her down in front of all her friends.


I’ll give her this much, she didn’t cry. What she did do, however, was slam her drink down with enough force to fracture the pint glass it was in, scream at me to fuck off and die, and storm off the deck. For my money, that was just as good. I turned to the guys remaining at the table, who were staring at me as though trying to figure out whether or not to laugh.


Al: What? She called me a lame-o. So the bible says what I did was okay: you know, an eye for an

eye and all that. And if God says it’s okay, then it’s okay by me.


There was a moment more of confused contemplation, and the lot of them collectively lost their shit. The one guy was in tears, telling me how awesome that was. Apparently, this girl comes to a lot of their parties, and while all these young fellows would like to take her to bed, they can’t stand her company either before or after. Evidently my Vapid-Whore-Dar was working perfectly that night, and for once the right person got it.


By this time I was starting to get antsy; this party was doing nothing for my love life aside from attracting a horde of little Tucker Max wannabes who followed me around wanting to hear me say funny stuff. The Captain joined me in the kitchen with yet another drink, which I damn near passed up due to the amount I’d consumed already that night (but I’ll never admit to that now).


Cap: Having fun?


Al: Man, I’m telling you, never do this to me again. When the only fun I get out of a night is verbally

trouncing a teenage girl I just don’t go home feeling fulfilled, you know? I mean, it’s kind of like stealing Halloween candy from small children: entertaining for a while, but it gets too easy really fast.


Cap: Well, you have to admit it hasn’t been that bad. Scenery was good, you got to be a bastard, everyone goes home happy. You might still even pick up if you tried.


I didn’t know it at the time, but the Captain was baiting me again.


Al: Pick up? PICK UP? YOU ASSHOLE. It’s not enough that every girl in here looks like a

stretched out slutty piece of shit. It’s not enough that they’re all going to spend their lives

alternating between an honest night’s work on their backs with their feet in the air, and heading to the clinic for pap smears and free condom stockups. Pick up?? I mean, come on: EVERY GIRL IN HERE LOOKS LIKE SHE ALREADY SUCKS DICK FOR A LIVING!!!


I should mention that when I’m drunk I have difficulty gauging the volume of my voice. At the end of this exchange, I had the full attention of every single person at that party. For the second time that night an utter silence fell on the room. You could hear hair growing in there. Ever the good wingman, the Captain threw out the defining line of the night:


Cap: Well, when you’re right, you’re right.


When the Captain and I left shortly thereafter, it was not precisely by choice. That is to say, the girls at the party had collectively gone to him while I was in the can and asked that he please remove his asshole friend from the premises because I was ruining their good time. The only two that didn’t seem to have a problem with me staying were Leetha and “Brooke”, the girl that owned the house. They both wanted us to stay, as did my new-found fan club, but I was headed swiftly out of Amusingly Assholish Al towards Pass Out Randomly Al, so we opted to head out. Though I never got to play, Brooke expressly told me that I should be showing up to her next party, so I guess I didn’t manage to alienate every single woman there.


On our way out I asked the Captain about his conversation with the Sinister Six and their cronies.


Cap: Seriously man, the final tally excluding Leetha and Brooke was a unanimous decision that you are

like the anti-Dr. Phil. You went out of your way to ruin those people, especially that one girl, with the lazy eye or whatever.


Al: Whatever, she probably just went home to write angsty poetry on a forty-five degree angle in her

diary. Besides, this whole fucking thing is your fault. You knew damn well what was going to

happen if you invited me to this thing without my foreknowledge of what it was going to be about.


Cap: Yep. Same thing as what happens when you invite Genghis Khan over for tea. Or Hitler to a Bar

Mitzfah.


Al: Come on, I’m not that bad.


Cap: All I can say is God help the woman that winds up settling for you. She’ll be a better man than I.


Al: (awkward silence)


Cap: (awkward silence)



Fin.


A Night at the Reverb

(Originally posted April 2006, the events depicted here occurred in early April, a few weeks after the events of the Stair Night. Did I mention I used to drink a lot? This was originally written as an email to a friend of mine, which is why it doesn't have the same narrative rhythm as the Stair Night story.)

Friday night wound up being something of a cluster fuck (two Fridays ago, when I was supposed to jam with Crazy Sean and Guitar Dan). See, Guitar Dan's plans changed and he neglected to inform me (he's a bit of a prick) so I sat around my apartment until about 8pm trying to get in touch with him or Sean. No such luck, so I called the Captain, who had invited me out earlier in the week to see his cousin's band play down at the Reverb (semi-major club venue downtown). Now, I wasn't terribly interested in seeing this band play: they sort of do that EMO-scrEAMO thing which I have only a little bit of patience for, and I knew that since it was a Battle of the Bands that genre would dominate my night of audial pleasure. Then the Captain said the two magic things he needed to: 1) the boys in the band were bringing a lot of women who were mostly stupid and easily led with few standards, and 2) there was promise of free booze. Off I went, since I follow my alcohol habit (and portions of my anatomy) around like a divining rod.


So we got down to the Reverb and after a couple of pints at a nearby bar we went in. I had to laugh because I figured there would be a lot more people there to see this so-called Battle of the Bands than there actually were. Mainly it seemed to consist of the bands, their girlfriends (or boyfriends or whatever) and a couple of hangers-on. Even worse, the guy from Rogers who was MCing the night kept trying to pump up the crowd. Unfortunately, when you turn your mic up really high in a small club with almost no one in it, the sounds that come out of the speakers don't really resemble human language so much as a scene from The Exorcist. So that was lame.


The first band we caught onstage was some GRRL POWER outfit called "Boring Mediocre Girl Band" (not their real name, but on the off chance they eat enough dick to garner a record contract, I don't want to get sued later). They sucked. A lot. They completely ruined my favourite Misfits song when they tried to cover it and then proceeded to play their instruments poorly in time to the drummer (the only male member of the band) who appeared to be on some kind of hallucinogen. However, their guitar player was hot so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. When they finished raping my ears they got offstage and I realized that "hot" guitar player was not nearly as hot as I originally thought. Let's just say she was a big fan of rancid, and I'm not talking about the band.


The next band that went on, well, I never caught their name, but it really didn't matter. From the moment they took the stage I couldn't stop laughing. Now, to be fair, for what they were doing they were a tight group, but the singer...it was like Eddie Vedder fucked Raine Maida and they had a boy. All his guitar lines and most of his singing in the verses had that growling, mewling "Yeeeeeaaaah" vibe that Lane Staley perfected (and that later got ruined by Nickelback and Creed and the rest of them), and then when he hit the chorus he went into this whiny, nasally "Superman's Dead" caterwauling that threatened to blow out monitors all across the stage. And he looked like a low-rent Chris Caberra, complete with EMO(TM) registered trademark hairdo and full-sleeve tattoos.

Needless to say, during these performances I felt a little of me dying minute by minute, so I did what I always do when I get depressed: I drank. Unfortunately, the bar was FUCKING expensive: $5.50 for a bottle of domestic beer? Get the fuck out of here. So I took it pretty easy, considering.


Throughout this time, me and the Captain are hanging out with this ex-girlfriend of his; a marginally cute broad called Lisa. From what the Captain told me, she's just another slut (like most of the women he's dated) so I figured I could ply her with alcohol to lower her standards enough to go home with me. That is, until she opened her mouth:


"Hi guyth. My name'th Leetha. What'th yourth?"


Sufferin' sucatash! The girl sounded like a post-op tranny Sylvester the Cat. I decided to forget plying her with booze and keep it for myself...I won't go into detail here, but just imagine what "bedroom speak" would have sounded like coming out of this woman. I would need to be shit-housed just to keep from laughing in her face.


So Phase I went into operation right then and there: I turned on the Charming Al bit and went to work on my impedimented hookup, made her laugh and whatnot. That's when Ken and the boys from Scarsville went on stage.


I kind of had to laugh again because there were roughly seven or eight of them on stage, all with instruments, all tuning up, all looking like extras from a Taking Back Tuesday video or whatever. Eight guys to play thrash? What are you, Supertramp? But they were okay, I guess. At least, for what they did they didn't completely suck. But by this time I was dying for a cigarette and really wanted to fuckin' leave, because you can't smoke in clubs in the city anymore.

So right after they got off stage, the Captain and Leetha and myself went with a few other people across the way to the Velvet Underground, which used to be a really happenin' club back when they did Machine Mondays (sort of an industrial/goth vibe in there, which I used to dig). They've turned it into a much more chill place since then: pool tables, two bars and a modest dancefloor, seating and big screen TVs showing music videos or the game or whatever. I was impressed.


At this point the Captain's younger brother Steve showed up with a couple of his friends: Steve was the one whose birthday I went out for a few weeks prior because he turned legal. Anyway, I like Steve as he's a good kid, and usually I don't mind his friends, but the two he brought out with him this particular night were utter fuckups. They weren't the usual MTV-ites that Steve generally chills with; these guys looked like they spent their free time playing Dungeons and Dragons in their underwear in their Mom's basement and jerking off to Kingdom Hearts standies. I referred to them as the Moron Twins the whole night, which I think kind of pissed them off. Whatever, like I'm going to start caring now.


Anyway, these two idiots decided they wanted to show me up playing pool. It so happens that I'm not a bad pool player on most nights, and on some nights I'm really good. It so happens that night was one of those nights. So Steve and I teamed against the Moron Twins for a game of pool. Predictably I botched my first shot, receiving much catcalling and horseshit from the Moron Twins, to which I replied that I was simply lulling them into a false sense of security. The next time the cue came back around to me I sank six balls, followed by a seventh which was completely awesome because I shot too hard - while I did sink what I was aiming for, the cueball jumped the table and racked Moron Twin #2 right in the nuts. I couldn't even bring myself to apologize because I was laughing too hard, as were Steve, the Captain, Leetha, and half the bar, because the kid was bent over cradling his junk and weakly calling for ice. Then he picked up the pool cue and I was reasonably sure he was going to try and hit me with it, but he was so drunk at this point that I don't think the fight would have lasted for more than ten seconds or so. It didn't matter; the bartender came over and brought him an ice pack.


After we cleaned their clocks at pool twice more, I was getting a healthy buzz on because the Captain kept feeding me double gin and tonics, which were very tasty. So I decided to talk to Leetha for a while. The conversation went something like this:


Lee: Tho, do you have a girlfriend?


Al: No (insert short ex-girlfriend sob story here)


Lee: That'th too bad. Tho are you looking for new prothpectth?


Al: No (insert prepared but impersonal desirous-of-one-night-stand-speech here)


Lee: Well, let me give you thome advithe, Alekth. I think you're very attractive and very funny, but on the thame token you thcare me.


Al: What? What do you mean I scare you? I'm not scary, I'm very nice.


Lee: Yeah, you're nithe and all, but there'th thith thread of violent anger that runth jutht beneath the thurfathe and I think a lot of girlth will thee that and be thcared off by it.


Al: I really don't understand what the fuck you're talking about. I've been called cynical, caustic, negative, a general asshole, but never "angry". Give me an example.


Lee: Well, maybe cauthtic would be a better word for it, but come on - people call you "Al"...that'th an old curmudgeonly name. You thould call yourthelf "Zander". You know, like the character from "Buffy". That would be hot.


Oh fucking kay. I'm not even going to list the reasons why I'm not naming myself after a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I like the show well enough, but since when do people nickname themselves? You nickname yourself, you might as well scream "I have no friends" and "I am a big loser who names myself after obscure television characters from the late 1990s". Now granted, people used to call me Zander once upon a time, but not in years, and furthermore, that's a really good way to get my ass kicked - who in this age group calls themselves Zander anyway? Tell you what bitch, in the spirit of 90s nicknames, I'll call myself Zander when you let me call you "Blossom" and piss all over your face. Wouldn't that be "hot" too? Huh? Goddamn it, I'm losing patience with this woman. And my buzz. I order another drink.


Al: I'll bear that in mind, thank you.


This sort of treatment from Tranny Sylvester kept up most of the night: seriously, this woman wrecked my shit all over the board, culminating when the Captain and I went home to chill out at her place. First off we had to tiptoe all over the shit festival that was her apartment and talk really quietly because her roommate was asleep (on a Friday night when she didn't have to work in the morning). Then when the Captain and I asked for the booze, the promise of which lured us back to her place, she pulled out - and I'm not kidding - a quarter bottle of Malibu rum. Between three people. Then she poured the baby booze equally into three PINT GLASSES and filled the rest with fruit juice. Great, do I get a cookie too?


We hung out there, painfully, for several hours, during which time it became plainly apparent to me that Leetha was not over the Captain. Quite the opposite: she was barely containing her love (or at least her burning desire to insert something in her genitals). I became aware of this and decided it was time for me to go the fuck home after a wasted night out. I suggested this to the Captain, and he agreed.

I left the room to hit the head before we departed into the early morning dawn. When I got back the Captain was looking decidedly uncomfortable and so we left. I was cordially invited to a shindig Leetha was throwing the next night which I promised to attend (sure).

Once we got outside, I asked the Captain what his problem was.


Cap: Dude, I think you’re right. I think she still digs me.


Al: Bravo. Nothing gets past you, does it? What changed your mind Sherlock?


Cap: When you left the room she started trying to grab my dick.


Ladies and gentlemen, I present proof positive that women are whores. (ed. Note: I know not all women are whores, but it’s hard to maintain a balanced perspective when so many of them are trying to grab the Captain’s dick).


A short cab ride later I collapsed for two hours on the Captain’s couch, only to get up and go for lunch with my ex-girlfriend. My life is silly sometimes.

The Stair Night

(Originally posted March 2006, the events of this story took place in early March of that year. This was the post that started it all. Enjoy.)

***

So for the last few weeks I've been finding myself tied up in some love-life drama (which I won't be writing funny stories about, you invasive bitches), and so I've been partaking in the same self-healing exercises I always do when depressed about women, school, changing climate, foreign policy or the utter futility of astrology: I drink myself into a fine mist.

That said, I've been gainfully unemployed since August (which is another potentially libelous story that I'll have to spend some time carefully crafting before posting) and as a result, my savings from six long years of self-deprivation have been completely drained out of the necessity of having a roof over my head and something to eat (even if it's only rice and beef broth for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a goddamn year).

So I really haven't got the money I need to be able to maintain the level of nicotine and gin in my bloodstream, at which I find myself most comfortable. This displeases me on some base instinctual level, and forces me to scrounge for other acceptable forms of debasing substances: Red Bull, double-strong Tim Horton's coffee, Tylenol 3, Star Trek marathons on the Spike channel, whatever gets me through the day. Of course, when it comes to my favourite men (read: Jim, Johnny, Jack, Morgan and Gordon), just like Diet Coke, you can't beat the real thing. Baby.

So what's a poor struggling student to do?

Enter The Captain.

Since I've known him, which is I suppose about three years now (give or take), The Captain and I have had a mutual understanding when it comes to the imbibement of happy juice. That is to say, we both come from a long genetic line of cultures with which alcohol is inextricably linked.

My father's family is German; my mother's is Irish - apart from the Scots, go find another nationality that can compete with the sort of enhanced constitution this mixed bloodline affords me. Of course, it also affords me a nasty temper and a judgmental streak (insert your own racially-charged jokes here; I'm proud of my hardcore heritage). While tempered by my inherent lack of muscle mass and streetfighting skills, these traits are supplemented by a university-level vocabulary and Socratic argumentation training garnered from my father, as well as a severe case of egotism that, when fueled by alcohol, utterly convinces me that I'm by far the smartest person in the room (read: everyone else is stupid and should be called out and shown up as such). All of this tends to land me in unpleasant verbal altercations which necessarily require my larger and more physically-fit friends to come and intervene on my behalf in order to avoid frequent trips to the hospital and/or a police station. Honestly, I don't even know why these people hang around with me.

The Captain comes from a line that is half-Spanish and half mainland European; while the Spanish aren't - to my knowledge - known for being serious drinkers, Ernest Hemingway did live on their beaches for several years, so one might assume they know a thing or two about taking care of drunks (a trait The Captain comes by honestly). Couple this with The Captain's inherent Spanish sense of charm and the Antonio Banderas-level game he brings to the clubs with him (though he is the whitest white boy ever to walk the planet), as well as a credit limit which is exponentially larger than mine has ever been (he's a top-level environmental engineer that runs a chic mall in Toronto's famous Yorkville neighbourhood), you've got the blueprints for a hard-drinking hookup machine. And that's what happens to The Captain each and every time he goes out. Though he's currently not single, and his keen moral compass is a finely-tuned machine which prevents him from misstepping into the realm of pseudo-adultery, he has the potential kinetic groove to bring home with him at least three willing ladies from any given club, on any given night, at any given level of intoxication you'd like to name.

Unless, of course, he goes out with me.

I have to make this admission if I'm going to try and live the so-called examined life: I am a piss-poor wingman.

Given my aforementioned drunken qualities garnered from my checkered cultural forefathers, I have the unique ability to cock-block anyone I happen to be hanging out with, standing with or to whom I am in close proximity. I become slurred, angry and abusive to everyone around me, which makes it extremely difficult for my long-suffering friends to keep the cloud of young attractive women they tend to retain, from dissipating utterly. As I said before, I also have no game, drunk or sober. After four-plus years in a committed relationship, any ability or confidence I had regarding picking up or even flirting with women at bars, clubs, social gatherings, grocery-store queue lines, late-night cigarette runs to the Rabba, classes, funerals, campus coffee houses, bookstores, bar mitzvahs, red-light districts, or chatting on the internet, is completely shot. Even worse than this is the fact that I'm bitter about it. Not because I particularly want to get laid or find a girlfriend or replace the one I ostensibly have now; it's got nothing to do with any of those things.

It's a principle, my friends.

There once was a time that I could walk into a room and people (I don't know the ratio of men to women, but for some reason it's often skewed one way or the other) would look my way. I could talk my way into a young lady's heart and, by association, anything else I wanted to talk my way into, within a half-hour or so, depending on the intoxication factor and other variables (boyfriends, jealous catty bitches in the room that I'd slept with prior, availability of reasonable privacy or transportation to a private location, et. al.).

Nowadays, only if I've had enough liquid courage in the moments leading up can I initiate a conversation with a woman, without the use of a trademark pick-up line or some other such desperation tactic. However, immediately following this landmark, one of several things will necessarily occur:

a) The woman will turn to face the speaker who's just addressed her, see that I more closely resemble her older sibling's creepy frat brother (the one who spends his time drinking beer, playing Half-Life and jerking off to nude pictures of Seven of Nine) than one of the emaciated, ecstasy-driven, EMO metrosexual Chris Carrabba wannabes she usually hooks up with, and she'll take a powder. This is Honest Girl - no bullshit, just a real clear message that even I can dig.

b) She will turn to face the speaker who's just addressed her, and it won't be me: in fact, she'll specifically turn and speak to whoever happens to be on the opposite barstool, and more, she'll do her damndest to turn that into the most engaging conversation she's had all night. Doesn't matter if the guy looks like John Turturro's character from The Big Lebowski; she'll be interested for as long as it takes me to go away. This is Dishonest Girl - apparently she thinks I'm stupid enough to believe that she actually wants to talk to Jesus the pedophile.

c) She will turn to face me, and an expression of abject pity will appear in her eyes. She'll of course quickly banish the look, for fear of offending me (even though she doesn't realize that my own eyes have been trained by years of this treatment to detect even a hint of the "you poor bastard" look). She will then proceed to take a predetermined amount of time (usually around 5-15 minutes depending on exactly how World Vision this girl wants to be) to talk to me engagingly, ask me questions about myself and my plans for the evening, the weather, a local sports team, and other vapid nonsense in an attempt to make me feel as though I'm not a complete social pariah and sexual outcast. Eventually she will beg off the conversation because her friends are leaving or whatever, thank me for a nice conversation, and vanish like the angel of mercy she is into the whirling chaos of the club. This is Really Nice Girl - of course, the road to my own personal hell is paved with the good intentions of these Mother Teresas of the club district.

d) She will talk to me as long as I continue to buy the Long Island Iced Teas she's been sucking down as fast as the bartender can bring them. When the money runs out, she goes to the bathroom and never comes back. This is Profiteering Drunken Whore. No explanation is really required.

After a few of these encounters, which invariably fall into the categories I've listed above, I tend to get really bitter and depressed. It's important to note here that I really don't like clubs to begin with.

Really. Don't. Like. Clubs.

I'd hazard to say that if I could get away with it I'd set fire to the entire Yonge-Richmond-Queen area and torch the whole mess of half-assed DJs playing absolutely shit music, overpriced drinks, pissy bartenders and vapid club-crawling ginos and punkers. I'd much sooner go and enjoy my drinking experience at a small pub with live music of some description (preferably acoustic or trip-hop acid jazz), a nice vibe and generally cool people who are there for the same reasons I am. Or better yet, stay home: buy a few bottles, invite over some of my more musically-inclined friends, get a pizza and jam for the night. Yeah, now that I could dig. So, apparently, could the Captain. Here's the story.



On the night in question (for those keeping track this would be the Saturday that just passed), The Captain called me up around 2 in the afternoon, asking whether I'd be inclined to spend the late evening downtown getting thoroughly shit-housed with some friends of his from Richtown, Scarborough (an offshoot of Toronto which is largely comprised of Ontario Housing projects with the exception of a few gated communities: The Captain's friends hail from one of these WASP strongholds). Having just consumed a bottle of Captain Morgan rum with a friend the night before and having garnered almost no sleep whatsoever, I was more than a little leery about going back downtown to do it all over again. Also, there was the aforementioned problem with funding, which The Captain assured me would be a non-issue as he was recently paid (I honestly don't know if this is generosity on his part, or else a strong desire to not recognize his own alcohol dependency by avoiding the "drinking alone" symptom). At any rate, I told him to call me later on (they weren't leaving till around 11 or so) and I would decide then. True to form, he called back around 5.

It seems that many of The Captain's compatriots had abandoned his great plan (which was to attend a club downtown called Lee's Palace; a venue I quite like for small live shows, but whose "Dance Cave" dance club upstairs I'd not ever attended) in favour of "pussing out" and staying at home for the evening. I therefore suggested that we chill out at my place and have a few (har har) drinks here, which is my aforementioned preference anyway. He concurred and set about heading over.

This is where the principle of overcompensation comes into play. The Captain would usually procure a bottle of some intoxicating substance on his way to my place, but my inference of having a few drinks led him to believe that I had somehow come upon a treasure trove of booze akin to the rum-running scene from Pirates of the Caribbean. Of course I hadn't, so we set off to the local LCBO to procure our stash for the night. Though I'm not usually a fan of sweet drinks (hence my preference for G&T) I've had a real taste for Captain Morgan dark rum recently, and so because The Captain isn't a fan of The Captain we compromised and bought a forty of Bacardi Amber. Just as we were approaching the cash, The Captain dashed back across the store and returned promptly with an additional 26er, pronouncing "Just in case" with a wink and a nod.

Upon returning to my apartment, it became known that The Captain had never watched the admittedly guilty pleasure of a film entitled "Euro Trip". I stress that this truly isn't my kind of movie for the most part - I wasn't a fan of the American Pie series, nor did I enjoy Scary Movie or any of the other lowest-common-denominator bawdy humour shit festivals in that category. But for whatever reason, I felt some sort of kinship with the characters in this particular film and was quite enamored of the title track "Scotty Doesn't Know", so once again I forced my opinion on a friend and made him watch the film. Whether it was the movie's innate comedic quality or the rum (which we finished over the course of the 90 minutes or so), The Captain laughed his metaphorical ass off the whole time, and by the time the end credits ran, we were really amped about the idea of going out to a club like we saw in the film. It's kind of the same feeling smokers get while watching a movie like The Boondock Saints or Casablanca, where every other scene makes you want to light up. With this in mind, we decided it would be a truly hype idea to go downtown to Lee's Palace anyway and the hell with the boys from Richtown.

I'd like to take a moment here and reflect on the sheer idiocy and lack of foresight which leads people to believe that decisions they arrive at while drunk are solid, positive plans of action. The last time we had a drunken idea that seemed to be really cool, I very nearly wound up with Star Trek command pips tattooed on my collarbone. Seriously. And yet, we've apparently not learned our lessons, so we're doomed to repeat mistakes again and again, ad nauseum, forever and ever, amen.

After a quick shower, we were off and running for the TTC. For my international readers, this stands for the Toronto Transit Commission, and it's widely regarded as one of the better transit systems in North America when it actually goddamn works. I happen to live about ten seconds from the nearest subway station, which facilitates my ability to implement these really poorly thought-out plans with little time to change my mind. While riding down towards the club, The Captain and I ran into one of his myriad attractive female friends, a young black lady whose name escapes me, but was a very cool traditional African name (at least as far as my White-North-American-wired brain can tell). Anyway, we shot the shit with her all the way down until we arrived at the club.

Now, once again, I should explicate to those who don't know Toronto (though I assume this is probably a rule the world over): bouncers and door-people aren't really supposed to let folks in who already appear intoxicated. It's a liability for them both in the legal sense and the I-might-puke-all-over-your-dance-floor sense, and really, given it was early in the night they had nothing to lose by turning us away. However, The Captain and I have mastered the ability which I like to call the "cool-calm". It's the kind of vibe you slip into when you have to deal with cops, irate bouncers, drunk assholes that want to fight you, raging boyfriends of girls you've hooked up with, and raging fathers of the same. It's the "I'm totally cool, I'm not ruffled and I'm definitely not drunk" vibe. It's the vibe that makes them suspect that you could easily walk the straight line while touching your nose and reciting the alphabet backwards, even if you absolutely could not if your life depended on it. It's the poker-face of drunk. And we've got it. All it takes is a certain amount of decorum and a great deal of restraint: when walking past the bouncers toward the lady that will take your money, you stay straight-faced, walk with purpose and give them the masculine "hey, what up" nod. Above all, keep your mouth closed because if you don't you smell like a brewery or a homeless person who can afford better than Lysol, and those bouncers are like goddamn bloodhounds when it comes to that. When you approach the ticket-lady, you smile warmly (still keeping those lips sealed), give her your money and allow your hand to be stamped. You nod to her as well, except with the smile it becomes a nod of gratitude and pleasant acknowledgement (as opposed to the manly politeness of the aforementioned bouncer-nod) and you make goddamn sure you don't trip on the steps up the stairs. Once you're within the bounds of the club, you're usually in the clear.

With this level of grace and confidence, The Captain and I passed the gauntlet at the front and immediately positioned ourselves in front of the bar. There was almost no one in the club at this point; truth be told we'd arrived early (about 10pm) and the place wouldn't really start jumping for another two hours or so. This gave us plenty of time to do what we'd come to do - drink our goddamn faces off.

The Captain ordered up four shots of Liquid Cocaine, a detestable and yet thoroughly delicious substance that combines equal parts Jagermeister and Goldschlager in 2 oz. shot glasses. We downed these in rapid succession, at which point he brought four domestics to the table and we began double-fisting shitty Canadian beer like men possessed. Given my ambient level of depression which had been overriding for several weeks at this point, I was hell-bent and determined to quench my rising ire and caustic impulses with copious alcohol (which, as many people are aware, is very akin to putting out a grease fire with PAM cooking spray). As more and more people began to arrive, The Captain turned on the Banderas-game and went to work.

It turned out that some of the Richtown crew had decided to come out anyway, as there's little to do in the barbed-wire compound they call a community. I was reunited with The Captain's old friends The Twins, an identical pair of EMO youth that had the same haircut as that ludicrous wannabe from The Ataris (you know, the one that makes you look like a prematurely balding white man with bleached-blonde hair); haircuts and total lack of fashion sense notwithstanding, they're okay guys. I was also reintroduced to a woman we call The Screamer (figure it out) whom I'd verbally owned at a previous party in Richtown; needless to say, she was less than pleased to see me again. The only one I'd not met initially was a man I called Cowboy, due to the headgear he was wearing that looked like it had been purchased at Billy Ray Cyrus' yardsale. Don't get me wrong; I've got nothing against cowboys, but there was something about this guy's vibe that screamed "schtick". I convinced him to come up to the DJ booth with me and request some Big and Rich; needless to say, the DJ looked at me like I'd just requested Total Eclipse of the Heart and ignored me completely. Oh well, she looked like quite the k.d. lang fan with her shaved head and unshaved upper lip, and if she can't dig a righteous vibe like John and Kenny, fuck her anyway.

So there I was, sitting in a booth off to the side of the dance floor, watching Hurricane Hormone wreak its vengeance on the denizens of this little Gommorah, and the first reasonably clear thought I had since the whole night had started was "what the fuck am I doing here?". As I said before, I loathe clubs. As I looked around I remembered precisely why: everywhere the eye could travel I saw poser after poser dancing with impressionable female after impressionable female, and I couldn't help but think that, if this was a house party and I had a bottle of gin and a guitar, these girls would be on my vibe like flies to shit. It was frustrating to acknowledge that I wasn't going to attract women just by being there, but as my roommate / close friend Ariel has told me on more than one occasion, "Unless you've got a valid credit card, women are not going to come knocking at your door looking for romantic liaisons". So I figured I'd just drink until I felt ready to try my luck at dancing.

A note on dancing: I am the epitome of white-boy dancers. After a lifetime of being a musician, I have absolutely no desire to partake in that outdated ritualistic mating process; I'd much rather be elevated on a stage, making the music so others could pursue random copulation. That, and I couldn't do the goddamn Macarena convincingly. The closest to dancing I ever got was when I was younger and used to attend raves, but really I don't know how much of my ostensible ability to rave came from a legitimate grasp of the music and the style with which ravers move themselves, and how much came from really excessive drug use. Either way, no one at those functions cared. Clubs are different.

I don't get where the genetic imperative comes from. Both my mother and sister have admittedly excellent rhythm and they're quite good dancers (keep your Oedipal jokes to yourselves you fucks), but both my father and I have no interest and thus, no rhythmic ability to move our bodies in tandem with music. I think this is a fairly common line between the sexes: women like to dance and such are good at it (with notable exceptions) and men don't like to dance and as such they suck (with notable exceptions - my gay friends kick ass on the dance floor). So my response to dancing is the same as my response to everything: if I drink more, I'll either get good at it, or just be intoxicated not to give a fuck that I look like a lame duck with a six-inch dildo buried in its rectal cavity.

So I sat in that corner booth, double-fisting Labatt Blue or some other rotten hops beverage (I absolutely refuse to drink Molson Canadian even though it's my country's "signature" beer; I'd rather be force-fed horse urine Terri Schiavo-style) and trying not to think about the fact that I'd have to go back to my place alone, even though The Captain (who was currently dancing in the center of a circle of more-than-marginally attractive women), were he to take advantage of his potential, could be bringing home a full harem of willing bar broads to do his every bidding. The more I drank, the more convinced I became that were I just to get up and try already, I might be able to get back some of that magic that I once owned and wielded prettier than a 10th level Elven cleric.

Then I asked myself whether that analogy could really be considered advantageous thinking at this point in the night. Fuck all of you, D&D kicked ass back in the day.

While these and other dark thoughts permeated my skull, I continued to sit and pound back the beers that The Captain had so charitably provided. Suddenly and without any warning whatsoever, I felt myself lifted from my seat by a meaty paw on the scruff of my black dress-shirt. I turned to curse at whoever was obviously trying to pick a fight with me, and I came face-to-face with a veritable ocean of black-shirted pec with the white-fonted words "SECURITY" emblazoned across the barrel-like chest. I looked up at my assailant and was greeted by the stone face of the absolutely enormous black bouncer I'd passed with the "what up" nod on the way in. Seriously, this guy made Michael Clarke Duncan look like Christian Bale after a three-week cocaine binge. I might as well have tried punching my way through one of those steel green electrical boxes you find near public schools nation-wide. I decided at that moment, even through my drunken haze, that resistance in this case was completely futile and that I better not make any sudden moves, or Golgotha here might just decide to eject me through one of the club walls and down two stories to the unforgiving concrete of Bloor Street. That, or he'd want to make me his "little puppy". Either eventuality was not terribly attractive to me.

"You gotta leave, man." Jesus H. jumped-up Christ in a sidecar, the guy sounded like James Earl Jones with a tracheotomy tube. I still had no idea what I'd done, but before I could even voice my objection, Big Brotha had hoisted me clear of the booth and was directing me much like a snowplow blade through the crowd of eager patrons. More than one Smirnoff Ice bottle bounced off my cheekbones and forehead before we cleared the crowd and headed for the stairs, which didn't improve my mood, though there was little I could do about it at the time. In the midst of this forced march I tried desperately to plead my case with Big Brotha, asking what I had done to warrant being kicked out and please, sir, couldn't I have just a little more beer before I went? No such luck.

However, the luck did kick in when The Captain noticed my imposed extraction and removed himself from his fan club to follow myself and Big Brotha to the entrance. I told him that for some unknown reason I was being kicked out of the club and also said that he was welcome to stay, given the sort of attention he was being afforded on the dance floor. He declined like the hardcore gentleman that he is and escorted me past the cute door lady and onto the street. Once outside, I promptly lit a cigarette (which are no longer allowed inside clubs in the Toronto district due to provincial legislation) and took stock of the situation. We both agreed that there was no reason for my expulsion and we should definitely scream Fuck You at the doors and sealed windows of Lee's Palace and never return again. With that, we progressed off into the night.

One of the most common symptoms of drunkenness is an irrational desire to find and consume the most vile and objectionable foodstuffs available. Under normal circumstances my preferences are Taco Bell (yes, I can't help but love that Grade F cat-meat) and Burger King, where I am encouraged to Have It [My] Way. Unfortunately, in the area we were walking neither option presented itself; in fact, the only option that we came upon was purchasing a piece of cardboard with fake cheese and plastic toppings from the Pizza Pizza chain. I seriously doubt this travesty of a pizza conglomerate is limited only to Canada, but for the sake of the rest of the world, I sincerely hope it is. These people are famous for providing pizza to elementary school Pizza Lunches across the nation, which suggests to the average consumer that they are indeed the Lowest Common Denominator of pizza restaurants, as they're willing to give away their product to a bunch of pimply-faced pre-teens who will eat really anything, no matter the nutritional or flavour value. At any rate, this was our only option on this fateful night, so we each purchased a slice of mediocrity and promptly doused them in an entire bottle of hot sauce in order to kill the taste of boredom that we otherwise would have had to choke down along with the pedestrian "hot" Italian sausage and "extreme" three-cheese blend. The only thing "extreme" about this pizza, to reference Maddox, is the "extreme" shit you have to take later on - but this sort of logic really doesn't apply when you've had a grand total of 20 oz. of rum, 5 oz. of cinnamon liqueur and 10 bottles of domestic beer a piece. After our less-than-satisfying trip to the Pizza Place That Fun Forgot, we headed for the subway station.

At that point we were both certifiably intoxicated: read, we likely could not walk the aforementioned straight line while reciting the alphabet backwards, so we were somewhat confused when we arrived at Spadina Station, also known as the "other" northbound station (also, three stops too early). So we got off.

This was a fundamentally bad plan.

Spadina Station is divided into two floors: the top floor contains the East-West line on which we had originally been traveling, and the lower floor contains the North-South line on which we had decided we were going to travel. The upper and lower floors are connected by a series of stairs, or for those of us with laziness problems, there are also escalators.

Now, several things at this point must be understood.

First, when Al gets drunk, the first thing to go is his gross motor skills - for the uninitiated, this means the ability to run, jump, or even walk with any degree of precision or accuracy. I can sit and play guitar all night with forty ounces of booze in my stomach, but ask me to get up and walk somewhere, and I'll likely decline out of a combination of laziness and sheer inability.

Second, Al wears contact lenses when going out. Contact lenses are a wonderful invention, allowing people who were heretofore unable to see past the end of their noses without the use of glasses, new freedom - the ability to play sports (har har), swim and see at the same time, and also look a great deal cooler than they do wearing glasses, when the glasses they bought four years ago have since been co-opted by the EMO movement and as a result have been taken under the same stereotypes which affect that particular subculture. I'd like it understood that I'm not an EMO kid - I really don't dig on Taking Back Tuesday or whatever, and I really really think that someone should fucking crucify the fucking Cure guy so at least he has something to complain about. Unfortunately I liked the idea of black, square-frame glasses several years in advance of their ruination, and because I haven't the cash to purchase new glasses simply to avoid being associated with a bunch of asshats, I've no choice but to continue looking like a poor Rivers Cuomo imitation. Anyway, contacts.

For those of you who wear contact lenses, you know that the more tired (or more drunk) you get, the more difficult it is to see out of the selfsame lenses. The reason for this is because fatigue and moisture lost due to alcohol consumption tends to dry out the eyes first, and without the natural tear-moisture provided by blinking, the porous plastic of the contact lenses starts to dry out, turning the world into a series of blurry light sources and (if you're drunk) disembodied voices telling you to beer-bong more tequila. This bizarre limbo is where I found myself while traversing the two floors of Spadina Station.

The TTC subways stop operating after a certain point in the evening; usually this is in and around 1:30AM, and given I never wear a watch I was unsure as to the time when we arrived at the crossroads. I remember being extremely concerned that we would miss the train, notwithstanding the fact that The Captain still had enough cash left to get us home via a taxi were the necessity to arise. As a result I was in an extreme hurry to get to the lower platform in order that we would not miss the northbound train.

I spied, through my drunk and dehydration-fogged contact lenses, an escalator that appeared to lead to the lower platform, and so I ran for it with all the grace of a crippled ostrich with a seven inch dildo buried in its rectum. I would be extremely happy to say I noticed too late that the escalator was one which actually ascended from the lower level to the upper, but the truth is that I did not. I ran headlong into an escalator which was coming the wrong way and yet I had it in my mind to try and get down anyway.

I succeeded, rather spectacularly.

When I regained consciousness, it was to The Captain and some random drunken frat-boy he'd conscripted to help me up, yanking on my arms with considerable force until I balanced under my own power on my own two feet. I vaguely remember the statements "Are you okay?" and "Does he need an ambulance" thrown about, to which I replied in what The Captain informed me later was a completely rational and composed voice, "No, ma'am, I'm perfectly fine to get home on my own without the assistance of an ambulance; but thank you very much for your concern." This The Captain found unerringly hysterical upon reflection, because of what had just occurred and the following state in which I found myself.

As it happens, I had attempted with some success to walk down a set of moving stairs that had been in fact coming towards me the entire time. This made my movements vaguely resemble some absurdist BodyBreak Stairmaster commercial for approximately five seconds before I inevitably lost my footing. According to The Captain, he saw me keel forward like a domino that had been nudged in the direction of its fellow slabs, only to disappear out of his sight. What followed would have been the most frightening and nauseating experience of my life, could I remember it.

Evidently, my entire body flew forward like Keanu Reeves going off the building in the Matrix, but this time there sure as shit was a fucking spoon. The front of my head collided with the divots in the escalator's metal stairs, and it didn't stop there. In essence, I went headlong down the escalator like some demented luge racer, using my forehead as a brake the entire way. I finally came to rest at the bottom of the escalator, whose emergency stop button The Captain had yet to press, and so in some bizarre twist of fate, the escalator performed its duty and brought my prostrate body back up to the top of the stairwell.

Imagine my confusion when, drunk and punch-addled from my race to the bottom, I found myself back at the apex of my colossal fall, wondering with the innocence found only in drunkards and accident victims: what the hell just happened?

At this point, The Captain hit the emergency stop and the escalator ceased its desperate attempt to eat my pants as I brought myself to a shaky kneeling position at the top of the decline. In his own admission, The Captain had feared the worst: he figured I'd goddamn killed myself falling down a flight of metal serrated stairs with that sort of speed, but upon seeing me in a semi-kneeling position, his hope to avoid police involvement was reignited. Unfortunately, I bore an uncanny resemblance to a drunk and fat version of Our Lord, dressed all in black and bleeding profusely from wounds in my forehead and like a running tap from my nose. Yes sir, I was indeed the K-Mart Jesus.

Unable to right myself under my own power, either due to alcohol or the severity of the blow to my head, The Captain recruited the aforementioned drunk frat-boy to help lift me up into a standing position, which is when the terrified TTC janitor came running at full tilt to see if we required an ambulance. In our still-intoxicated state we insisted that all we required was some paper towel and directions to the subway platform. At this point I had smeared my life's blood all over no less than three of the escalator stairs as well as on the wall beside and part of the handrail. More's the pity; according to The Captain, the poor janitor had just finished cleaning the selfsame escalator prior to my stupendous leap of faith.

In an act of unadulterated brilliance, we elected to return to The Captain's apartment, which resided on the northernmost-west side of the giant "U" which makes up the Yonge-University subway line (again, look at the map if you really care), instead of returning to my apartment where I live with my EMERGENCY ROOM TRAUMA NURSE ROOMMATE who might have looked at my injuries in greater detail. Nope, no such luck for us. Instead, we returned to The Captain's place where he called his brother no less than three times, requesting that any and all First Aid supplies they had in the house be ready and waiting when we arrived. The entire subway ride back, The Captain was more than a little amused to note that every time I took the paper-towel away from my head, I exclaimed with renewed surprise:

Al: Am I bleeding?!

Cap: Yes, you stupid bastard, you're bleeding like a damn sieve. Keep the fuckin' paper towel on your fool head.

Al: Wow. What happened?

Cap: *sigh*. You fell down a goddamned escalator. Don't you

remember?

Al: No man...(removing paper towel again)...wow, am I bleeding?

Needless to say, this got a bit repetitive for the old Captain, so he eventually ignored me, much to the chagrin of the other five people on the subway car with us, who were unadulteratedly staring at me with an expression of amusement mixed with abject horror. I must have looked like I just walked out of an MXC competition with my face all cut up and blood seeping through my clothes in random places. Evidently I was quite lucid; I was reassuring everyone on the train that I was "perfectly fuckin' fine" and that I was extremely desirous of Burger King (which I knew was right around the corner from The Captain's place) the moment we exited the train. The Captain's response was to tell me that yes, we would indeed get Burger King, but first he would take me home and treat my wounds, and then he would venture out to bring me an Uber Whopper or whatever it was I wanted. Like hell he would.

We finally returned to The Captain's abode where he slathered me with Polysporin and haphazardly slapped bandages on my face before we both mutually collapsed under the excesses to which we'd subjected ourselves over the course of the night. Amazingly enough, it was the best sleep I'd gotten for almost three weeks.

The following morning was a bizarre experience; The Captain was still prostrate in his bed when the unbearable thirst I felt in my throat and cotton-mouth drove me to rise from the couch and to the sink, where I consumed probably four gallons of shitty Toronto tap water before I could even stop myself. I was unsure as to whether I had dreamed the events of the night before or whether they'd actually happened; a trip to the bathroom and a look in the mirror solidified the horrifying and yet endlessly amusing reality of the situation. My face looked as though I'd been struck repeatedly with the ass-end of a hammer, as did my chest and legs. My left kneecap was swollen out to the point that it looked as though that joint was about to give birth. I'd also done significant damage to my thumb; my initial prognosis was that I'd broken it or at least fractured it in my swan dive, but more recent improvements have suggested merely a sprain. All in all and combined with the significant amount of liquor I consumed, I bore a striking resemblance to some kind of white-trash Bruce Campbell clone a la Army of Darkness. Every movement I made was like dipping my limbs in acid, and I spent two consecutive days walking like Hopalong Cassidy. And yet, I had survived. All told, I got off light: the following evening I went to sleep early, and was plagued with nightmares of what might have been: a blow to the neck might have rendered me Christopher Reeve the second, or a slight miscalculation in the impact point might have turned me into the Toothless Wonder. All manner of ill might have befallen me had I not fallen in just the right way to avoid permanent damage: my roommate told me that the fact I was drunk probably aided in this as I was loose and bendy when I struck the cold, hard steel. Of course, it's the great Catch-22 of drunken escapades - had I not been drunk to begin with I likely would not have attempted to body-surf my way down the wrong escalator. Brilliance, thy name is Al.

The sound of water falling into the sink evidently awoke The Captain from his slumber, and he came out to join me in the living room. We both sat quietly for several minutes, before The Captain finally broke the silence with the words:

Cap: I can't believe that fuckin' happened.

Al: Neither can I, Captain. Neither can I.

Cap: Are we getting old, or are we just really excessive?

Al: At this point, I'd say we've crossed a line from borderline alcoholism into true debauchery. Let us never speak of this night again.

Cap: Are you goddamn kidding? I'm going to tell everyone I know about this! Fuck, man, it's not even Spring yet, and we've already got completely ridiculous wild-ass drunken stories! Isn't this great?

At the time, I couldn't have disagreed with him less. But I'll be damned if I tell anybody that. More to come...welcome to the Freak Parade.