Thursday, February 28, 2008

Search for the Truth, and Take a Few Drinks Along

I was out drinking the other day, having an after-party for the powderpuff football game. “Powderpuff,” in case you were wondering, is the term for girl football. Yes, I played. Yes, it was fun, and yes, I am now painfully aware of every movement I make. We played our asses off, but the upperclassmen won, because they started calling fouls on us every five seconds. I’m a little bitter about this, because the freshmen and sophomores totally deserved to win. We were so much better. Oh, well. So, anyway, we had an after-party involving hot dogs and, of course, lots of beer.
At first, we were all at a certain park down the road, which happens to be closed at the moment for renovation or some such nonsense. It’s been closed most of the year, actually, but we’ve had a lot of parties down there, regardless. So we were hanging out there, until a security guard, or something like that, walked up to what was probably the calmest drinking group he’d ever seen, and told us, rather rudely, to leave. Our response was “Okay,” and we instantly packed everything up and left.

At this point, some of us decided to leave altogether, but the others wandered down the road to another dirt patch that we habitually frequent. I was the only freshman who remained, and pretty soon I entered into a discussion with a couple of the sophomores, musing on how truly strange people at my college are. There’s no place like it. And the people there are completely inexplicable to the people outside. Just looking at that last incident, our drinking party was sitting around a fire pit, engaged in semi-intellectual conversation, when a guard came over and was unnecessarily rude. We didn’t give him any backchat at all, we simply cleaned up after ourselves and disappeared in literally under a minute (we’re rather used to getting kicked out of places). We simply moved a few hundred feet and continued our chill party. Someone started playing tunes from his car, and the intellectual conversation was resumed, occasionally broken by bouts of singing or rapping along to the music, or, more frequently, lapsing into gossip, which is much more fun (as a graduate once put it, “There’s two things to talk about here: The books and the people. And after about the first two weeks, you get pretty tired of talking about the books.” The people, on the other hand, are always changing).

That’s my college. We’re intellectual, we’re nerdy, yet we’ll burst into rap when the spirit moves us, and switch just as easily into indie rock or an Irish drinking song, or something equally unexpected. We swing dance, we get into furious debates about matters ranging from whether an angle can be a magnitude to which of the old Star Wars was the best to why the Iliad ends with the burial of Hector. We watch movies in cars off-campus, we smoke like chimneys, and we drink in dirt patches, while remaining comparatively polite. Most of us are either semi-alcoholics, or getting there. And, somehow, we preserve chastity.

Yeah. Nothing like the place, nothing like the people. For the first time I found myself thinking of this place as a kind of home. A funky, messed-up, claustrophobic home. Sounds like it should suit me, in a badly-fitting way. And maybe badly-fitting’s not so bad. It's sort of a perpetual state for me, in fact. I think I'm finally getting comfortable with it. After all, it's probably the best I'll get.

Spudge at 7:20 PM

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Monday, February 18, 2008

A Passing Feeling (I know, I couldn't think of a better title)

You know that fragile feeling that you get when you’re about a drink and a half away from an actual hangover? That vaguely unstable, shaky feeling where the world is slightly too sunny and you have just the faintest ghost of a headache, and the slightest twinge of queasiness. And you know that if you had had just one drink more, just one less glass of water the night before, you would be absolutely fucking miserable today. You stumble out of bed around noon or later, and go out to face everybody. That first walk outside after partying the night before is always daunting for me. For one thing, it’s inevitably fucking bright outside. Well, I am in California, after all. But it still seems like it’s mocking me.

For another, I’m always somewhat reluctant to meet the people I hung out with the night before. I think Terry Pratchett said it best, but I don’t have the actual quote on hand, so I’ll try to paraphrase: That feeling when you got absolutely smashed the night before and jumped on the table, and started singing those songs that were screamingly funny at the time, and you know you have to go out and see all those people again today, and when you look them in the eyes, you’ll both remember, but the difference is that you’ll both be sober this time. Not that I did anything hugely embarrassing (I hope) last night, but still. There’s always that initial hesitance when you wake up and your memory’s all foggy and jumbled up, but you do remember that one incident, or two, involving that guy and the beer, and you sincerely hope he doesn’t. Like Pratchett says, it was so funny last night, but now that you’re wrapped in a cloud of sobriety once again, you just can’t see the humor anymore. And that’s really, I suppose, why sobriety sucks. Because you take life too seriously, and you start making stupid judgments and bad decisions, and generally making a fool of yourself.

Because, see, that’s what you do when you’re drunk, but I’m being all clever, and trying to make the same point about being sober. I’m sorry, I just wasn’t sure hit you over the head with the Great Sledgehammer of Unsubtlety enough to get the point.
Anyway, I’m holed up in my dark cave of a dorm room, with the aforesaid fragile feeling, sipping tea and writing this, because I really don’t feel like writing my math paper right now. I’m also listening to a mix I made that I’m actually quite proud of. It’s the Alcoholic Letdown Mix, for situations exactly like this one. The day after a party, when you’re experiencing the pains of the booze leaving your system, and sitting around, saying “Now what?” It includes, of course, the best hungover music I could find, such as classic Modest Mouse and Ugly Casanova ("Things I Don't Remember," anyone?), The Department of Eagles (probably the most soothing music I’ve ever found. And, of course, not to be confused with the Eagles), Eels, Wilco, etc. Mostly chill stuff. It almost goes without saying that Elliott Smith, and the Mountain Goats are represented, as well as various other good songs by other artists that fit the idea of the mix.

I’m not sure why I’m going on about this. It’s not that original of a mix, I know, but it’s rare for me to make mixes that aren’t totally second-guessed and over-thought. In short, it’s hard to make a mix that my insecurities don’t eventually ruin. This one just felt right.

It's a rare feeling for me. I'd like to keep it.

Spudge at 11:34 PM

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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Eat, Drink, And Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Fast

Today is Ash Wednesday. I’m hungry. Believe it or not, those two sentences do go together, because Ash Wednesday is one of the two fast days of the year for Catholics. Good Friday is the other one. A Catholic fast day, in case you were wondering (you probably weren’t, but what the hell), consists of two snacks (which do not, when put together make up a full meal), and one meal. And abstinence from meat. I decided that my meal would be dinner, therefore I am hungry. I just had some rabbit food as one of the snacks. Carrots and lettuce, I mean, not what you feed to actual pet rabbits. It helps, somewhat.

But Ash Wednesday is depressing. It’s the most time possible before Lent finally ends at Easter. And the idea of Lent stretching before us is enough to make anyone devoutly wish we could all just skip the next six weeks or so. So I should get off the topic, or I’ll sound like a self-pitying whiner, and whining in self-pity is not what Lent is about. Instead, I’ll talk about Mardi Gras, which was yesterday, because yesterday was fun. In fact, yesterday may have been one of the best days I’ve had here all year.

For one thing, because it was Mardi Gras, everyone felt justified in acting goofy all day. The Austrian boy in my section (one of the craziest people I’ve ever met in my life. He’s completely insane in a hilariously vague and out-of-it way. The quintessential mad genius), was called on to do a Euclid prop in Math. He wandered up to the board, suddenly whipped out a home-made devil-mask, and started screaming the prop at us in German. My section erupted in laughter. It was by far the funniest class we’ve had all year, and we’ve had some pretty wacky ones.

And the day just got better from there. We were all determined to go out and party that evening, mostly because it was Mardi Gras, but also because when would we ever not want to go out and party? Mardi Gras just gives us a better excuse than the usual cry of “Because it’s Tuesday!” So as soon as seminar (a 2-hour-long evening class) ended, we all changed into the warmest of our warm clothes, grabbed various blankets, chips, etc., and streaked toward the parking lot. From there, we hiked up the hill to one of our drinking spots. These spots are typically large patches of dirty asphalt, or just dirt, as the case may be, located barely within walking distance of the college. Steep, hard-to-navigate-in-the-dark-even-when-you’re-not-drunk walking distance. This is because we are a) not allowed to drink on campus and b) underage, therefore we cannot hang out in a spot that’s actually somewhat comfortable to drink. So it’s not just the college’s fault, it’s America in general. Specifically California for not having more convenient landscapes in which to drink illegally.

And a really good time was had by all. One guy had very sweetly bought all the beer for us, so there wasn’t very much, but that wasn’t a problem. We had enough for at least two beers each, which was the right amount to get most of us relaxed and happy, but not anywhere near drunk. So we sat around, listening to the guys playing guitar, eating cookie-like objects, slowly drinking beers, and just hanging out. I’m having a hard time expressing what a great, chill time it was. Pretty much the entire freshman drinking group was there (there are roughly fifteen of us), with the exception of Leon, whose departure is still being mourned by all. We toasted his memory. The guys played a song for us that they’d started composing the night before. It’s the ballad of our drunken group, and so far they’ve only worked out the chorus, but it’s hilarious. Each one of us gets our own line. When I remember it (or when they come up with the full version), I’ll post it up here, but for now, the line about me is “Spudge’s stealing cigarettes from the bodies on the ground.” For the record, I have never done that. But it’s still hysterical.

We made it back about five seconds before curfew, which is eleven o’clock on weeknights, by running almost the entire way back. It nearly killed us, but we made it. Whereupon, I burst into the dorm, ran to my room, hugged my roommate, told her I loved her, ran back into the common area, ate several doughnuts, ran out into the courtyard where I hugged Maggie (one of my best friends among the freshman drinkers) and told her I loved her, too, and then tried to call Fishy in order to tell her that I also loved her. Of course, I got her voicemail, so I just left a fairly effusive message for her to hear in the morning, or whenever she feels like listening to the messages. Yes, I was very hyper.

And today is Ash Wednesday, which makes the good time yesterday seem even better. That’s the way the day before Lent should be, and that’s why people party so much on Mardi Gras. The orginal reason, anyway. You need a happy memory to look back on, to smile at throughout the dismal days of the Season.

I’ve given up dessert and sweets of all kinds. It’ll be interesting to see how well I can keep this resolve. Good for me, too. I'm definitely lacking in the self-discipline area. But, as of now, all that is changing.

For the next forty days and forty nights, anyway. With the exception of Sundays.

Spudge at 7:08 PM

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