what happened tonight.

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 admin, posted on December 31, 2009 at 8:42 pm, filed under Capitol Hill, alcohol, master cleanse and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

an ode to becky.

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 admin, posted on December 17, 2009 at 4:47 pm, filed under Capitol Hill and tagged , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

hey

everyone — a quick word about St. Patrick’s day:

First off, I want you all to be safe. Drinking green beer is fun, but do you know what they use to make the green beer green? Formaldehyde. And mercury. Also, when you’re doing Irish car bombs tonight, make sure you don’t tip your pint glasses up too quickly because the shot glass might slide up and chip your teeth. I’ve heard of them actually being banned in places for this reason. Also, don’t drink and drive. Or drink and ride busses. Or drink and walk really fast. If you’re going to drink and indulge in any form of transportation, make sure it’s either walking slowly or tiptoeing. If I see a bunch of you tiptoeing down the AVE later I’ll know you got this memo in time.

Secondly, if you should find yourself talking to a member of the opposite sex tonight and he/she is not wearing green and you want to pinch him/her to be flirty but aren’t really sure if you should do it — definitely do it! Nothing bad can come of it, and a night of gratuitous sex possibly can. Remember: Love is blind, but not color blind.

Thirdly, and this isn’t really my recommendation but more of a recommendation from the Seattle Police Department: Do not drink in public. However, since you’re going to anyway, let me tell you a good place to go. Down by Portage Bay just south of the Health Sciences buildings in the University of Washington there is a rock retaining wall that has about three feet of beach between it and the waters of Portage Bay. I went there two days ago with a friend and we sat wedged up against the wall and drank beer we had recently purchased at a convenience store while we felt the breeze come off the water and watched boats go by. It was uncomfortable, it was cold, and I’m 25-years-old. However, the day I stop drinking in public is the day I move to Provo, Utah and become a eunuch. The deviance felt while drinking in public is the only reason to do it. If they ever legalize it and do away with the $38 dollar tickets they currently give out if you got caught I’m sure I’d never do it again. Except maybe at Madison Park. In the summer.

Fourthly, don’t go to Kells tonight. That place is so fucking lame. They’re charging $20 bucks to get in to watch some shitty “Irish” bands play shitty Irish “folk” music, and all you get for the $20 is some shitty t-shirt, overpriced drinks, the company of Neanderthals, and, like I just explained, the opportunity to listen to shitty music.

Fifthly, I’m sort of just rambling right now so I can get up to saying “seventhly” and “eighthly.”

Sixthly, you probably shouldn’t go to Fado, either. That place is lame.

Seventhly, yes, saying “seventhly” was pretty satisfying, but I have a feeling saying “eighthly” will be even better.

Eighthly, I was right.

Have fun!

-Wetzler

This entry was written by admin, posted on March 17, 2009 at 4:31 pm, filed under alcohol and tagged , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.