Momma wouldn't like it

So let me tell you something about Montgomery. In this town, sometimes, we get drunk just to drive. As a wise man once said when questioned about this fact, "well, how else are we supposed to get home?" Well, tonight I was drunk enough to think it was a good idea to drive out to The Waters. Here's some facts about the Waters. Fact: it's a good ten miles at least from Montgomery. This doesn't sound like a lot until you think about the fact that there are no streetlights on the way out here, and you consider fact 2.

Fact 2: The Waters are probably haunted. This neighborhood is a nice Pleasantville esque kinda place, and therefore super creepy. Plus, when they built it, they had to move a civil-war era (or older!) graveyard and that is always super bad news. I'm always expecting a screaming disembodied head to pop up in the road and force me to crash. Whatever, without the ghosts, it's a nice kind of place. The kind of place you bring a blanket and a pretty girl to.

Well tonight I brought neither. It was Tim's birthday tonight, so happy birthday to him. He's finally 21, finally able to spend too much money on too little booze at restaurants and bars. Tonight I had just enough beer to be introspective, which is not a good thing. Maybe I should be out driving around still. It's so risky but it does make me feel better for some godawful reason. I'm not sure why. Anyway. I don't want to turn this into another weepy post but I'll say what there is to say and hopefully it'll turn out okay.

I guess that's all I've ever hoped, that things would turn out okay. I guess when I said I wanted to give it another shot I really did mean it. When I say things I usually mean them, really mean them. It doesn't matter if I'm drunk. I had to type that shit out and try my best with the spelling. If I hit send I really meant it. Who cares about the consequences? I've done some things that people have come down on me for, and damn it, the things I've done wrong have stuck to me. I deserved them and I paid for them.

So there it is. Hope for the best, expect the worst, right? Tonight all I can think about is what I left behind. Tonight there's not a thought for the future. Drinking and blogging was really a terrible idea. I guess the truth of it is, you have to decide what is real and what isn't for yourself. In this blog, you got what I want to say, what I meant to say, and what I couldn't say, and these three things are all things I said. You have to sort them out and decide what to believe and what to take with a grain of salt. But I guess in the end you have to believe that whatever I write I mean, I really mean. Whatever message I send, I'm trying my best, and I hope with all my soul that you can understand this dishonest heart of mine.

I understand more than just the jokes. The truth is there too. Hopefully, next time there will be less truth, and more jokes.

On the way

I guess I need to be drunk and happy but I'm not really that drunk and I don't have any real reason to be happy. When I say that it sounds like I'm horrifically depressed but I'm not. There's just nothing really to smile about right now. Life's been kind of crappy, and that's just what happens sometimes. I hope to make an amusing drunk entry soon, after a good night with good friends and good beers. No more of this Keystone Light shit. When I was little the first beer I had that my dad let me have a sip of was Miller Genuine Draft. I grew up thinking all beers were that bitter and shitty tasting. When I have kids I'm going to let them have some Keystone and make sure they know that not all beers taste that crappy, but there's going to be a long stretch of time when all the beers they can afford will.

"I tried my best" or "Oblique references to another blog"

I came home and decided I wanted some White Castle, and after warming up a couple burgers I realized I could neither really feel nor taste them, so I guess an update is in order. I should count myself fortunate that I did not fall to the same fate as Tim, who is probably vomiting into a tupperware container right this very moment. A glass of straight rum will do that to a man. It'll do it to some inanimate objects too.

So I'm home now. I mean home home, that house where you grew up, where you inevitably feel like there's a bed and a meal waiting no matter what (your mileage may vary). This means I now spend a lot of time sleeping, a lot of time reading, not enough time studying, some time listening to music and too much time think think think thinking, how did we get this way? People who spend a lot of time hacking into my Facebook account and reading my messages will recognize that last quote. Here's another one that's on my mind:

"I can be happy you're happy and wonder how you're doing, and wonder if I'll ever meet somebody like you again and think the silence means contentment and smile for it."

We can all try our best to keep it together. You can meet someone new and it's like a game (this is indeed the origin of the term 'game'), that is, you can try to convince her (or him, I'm no doctor) that you're that perfect blend of nice and dangerous, you do all the things she approves of and maybe one that she doesn't, so she can try to fix you.

You're sweet and sarcastic and witty and funny and you can try to pretend you're sexy and you try try try try to light that fire, cause when you got that you got everything, and it takes a damn lot of mistakes to put it out. You try your best to be your best, and you wonder how long it'll take before you fuck it up. And after a while, either you fuck it up or you fucking wise up, cause it's the first thing with the people who were worth every second and it's the second with people who weren't. The difficulty lies in determining who lies in which category because a lot of times, at first, more people are in the first than are in the second, and unless you got some goddamn impeccable taste, that simply isn't the case. You have to filter them out and realize that maybe things didn't work out but it wasn't your fault. Or if it was, you have to convince yourself that it's okay.

So then you spend time and talk with pretty girls you know you'd be terrible with, or pretty girls you know you are terrible with, those few members of the opposite sex where sexual tension simply became acceptance, then understanding, an understanding that you'd never hurt them and they wouldn't hurt you because neither of you would give each other that chance, or would give that chance again, and with that understanding you reached an agreement and you both realized that maybe both sexes, men and women, both have the same problems, that you both wonder what's going through each others' heads and you both think "oh they're cute" and that makes up for a couple shortcomings and you can comfort each other when someone says "this is nice but I'm just not feeling it" or "god, I just don't know how to feel" which is a great bomb to drop when somebody's been trying their best or at least pretending to be.

Maybe not everybody's this way but when I really like somebody and I'm spending time with them, I am so nervous, so terrified, because I know I'm just a step away from fucking it up, that my facade, no matter how shittily I may have constructed it, because it is still a step up from the reality, is still just something I have to hold up, and I am just one misstep away from fucking it up. I am just one itchy thumb away from calling too much, or calling too little, and when it's over I'm just left to thinking about what it was that drove you away. Unless I know what it was that drove you away. In which case I can blame freely, and unfortunately it may fall on myself.

Because we both know that so many things are just code for "I'm tired of him." Or "you won't have sex with me." Maybe you personally have never used either of those things. But I know that happens, and it happens more than people would admit. And you can be jealous that your beautiful friend who you love even got that message, but glad that at least they got something, they didn't just get a pile of maybes, and they didn't get that nagging fear that under all those maybes is just another no, and while they may have wondered once again "what is wrong with me?" at least they got that far, to ask that question in the context of a relationship and not outside of one, because inside that context it simply brings to question your emotional availability and stability, and outside it sheds doubt on your entire personality.

You think about how ironic it is that those who may understand you best are those you try to keep yourself from being with. It's complicated, you say, or you don't want to ruin it, you say. Another way to save yourself from fucking it up. You remember that you only hurt the ones you love.

The reason for this is simple - only you have enough of the ones you love to hurt them. And they have enough of you to hurt you too. When you kick an anthill, you better believe those ants are going to bite the shit of you.

But you know, I was hoping this drunk blog was going to be heartwarming and hilarious instead of depressing and self-pitying. I guess we all have disappointments. And if you're out there reading this, and this seems familiar, but not in the "I've been there" kind of way but more in the "Was that me?" kind of way, know that I've never held anything against anybody. People do all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, be it fear or kindness or even true malice. I've done my share too. But it's not too late to put things right. It's not too late to give things another chance. You've hurt and been hurt and it's the same with everybody. These are all hard lessons, and we must repeat them until we learn.

Graduation Day

The purpose of this blog is to document the things that run through one's head while intoxicated. The name is supposed to reflect this - Sunday Syndrome, that is, what happens when you have drunk people over at your house (or you drink a lot yourself) over the weekend, and on Sunday the light filters through your windows and you drag your carcass out of bed and you go in the kitchen and you see all the bottles and you think "god why is this here? Who left all these beer bottles out? Who...who puked in my sink? Why is this wet?"

That's a really terrifying question. Why is this wet? You went into your kitchen and you saw, or god forbid, you picked up something that was wet and you wished, you wished with all your soul, you wished that you were just hallucinating, that you were drunk as shit and you didn't sit on your couch into a puddle of beer (or worse).

So tonight I was drinking with my friend Ryan. It's graduation day. We don't usually need an excuse to drink, and not having one usually doesn't stop us. But graduation day slows down the entire city. Parents come in and suddenly everything takes forever. Waiters become surly, gas pump lines are a hundred miles long, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But there it is, tonight was the last night for Ryan as an undergrad, and we had to drink beers and be merry. Merriness didn't really find us though.

Shirtless o'clock started early. Usually it's at 1 AM but tonight the bare chestedness began at about 11:30. This should have been the first sign that it was going to be a bad night. Perhaps physically it was not. I've managed to keep my dinner down at least. But emotionally, we all have tough times.

Speaking of which - I have a tough time typing this. This blog is going to be my drunk blog, and I am not going to update it unless I have been chugging down that vile liquid. That sounds like a blowjob joke and maybe it is. It happens. Sometimes bad things do happen to bad people. But all I can hope for is that tonight some people realize that because someone will not be around does not mean that they are leaving. And that maybe some people remember that they too used to scream with us, that all that emotion was never really out of our domain.

Tonight I wish that things had turned out differently, like I always do. Looking back we can always see what we did wrong, that maybe we could have turned things out differently, maybe we could have been stronger, maybe we could have laughed more, lived more, loved more, maybe in the end we would have had somebody to be crazy with, and maybe that wasn't too much to ask for. The summer is a long time and things do change. It's interesting how you wish that you want some things to change, growing up, but you don't want the conqsequences. Human nature I guess.

But in the end there's always something left unsaid, something left undone.

But you know, that's that. It's graduation night. People gotta sleep before they walk in a few hours. All I can hope for is the confidence that I too can jump in headfirst, that I can take a dive without cracking my skull on the bottom.