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I used to gamble with my life as if I were playing a video game. When things fucked up, I liked to think that I could revert to an old save, do things differently, and eventually turn into an impatient moron again, so I could repeat the process.
Life, as it would seem, is a very strange game, written by some very strange programmers. No saves? Time only moves forward? No creepy, super cool effect that slows it down so I can make decisions without a hint of sweat? These coders had a sense of humor. Time seems to fly faster when you could use more time to think. It passes so quickly when things start to go awry, and then, when I’m safe, and relaxed, it just drags until you search for trouble. It’s a thrill, and I’m a total advocate. Life is definitely stranger than fiction. I can’t experiment recklessly with my life without facing the music, I can’t push an arcane combination of keys to become a God. Luck breeds those.
No second chances here, and I know you know that. I also know better. I know that in the heat of the moment, you will forget it. You won’t learn from your mistakes, and you will do something you can’t take back. Something that hurts, but thickens your skin. You'll even thicken someone else's skin along the way.
And then you will the rue the day you were born. I think it’s better to just rue the day you turned cavalier. You start to diverge from the person you wanted to become, to the incorrigible person you are starting to become. The worst part is that you can only accept it in wide-eyed horror, and make some dimwitted quips along the way. Cynics make it a long way in the business of life. Cynical optimists, as it would seem, have the best of it all. And for me, hell, it couldn’t get any better. Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a schizophrenic.
And so is the unlucky person inside me who gets to suffer when I need escape. My eyes glaze over, smother the voices, and I turn to autopilot, factoring in the quickest way out of my mess. I sit on my toilet, smoking cigarettes, guitar in my hand, a philosophy book on the table, my mind on my latest quandary. That bathroom has been a better friend than many I have known. I fixed my heart hugging the commode, I left my old life behind on that pot, pondered my financial situation whilst inebriated, and I murdered the kid inside me on that seat. It listens, it feels, and eventually, tires of my presence and nurses me back to health for some momentary respite. And even so, Robi replaces the idiot again. Just like a saved game, just that time doesn't stop, and I don't learn my lesson with gambling. Fire doesn't scare me anymore. It's like being passed out for a few weeks or months, and then waking up to picture perfect clarity, a few scars and a throbbing headache. Simply peachy.
Why don’t they introduce that into a video game? I walked into the bathroom, stoned like Gibraltar (or Mary Magdalene) and saw what I can only describe as a brown demon peering at me from inside the toilet. It was a definite spooker if you ask me, but I'd seen demons before, if you know what I mean. The solution was two-fold. First, not finding George C. Scott or a suitable exorcist nearby, I did the next best thing and flushed the john; second, I took the piss I walked into the bathroom for and flushed the john again.
My father would have said, "Son, you have to clean up."
He wasn't talking about Lysol, or restocking the toilet paper. His solution is worded like, "Convert to Christianity and flush your friend's herbal pot down the porcelain one." This would result -- as train of thought dictates -- in my first experience of being persecuted for the faith.
Holy writ is riddled with condemnation for intoxication of any kind. Harsh words against getting sloshed are so plentiful and obvious that even a one-eyed inebriant should be able to spot a few references on a drunken thumb-through. Prohibitive and condemnatory statements against elbow tipping and booze bibbing are just as severe as they are plentiful. Those that don't bugger your gray matter usually run afoul of the point: sobriety. I've hit so many tokes, eaten so many blotters, that I'm slowly losing the person I was before the fall. Do I remember what it was like to be undeniably clear-headed? I can't tell the difference anymore. It often feels like I make better decisions while the world spins around me.
Drugs do funny things to your mind -- why else do you think folks drop acid, snort lines and tap veins? It sure isn't to feel normal. If so, it's an extremely expensive way to feel as lame as you did five minutes before toking that bong. The whole point of drugs is that they tweak your perceptions -- effectively, and with more reliability than just depriving yourself of sleep and water.
Drugs can make you feel euphoric (Pot), jazzed (Amphetamines), invincible (PCP), mellow (Heroin) or like Aristotle (LSD). To restate the obvious, much like Dumbo's visions of dancing pink elephants, drugs make you hallucinate. Someone I know who suffers the odd LSD trip sees walls bend around her. Another girl I know, doped on morphine, saw large ants the size of 1950s B-movie horror flick monsters marching around her room, all while sitting like a a blob of jelly on her couch. Last week, I saw one of my best friends act like he was The Thing, while attempting to dance around the room (like The Thing) to a fairly eclectic play list of Infected Mushroom and the String Cheese Incident.
You get the drift.
God doesn't give a hoot how a person gets tweaked -- be it crank, beer, wine, paint thinner, bourbon, crack, ganja or glue. He doesn't care if a person is just nursing a gentle buzz or getting flat-out fit-shaced. If two tokes of that bong put you past sobriety (nepho from my English-to-Greek dictionary!), that is one toke over the line. It's too bad for God, then, that drugs also make you not give a flying shit. Or a floating one (like my toilet demon-turd).
Seven-forty a weekday morn,
purple pot in blow-glass bong,
cheap vodka, peach-apple schnapps,
lime water; mix well and watch closely;
things often forget to collapse,
as the world brightens quietly.
God, it feels good to be an alcoholic heathen. |
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