I Drunk
(Dec 27/05)
I drink whatever comes down the pike, gin, vodka, gimlets, lime cordial in stouts and lagers and bottom-self Sherries and Ports, the two seemingly indistinguishable except for the colour. A cheap Sherry is generally a pale, russet red, a Port, a tinge lighter and less russet, yet in consistency, identical to Sherry and other vintner’s low-end putrefaction. I drink at sun up, midday, and sunset. I drink when I’m happy, sad, or simply disaffected with my life and those other’s who seem identical to mine, yet differ in colour, taste and consistency. I once thought I had cholera, but it was a simple cramping in my side, under the fourth and fifth rid where my gallbladder sits. There are stones in there, so I’ve been told, and in my right kidney, urethra and piss-bladder. I have had three surgical procedures, one called keyhole surgery, and three lithotripsies to pound the stones into smithereens. The stone fragments are then pissed into a sieve, which you then have to poke around in with a Popsicle stick gathering up what you have pissed out. These odds and ends are then brought to the chemist, whose job it is to determine what exactly the stones are made of; they’re consistency and geological stratum. I figure they’re made up of putrefied grape skins and tannins, perhaps some lime cordial and stout ales.
I drink whatever comes down the pike, gin, vodka, gimlets, lime cordial in stouts and lagers and bottom-self Sherries and Ports, the two seemingly indistinguishable except for the colour. A cheap Sherry is generally a pale, russet red, a Port, a tinge lighter and less russet, yet in consistency, identical to Sherry and other vintner’s low-end putrefaction. I drink at sun up, midday, and sunset. I drink when I’m happy, sad, or simply disaffected with my life and those other’s who seem identical to mine, yet differ in colour, taste and consistency. I once thought I had cholera, but it was a simple cramping in my side, under the fourth and fifth rid where my gallbladder sits. There are stones in there, so I’ve been told, and in my right kidney, urethra and piss-bladder. I have had three surgical procedures, one called keyhole surgery, and three lithotripsies to pound the stones into smithereens. The stone fragments are then pissed into a sieve, which you then have to poke around in with a Popsicle stick gathering up what you have pissed out. These odds and ends are then brought to the chemist, whose job it is to determine what exactly the stones are made of; they’re consistency and geological stratum. I figure they’re made up of putrefied grape skins and tannins, perhaps some lime cordial and stout ales.
When I have money, which I seldom do, I treat myself to imported beers and a bottle of Teachers or Old Grouse. I seldom use a glass, as I find it slows down the imbibing process, and requires an eye-hand coordination that mystifies me once I’ve started the drinking process. I have always dreamt of going to Mexico, where I could drink myself into a coma on Tic-Tac and real Mexican Mescal, the kind with the worm dead at the bottom of the bottle. They say that the worm is so saturated with mescal, the drug, not the liquor, that once eaten it can cause such horrid hallucinations that many people chew their own fingers off or eat dirt thinking it’s a tamale or some Mexican delicacy. Geoffrey, the consul general in Lowrey’s Under the Volcano, eats mescal worms like their going out of style, catching them between his front teeth, then biting them in half, thereby making the digestive process that much quicker. I once ate a worm when I was a kid, on a dare from this guy named Pete Peters who had a cleft palate and pyorrhea. It tasted like dirt and slim, if slime has a taste of its own to begin with, which I very much doubt it does. I have drank in the backseat of moving cars, in airplanes cruising at high altitudes, in chugging trains with bar cars and train stewards, and in closets, boot rooms and under a child’s play structure during a torrential late summer rainstorm somewhere in a city I now forget where.
I have vomited with such force of nature, that the corrugated soft tissues in my throat landed in a placental bobble in the bathroom sink, which I was leaning against while straddling the toilet trying to urinate at the same time as I was throwing up. I have split the skin on the bridge of my nose, and burst blood vessels in the whites and sclera of my eyes. I once almost detached a retina, but was lucky enough to have eye drops and surgical gauze handy at the time. Sometimes I would get such horrible cramps in my side and in the knotted muscles in my thighs and calves, that I would have to stand for at least half an hour in a scalding hot shower to assuage the pain and torment.
I would fish throw friend’s pockets when they weren’t looking, looking for spare change or a five-dollar bill that had gone forgotten. I would sell whatever I had, even things I needed, like bus tickets and food stamps, to scrounge enough for a King Can or a twenty-sixer of Sherry or Port, the two being virtually interchangeable and screw topped with a plastic sleeve around the neck. I would have drunken cat’s urine, had I thought it had alcohol in it and would go down quickly and with minimal burning. I don’t drink any longer, but still have vivid memories, sometimes flashbacks, that leave me with a sick, ruinous taste at the back of my throat.
No comments:
Post a Comment