Good Old Times

to the alcoholics,

There are two signs you need to look out for if you want to know if I've reached my 'buzz point': 1) I start getting real philosophical and honest to the point of political incorrectness, and 2) I start using the F-word as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, and even conjunction, preposition, and interjection. It's really quite extraordinary as I try to use correct grammar as I modify all the different forms of the F-word. In high school, my peers used to ask me calculus questions after I polished off a fifth of a fifth of Patron, and yes, I could still do calculus after all that. Now that I forgot all that calculus nonsense (which is good for nothing except telling people who know or care that you 5'd the Calculus BC AP along with 7 other tests), all I can do is tell you random stuff that doesn't really matter all that much but makes you think that I kind of know a little something about something.

But since I'm still slightly inebriated, I'll be a bit honest with you: Truth is I don't really know all that much about stuff that really matters (in my opinion). And it scares me. It is a wholly unsettling feeling that I'm not the badass I pretend to be at the important sh--.

At the 'buzz point', the next alcoholic beverage will send me straight to the porcelain god or passed out with a future trip to the aforementioned god (which likely has more followers than the traditional Dude whom* people praise). I feel completely honest with myself which is sad considering it takes a foreign substance to make me face up to my most protected thoughts. It is a precariously golden moment of [false?] enlightenment.

I tell people the honest truth about how my latest job got cut, and how I kinda expected it to happen and how I kinda wished it would happen.

I tell people that my job made me feel dishonest while I smiled and told customers I wished they'd come back when I secretly deplored them for ever gracing my sight.

I tell them that I have done absolutely nothing in the past 2 weeks and how it feels absolutely amazing to not have to work, disregarding the fact that they have to cram for finals in the next couple of weeks.

I abhor and then console myself for assuming the professional pharmacist role while giving a mini-speech to pharmacy students: I mustn't tell the kids that Santa Claus and the Easter bunny aren't real--they will find out for themselves soon enough if they don't suspect already.

Because who the f-- cares! I've paid my dues in time and money and mental health. It is the time for rebirth into the new me or the old me or the better me (or worse me).
--

Sometimes I think of myself as a broken man with no purposeful intention except the innate desire toward self-preservation through food, shelter, water, and sex. And is that all life amounts to for a young adult male? Food, shelter, water, and sex, and not necessarily in that order?

It is abysmal sometimes when I go out and get to that wasted, veritable state where I look at other guys and think that if they could get with that one girl they were staring at the whole night that their life would be magically cured, that somehow the other flawed human being would make them perfect. But sadly it likely isn't true. Two wrongs don't make a right, and two imperfect persons do not make a perfect one.
--

'I had a good time tonight.'

'Yea, it was kinda like old times a couple of years back when we were in school, when I was driving you around from place to place.'

'Yea, kinda like the good old times, bro..'

With that, my friend exited the car at the University parking lot. I checked the door locks manually to make sure it was secure (can't be too careful in the ghetto), made a semicircle out of the parking lot and onto the road to the freeway..

Cruising down Gulf Freeway, I activated the cruise control at 60 mph to take the speed variance out of the equation for the Friday night copper. But the folks in the right lane were moving at an even slower pace, so I disabled the crutch and took over completely.

And I started to think about my life and how it isn't really all that bad in perspective and how I can really start digging the person I am or will be. So after all the years in between high school and now, I've arrived at the same point where I've started, just a little different, hopefully a little more grown and a little less green. And you know what? That's okay..

With that, I cranked up the pathetic speakers in my ride and faded into suspended consciousness while navigating the miles of concrete, passing the familiar food dives and sleazy strip joints, past one of the adult video stores where that priest got caught for 'public lewdness' for touching himself, to mi casa in the suburbia boonies..
--

Don't live life on autodrive; don't live life like your choices don't matter. Because

'lately I, am beginning to find that I,
should be the one behind the wheel.'

..and when you feel inspirational (through natural or chemical means), write it down, because you'll forget it the next day when you're looking at the receipts and wondering how the f-- you spent so much the night before..

..but I suppose you got to pay tuition for those life lessons..

--
*yes, that is the correct use of the word 'whom', so I think..