September 13, 1997, Saturday

It's days like today, vacations from my usual Saturday hangovers, that help me realize the fact that alcohol is just a poison.

S


trangely, for a Saturday, I feel both healthy and lucky. Let me address the boring part, the healthy feeling, first.

I only drank two beers last night and then had 12 hours of sleep, after having been awake only four hours. All that sleep gave my body time to heal from the myriad injuries to which I and others have subjected it. My thumb is still sprained from a week ago, but it's gradually improving. I can play guitar again, though it hurts to do so. Today, best of all, is the lack of a hangover. For all the fun of getting drunk, the payback the next day is hardly worth it. It's days like today, vacations from my usual Saturday hangovers, that help me realize the fact that alcohol is just a poison.

But he was too badly injured. His arm was cut and he was bleeding.

And worse than that, it can be a meat grinder and a ticket to judicial hell. This is the part where I discuss being lucky. You see, when I was preparing to head off to work this morning, Leah suddenly appeared. She was still dressed in the clothes she'd been wearing when she'd departed with Rory for Blue Hole last night. "Did you hear about what happened last night?" she asked ominously.

"Rory totalled his car?" I guessed.




I was right. Not only that, he'd hit another car, and then attempted to drive away from the scene. But his car was too screwed up to continue for very far. So he tried to make his get away on foot. But he was too badly injured. His arm was cut and he was bleeding. So he tried to hide. The cops caught him though. He's in jail now, charged with felony hit and run and driving under the influence. To get out he must raise a $4000 bail. Leah and that guy Ocean from the C&O had both spent the night in jail as well, for being drunk in public. To be drunk in a car is evidently defined as drunk in public in this state. I could well have gone with those folks last night. No doubt if I had, I too would have spent the night in jail. My sixth sense saved my ass yet again. Remember the carnage on Carter's Mountain? Rory, a British subject, may well be deported. Out society holds him in contempt. The whole lurid story was on the local teevee news this morning, complete with Rory's full name.

He's in jail now, charged with felony hit and run and driving under the influence. To get out he must raise a $4000 bail.

Still, it's hard to feel sorry for him when he consistently refuses to learn from his mistakes. He anticipated this car accident on his website, for Christ's sake.

---

The cops no doubt had written off Leah as "the girl" who, much like a dog, could not be held responsible for much.

B


ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, the place I call home, I chatted some with Leah about the accident and what not. It seems that the guy Ocean wasn't charged for being drunk in public after all. Instead, the cops took him aside and interrogated him about the others and then charged him with a much more serious crime: aiding and abetting a hit and run. Neither Leah nor I could think of an explanation for this charge or why the cops hadn't also charged Leah. I figured a sort of dehumanizing sexism must be at work. The cops no doubt had written off Leah as "the girl" who, much like a dog, could not be held responsible for much.

The ear-to-ear wrap-around bangs on the two girls horrify me.

As for Rory, languishing away at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, his housemate Tyler visited him today, but that's all the visitors he can see for the week. The plan now is to raise bail money from Rory's parents overseas in Leeds, England.

Leah went off to be a waitress at the Main Street restaurant called Southern Culture, and I stayed home and watched teevee, mostly The ABBA Movie on VH1. I remember back when I was a kid in the 70s, I rather preferred ABBA to most stuff on the radio. I think I liked the fact that it didn't sound much like the rock and roll and disco that was then popular. I also like Blondie, perhaps for similar reasons. What's odd in both of these cases is that at the time I also had a peculiar dislike for female vocalists. This dislike persisted in some form up until only three or four years ago. Perhaps I should say what I think of ABBA now, seeing them in a historically fictionalized pseudo-documentary. I like the music still, if only for reasons of nostalgia, but maybe there's more here than that. Their voices remind me of Deya's mother, a Swedish ex-patriate. But the look, the look, oh my god. They look so horrible! Those flowing proto-glam white clothes so popular at the time, they're so ridiculous. And the haircuts! The ear-to-ear wrap-around bangs on the two girls horrify me. I'm sure they were the ancestor of the mullet of the 80s. Last of all, ABBA's stage presence could be characterized as nothing short of dorky.

Monster Boy dressed up in a little old lady dress in anticipation of a date with gothic Amy while I gradually became sleepy, eventually taking a brief nap on the couch.

It makes refreshing use of things like irony, bathroom humour and satire.

T


hen Tyler called from the Haunted House. I suppose he wanted to talk to Leah about the Rory situation, but of course she was gone. So he ended up confirming what Leah had told me earlier, that there was a little party happening at his place tonight for the staff and friends of UVA's Yellow Journal.

The Yellow Journal is a relatively frisky and occasionally controversial little on-campus publication. It makes refreshing use of things like irony, bathroom humour and satire. It rather reminds me of Oberlin's Below the Belt.

Had Rory been some stranger and drunkenly slammed into my car in the manner of Friday night, I'd have no sympathy for him at all.

Well, I'm an avid reader of the Yellow Journal whenever I can get a copy, and more importantly, I'm a big drinker of beer, so I headed straight down to the Haunted House. I appeared suddenly and mysteriously on the back porch amidst of a mix of strangers and friends, ones whose names I can never remember. The attractive asian girl running the keg of Killian's Red was suspicious at first, but I knew what to say, that I was here for the "rockin' Yellow Journal party" and that I knew Tyler.

I ended up discussing the Rory situation with the various people there. It was such a preposterous story that we found ourselves chuckling over it. Not that it doesn't suck to be Rory right now, but if an intelligent bloke like him can't learn from his mistakes, then you'll have to accept me finding some humour in this. Had Rory been some stranger and drunkenly slammed into my car in the manner of Friday night, I'd have no sympathy for him at all. He's lucky that no one was seriously injured by his foolishness.

When Deya showed up, she noticed all these Yellow Journal groupies and summed it up to me by saying "There's a lot of dorks here."

Let's see, I drank lots of beer, the Curious Digit guys came over, and so did Darius, the guy who used to throw Big Funsters out of the Tokyo Rose. I found myself talking to a diversity of Yellow Journal staff, who, for the most part, appear to be ethnic East Asians and Subcontinental Indians. Their male friends and supporters were there as well. When Deya showed up, she noticed all these Yellow Journal groupies and summed it up to me by saying "There's a lot of dorks here." I'd been thinking that very thing myself. Not that I don't like dorks, mind you, but there's an offputting element to them as well. I do not like people behaving unctuous towards me upon discovering that I'm a hilarious conversationalist blessed with real social skills (the kind that only begin to fade on the 5th beer).

There were also a number of people (both boys and girls) with a seeming unbounded love for the extreme. These tended to wear black boots and have closely cropped hair. But, unlike the somewhat stylistically similar skinheads and other anti-intellectual types, they prided themselves on being able to talk about such high-brow things as the subtle nuances in John Waters films.

The would-be rockstars of Leeds, England can often be heard plinking out very bad versions of Jimi at the guitar shop run by Rory's father.

Darius put on some Jimi Hendrix, which may well be Rory's favourite music. Too bad he couldn't hear it from his jail cell three miles away.

Grinder tells me that the would-be rockstars of Leeds, England can often be heard plinking out very bad versions of Jimi at the guitar shop run by Rory's father.
But Deya wouldn't stand for it. After Darius had left the room and before the first Jimi song was done, she'd substituted in Pavement's "Shady Lane." There were other music battles throughout the evening.

In general, I was well behaved. Beer doesn't have much effect on me. Someone else, however, puked in the bathroom and stunk up the whole house.

When there were few people left, I walked back home, checked my email, and went to sleep.

back to the top
previous | next