Tonight has not yet happened. 2010 has not yet happened. But this is what might have happened:
At the stroke of midnight I was nowhere near a girl and nowhere near mistletoe. I was at the other end of the roof terrace, vomiting over a railing. No one saw me doing it, and I didn’t tell anyone I did it. It was the first time I had puked in a long time, and I blame it on cigarettes.
I only smoke cigarettes when I’m really drunk. I hate them otherwise. Granted, I HAVE smoked cigarettes sober before, but it’s different when I’m sober. It’s a calculated decision. It’s me saying, “OK, I’m bored as fuck right now, so I’m going to smoke a cigarette. I know it’s going to make me feel like shit, but I don’t care — I want to get high.”
On Mina’s roof terrace I must have smoked at least 10 cigarettes. It was Rachel’s fault. The Marb Lights appeared before me as if on a conveyor belt, and I kept sucking them down. We weren’t really even talking — in fact, I think 50 percent of the time she had her back to me, but she still kept handing me cigarettes. This was after I had just gotten done chugging a bottle of champagne by myself in the bathroom. Why I brought it into the bathroom is a mystery. Why I decided to chug it is not.
It has always been assumed that if any kissing is going to happen on New Year’s Eve it’s going to happen at the stroke of midnight. This was not the case for me. I ended up kissing a girl named Cassandra (or rather she kissed me) at 9:30pm. I did not want to kiss her. She was not attractive and had a personality that reminded me of the face of a pug. Her laugh — high pitched followed by a guttural guffaw — sounded like a zebra getting punched in the stomach. She would also yelp and say, “Oh my God, I know exactly what you’re talking about!” after everything anyone said. At one point I ventured that I had been extremely constipated the week before just to see if she would say, “Oh my God I know exactly what you’re talking about!” but she was too busy paying attention to another conversation, one which involved the return policy of leather boots at Nordstrom.
When I walked out on the balcony to have my first cigarette of the night, Cassandra followed me. She had on a short black dress displaying pasty calves. The upper part of the dress had some lace that was less than flattering and reminded me of my Grandmother’s funeral. Before I could take a drag off the cigarette, she pulled me towards her and pressed her large red lips against my face. Not my lips. My face. Her lips were big enough to cover a decent portion of my face, and after she was done kissing me she tugged thoughtfully on my scarf and scampered back inside. It was the last time I would see her that night, though I would acutely remember the feeling of her lips on the area just beneath my nose when I vomited over the balcony railing a few hours later.
After vomiting, I made my way down to the street. It was 12:05 am, the fifth minute of 2010. I walked along Broadway in the general direction of my house, and vaguely wondered why I had gone to the party in the first place. I had talked to practically no one, drunk entirely too much, and gotten kissed by a girl who reminded me of a dog. The highlight of the night — by far — was walking home: knowing that it was over, knowing that my bed awaited me, and knowing that tomorrow, or rather today, I could start to forget my last night of 2009.
This entry was written by , posted on December 31, 2009 at 8:42 pm, filed under Capitol Hill, alcohol, master cleanse and tagged 2010, alcohol, bars, Capitol Hill, drinking, new year's eve, nightlife, partying, seattle, sex. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I met a girl named Becky at the Cha Cha Lounge two nights ago and more or less became instantly enamored. She was from Challis, Idaho, and we talked until the bar closed and she and her two friends had to leave. I may never see Becky again, which is why I have written this memoir:
I just Google Mapsed Challis, Idaho. It’s somewhat close to a town called Chilly, Idaho. It’s a small town place built upon the hearts and minds of upstanding Americans. Real, hard-working Americans like you and me. People we can identify with. People we can believe in. It has a baseball field where every Easter the 4-H club holds their Easter egg hunts. Do you remember last year when little Billy Ripkin got lost in the rose thicket looking for the golden egg? Oh, how he cried and cried. He must’ve cried for three hours until someone finally shut him up with an icecream sandwich.
And then there’s Becky. The light of my life. A smile that could bring the strongest, toughest man to his knees. The kind of smile that can only come from a small town like Challis, Idaho, where it can’t be corrupted, tarnished and stained by the big city. Growing up, Becky wanted nothing more than to get out of Challis and see the world. She wanted to be a city girl. Her parents prayed that it was just a phase — who would milk Goerta after she was gone, what with Tommy working 12+ hour days at the meat processing plant?–but when she talked to her daddy about going to the big city he know deep in his heart that it wasn’t just a phase. He saw the glimmer in her eyes, a glimmer he had only seen once before — when he asked his wife Evelyn to marry him.
Becky finally made it to the big city. From Challis it was a 13-hour drive, up into Montana through Missoula then into Washington through Spokane on I-90. Her daddy brought her because he knew it might be the last time he saw his little girl for a while. That smile, so full of life. Those eyes. He knew she was fated to leave Challis when she got her tattoos. That was the first sign, the biggest sign. Sure, people in Challis got tattoos — people got them all the time — but not tattoos like this. On her right wrist she had a few words from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Man is the cruelest animal.” On her right abdomen she bore the Arabic transcription for the word, “Rain” and on her left bicep a small angel which she had seen in a digital reproduction of the sistine chapel during her junior year art class. These tattoos told her daddy she would not last long in Challis, but the presentiment did not make it sting any less when he finally dropped her off in Seattle and turned the car back around for Idaho.
Now Becky is doing just fine. She hasn’t forgotten about Challis, Idaho, but a little part forgets every day. She doesn’t notice the things she forgets. One week her brain stopped remembering what it used to smell like on her parents porch when the spring thunderstorms would roll in over the Sawtooths from the west. The next week it was the name of the street of the pool where she used to take swimming lessons as a child. By the time she went back for Christmas, the first winter after she had left, she barely remembered how to milk Goerta. Worst still, she didn’t want to milk Goerta.
Who’s to say whether life is better in the big city or in the wide-open country? To each man, or in this case woman, her own. Becky might have forgotten how to milk the heifer whose milk helped her grow from a little girl into a strong woman, put part of her, somewhere deep inside, will always long for Challis. Her daddy is waiting for the day when it happens. He knows part of her longs to roam free, longs for a freedom that can’t be found in the congestion and crowds of the city. He knows her life was not meant to be centered around sewer grates and honking horns, but rather the whisp of the fall wind in the wheat and the fresh patter of a summer drizzle, when it seems God himself is willing the corn to grow higher and higher. The tattoos did not change Becky; the city cannnot change her either. Just as every spring the storms come in from the West, from north of Ketchum and into the Salmon River Valley, one day Becky will come from the west too. She will come home, and she will stay. Because she has not forgotten her daddy. She has not forgotten her soul.
This entry was written by , posted on December 17, 2009 at 4:47 pm, filed under Capitol Hill and tagged becky, bimbo's cantina, Capitol Hill, cha cha loung, challis, girls, nightlife, party. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I have long longed to photograph the stairs by my apartment that lead up to Capitol Hill. These are symbolic stairs; they symbolize the transition between the normal world and the hipster world, two worlds I sometimes find myself caught between. You see: I wear flannel. I wear Vans. I ride my bike places. I sometimes smoke cigarettes.
But I fucking hate hipsters.
This entry was written by , posted on December 15, 2009 at 9:41 pm, filed under Capitol Hill, Travels, alcohol, the boot and tagged Capitol Hill, eastlake, hipster, howe. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
This entry was written by , posted on November 18, 2009 at 3:23 am, filed under Capitol Hill, Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
This entry was written by , posted on at 1:42 am, filed under Capitol Hill, Ravenna, Uncategorized, master cleanse. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Looking at these photos that my friend Phil just sent me and listening to the “Last of the Mohicans” soundtrack, I feel like I could pretty much take over the world right now. John Williams, you have moved me. Phil Ganz, so have you.
Upper Kenai River
Skilak Lake
Mt. Cecil Rhode
Leaving Homer for Seldovia
Homer spit.
Cecil.
Outside Beach, Seldovia, AK.
Summit, Mt. Cecil Rhode
____________________________
All photos courtesy of Phil Ganz.
This entry was written by , posted on November 14, 2009 at 10:51 pm, filed under Alaska, Capitol Hill and tagged cooper landing, digital vs. film, party, resurrection pass, skilak lake. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
This entry was written by , posted on November 3, 2009 at 1:07 am, filed under Alaska, Capitol Hill and tagged cooper landing, kenai princess, slaughter ridge. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Click here to listen to Billy Currington’s first ever podcast, coming to you live all the way from Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Billy has been living in Belle Fourche for ten years and is the owner of the Cowboy Bear Back, one of Belle Fourche’s most popular bars. On today’s podcast he talks about the Bear Back, tourists from London, and the blizzard that recently rolled through Butte County. Also, click here to read the article in the Rapid City Journal Billy mentions in his podcast. Pay special attention to paragraph ten.
This entry was written by , posted on April 5, 2009 at 1:14 pm, filed under Capitol Hill, Uncategorized and tagged belle fourche, blizzards, bmw, butte county, carbon monoxide, cowbow bear back. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
1) Rainier beer — I love Rainer. Rainer is my homey. But I can’t drink it anymore. It’s bad beer. It makes my hangovers worse.
2) The Cha Cha Lounge — The Cha Cha lounge makes up for it’s sewer-like lighting and and abundance of messenger bag-toting hipsters by selling massive pitchers of Rainer for six dollars. Because it makes my hangovers worse, I’m a fool to drink Rainer. But at six dollars a pitcher, I’m a way bigger fool not to.
3) Shredded beef nachos — Was that second order absolutely necessary?
4) Mixing alcohol — Started with a margarita, then a 22oz. of Fat Tire, then an Irish coffee, and finally a night cap that consisted of several pitchers of Rainier and Manny’s. Should’ve just drank Manny’s the whole time. Discipline, Mark.
5) Chase Budinger — I hate Chase Budinger. So much. Still, I think Arizona, if both Satan—I mean Budinger—and Jordan Hill play well, have a chance to fuck shit up in the NCAA tournament (and by “shit” I mean “Utah”).
6) Barry’s Mustache
Better take it easy tonight to be in top form for tomorrow. Lee Brown’s first ever footsteps in the United States of America in t-minus one hour!
-Wetzler
This entry was written by , posted on March 16, 2009 at 5:51 pm, filed under Capitol Hill, alcohol and tagged hangover, seattle nightlife. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Rippin’ it
Dear Faithful Readers,
By last count there were roughly 42 of you. Why do I use the word “roughly” with the seemingly precise integer “42?” Well, it’s complicated, and you’re not a statistician. So don’t ask questions. The other day apparently there were around “60″ of you. 60! I don’t even know 60 people, so that made me feel pretty good. Actually, the thing that made me feel awesome was when I went to a bar the other night and a friend of a friend recognized me just because of the “blog.” I had never met this girl in my life. She asked me “How Hawaii was.” So as you can see, I’m already famous.
Fame has its downsides, though. I have to wear those hats with the really curvy bills pulled down tight over my eyes all the time so people don’t recognize me. That or really huge sunglasses. The other day at Chipotle some chick was harassing me for an autograph and she scratched me with her newly manicured nails. I screamed “How dare you” and scratched her back. Nobody messes with me when I’m at Chipotle.
Another fairly annoying thing about being famous is the paparazzi. These days everyone has a point and shoot camera, so everyone is a potential paparazzi (or paparazzette). So far nothing too bad has happened but I’m really worried that one of these days I’m going to be getting out of my car and someone’s going to take a really awful crotch shot and put it all over the internet. Right now I don’t have a car so I guess that’s not very likely to happen. But maybe some one will do it when I’m riding the bus. I take the 71 all the time.
In health news I have stopped drinking again ever since my and Darren’s trip to Ensenada. I’ve replaced the drinking, however, with gross amounts of junk food and frozen pizzas. Tonight I polished off a frozen Tony’s pepperoni pizza to myself, which is bad and clocks and at around 1000 calories but isn’t as bad as it used to be because their pizzas have gotten smaller. One of the reasons I haven’t been drinking is because I’ve had a cold, which I’ve been combating by ingesting around 20000 mg of vitamin c a day.
As far as employment goes, I’m still interning at El Extranjero. I’m confused because a lot of the time people there aren’t that warm to me. I mean, some of them are, but most of the people haven’t even introduced themselves. I think most of them look at me and think, “Oh, there’s that new intern. I’ve heard about him. He’s going to be huge,” and they’re kind of intimidated and it’s just easier to walk past my desk without really making eye contact. Or something.
In travel news the next Where’s Wetzler? trip will be this weekend, though to where I do not yet know. I might do it in the same format as the last one, i.e. post photos but never really reveal the location. Keep you guys guessing. Make you study those maps. Do you study maps? Study those maps. I was in the 8th Grade Geography Bee. I got out on the first question because I confused longitude with latitude. Study those maps.
Fondly,
Wetzler
P.S. Natalie Berry
This entry was written by , posted on March 2, 2009 at 12:51 am, filed under Capitol Hill, Uncategorized, master cleanse, the boot and tagged agoodreed, friends, seattle, seinfeld, uw, vancityallie, yobeat, your mother. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.