Originally posted: March 02, 2005.
A couple weekends ago I was at home on a Friday night, drinking shitty wine, and banging away on my laptop. The phone rang…
Wait, hold on a second. That sounded pretty damn lame, didn’t it? In fact, it’s possible that was the lamest thing I’ve ever written. Sitting around in front of a laptop on a friday drinking wine, alone. Wow. Pathetic. Then again, that’s exactly what I’m doing right now. Hmmm. Maybe I outta not think too much about this, for I’m apt to get a little depressed. Fuck it. Let’s start over…
A couple weekends ago I was at home on a Friday night, drinking shitty wine, and banging away on my laptop. The phone rang. It was my buddy Aye Aye giving me a quick call from Florida as he walked home from a bar. We caught up on a couple things, bullshitted for a few minutes, and then, without any segue, he announced, “See ya in Valdosta.”
Click.
I put the phone down, then leaned back over my laptop. Well, it seemed my plans for Saturday were now fully arranged. And they consisted of the following details: See ya in Valdosta. That following morning, I was going to get in my car, drive 3 and a half hours to some small Georgia college town that I’d never been to and knew nothing about, find myself a bar, grab a seat, and start drinking. Somewhere in that same town Aye Aye would be doing the same. I hadn’t seen my old friend in about 8 months, and chances were pretty good that I wouldn’t see him tommorow either. For we had no plans on when/where to meet, and I had no plans on answering my cell phone.
In fact, my only plans were that I was going to be drinking alone in a strange town. Within an hour or two, I would not be able to drive home either. And all I would know, is that somewhere in this foreign town, I would have a drinking buddy, and if I’d run into him, I’d have a hell of a good time. And if I didn’t, well, I’d be alone and drunk and stranded in unfamiliar territory. Fucked, if you will.
I went to bed with a nasty cheap wine buzz and a Christmas Eve feeling of exhilaration, knowing that tommorow was going to be a fucking blast, or it was going to be fucking hell.
And so it began. The trial run of DRINKING BUDDY – THE GAME.
Noonish on Saturday I hopped in my car to began my trek. After a brief stop at the local QuikTrip for a fresh pack of smokes and some Barqs to wash out the wine dust, I was on my way. I was dressed in my official “strange-drunk-in-a-strange-town” duds – a shitty 70s pleather jacket on top of a tan “Yoo Hoo” garage shirt with “bones” emblazoned over the left breast, on top of a fresh new Tuxedo t-shit. Remember those? I was wearing a pair of shitty brown pants and garden gloves with the fingers cut out – cut out, so I could still smoke. Or so maybe I’d look a little bit like a guy who knows a thing or two about trains…
I pulled into Valdosta a few hours later with the sounds of Tom Waits blowing through my speakers (planned, not a coincedence). I drove up and down the downtown streets a few times, getting my bearings. Hmm… Not what I’d expected. See, I went to school in Athens, GA, and we Athenians boast a downtown with the most bars per square mile in the…well… I don’t know the stats, but there’s a shitload of bars. Quite unlike where I found myself on that Saturday… In fact, I spotted just one apparent bar in the whole downtown. So, I parked my car in front, loaded my smokes in my front pocket, and walked up to the bar door. Locked. Damnit. Now what? I began to walk.
Oh, and by the way, I was informed later that this particular locked bar – the only bar I could find – happened to be a gay bar. So, it turns out that it was quite fortunate the door was locked. Had it not been, I’d have swaggered on in, plopped my ass on a stool, and ordered a beer. My terrible sense of observation would have prevented me from noticing that there were no women in there, and I’d probably have struck up a conversation with a fellow barfly and explained how “I’m an out-of-towner looking for a buddy.” Yeah, that might have been a little awkward.
So I wandered the streets for a while. My brief tour led me to one conclusion: Downtown Valdosta had a lot of sketchy mother fuckers in it. And this is coming from a guy in cut-off garden gloves and a pleather jacket and a pair of shades. Aye Aye had mentioned that he still drives a “shitty red car.” Well, half the cars in downtown Valdosta were red and shitty, and every time I stopped and stared at one, I probably increased my chance of getting shot by tenfold. I decided the best idea was to get my car outta there. I hate my car, and all cars in general, but I’m fairly certain that I’d hate having to report a stolen Honda with a hangover even more.
I drove about 2 miles out of town and rented a room at the Days Inn. I smoked a cigarette in the room, admired my outfit in the mirror, then headed back outside to walk the stretch back to town. I walked on the side of a busy street, past a piece of shit house with a couple of bums standing outside in the front yard. They yelled something to me. I smiled,and continued walking. This isn’t going to be good. I passed a couple of liquor stores. Ok, better. I stepped over a smashed Budweiser bottle. Ok, well, even better. At least we can conclude that people drink around here. I continued my trek down the side of the road and spotted an intersection a block or two ahead of me. All of the sudden, a big white board dropped down in the middle of the intersection to block off the traffic. A train was coming. A fucking train. I stood there on the side of the road as a train chugged past, forcing me and all the non-weirdos in their cars to stop and wait. Then the train stopped. Right in front of us. I stood there, on the side of road, next to a traffic jam of cars, and stared at the graffited sides of the train cars, as they sat there, stationary. A fucking train.
I stood and stared at the wall of cargo cars that was blocking my progress. I contemplated crawling underneath the train to continue my journey. Probably not a good idea. I contemplated hopping on one of the cargo cars. Which, of course, would have been officially crossing the line between responsible young adult with a love for the drink, and fucking hobo. So I just waited. Finally it began to move. And so did I.
I eventually made it back into downtown. Oh, and by the way, walking 2+ miles in slip-on Vans tends to rub the shit out of your heels. The next morning they looked like red, bulbous waffles. I don’t even like waffles. Or pancakes. But I love bacon. And eggs. Although eggs will make you fucking barf if you think too hard about what they actually are.
I was crossing an intersection in downtown Valdosta trying to figure out what I was going to do and where I was going to drink, when I heard the magic words.
“Drinking Buddy!”
I looked up and spotted my buddy Aye Aye. He was sitting at a table outside some bistro, drinking a beer in a glass. He was wearing a suit jacket and suit pants, and an obnoxoius Hawaiian shirt. On his head was a big straw Panama Jack hat. He was talking on his cell phone and smoking a cigarette. You know what he looked like? He looked like a retired spy going incognito at a Moroccan cafe on “one last mission.”
Fuck yeah! My drinking buddy!
I ran up and grabbed a seat at the table. Well, alright! We did it! The night may rule, or it may turn to shit, but either way I’d be drinking through it with an old pal. And so DRINKING BUDDY – THE GAME now had a good chance of NOT setting a really shitty precedent.
As we sat outside at the table, a dude who was stopped at a redlight in his car leaned out and yelled to us, “You dudes are cooool! Just chilling… Just chilling.” I yelled back, “That’s what we do!” He waved and drove off.
We drank a couple beers outside the bistro and then decided to head inside to grab a bite to eat. We hadn’t realized that it was kind of a high-class joint. At this point, it was probably 8 o’clock or so, and the place was filled with the dinner crowd. All the men were old and wearing suits, and all the women were old and wearing dresses. There was a lady playing a baby grand piano. Play some fucking Jovi, bitch! We asked for a couple of menus….
PORTERHOUSE STEAK
MUSHROOM TOPPINGS WITH WEIRD SHIT. PRETENTIOUS BROWN THINGS IN MASHED POTATOES. WORDS LIKE “CARAMELIZED” THAT AREN’T FOLLOWED BY WORDS LIKE “APPLES.”
$25.00
Fuck caramel.
The well-dressed bartender asked if we’d decided. Aye Aye responded, “Actually we were looking for something like chicken fingers.” The bartender laughed, then gave us directions to a nearby pizza joint.
We headed over to the joint – an old Victorian house turned into a pizza parlor – and grabbed a seat at the table by the bar. We ordered a big-ass pizza and talked about death. Came to the conclusion that, well, everybody you love is going to fucking die, and the only plus is that maybe you’ll die before you’ll have to deal with it. So, really, what it comes down to, is that the very best case scenario is that you’ll die first. Weird, eh? Best case scenario in life is that you’ll die. So, to all the kids out there, I’d suggest you stay away from the booze, or else you’ll be 30 and be talking about shit like this…
The bartender was a friendly long-haired fellow named Justin. He gave us some advice on where to go drinking in this town. He drew us a map on a napkin. He called us a cab. And then, as soon as I had just finished telling Aye Aye that, “look dude, I’m going to stay away from the shots tonight. If I suggest we hit the Jager Bombs or something, remind me that by all means, I don’t want any shots,” Justin asked, “You guys want to do a shot?”
“Sure man!”
So we did a couple of shots, and then followed Justin as he took us and a group of his pals on a tour of the upstairs which they were in the process of rebuilding into a classy music venue. It was originally a dumpy punk rock outfit up there, and he pointed out some of the holes on the ceiling – a sad reminder of what happens when dudes in combat boots decide to crowd surf.
The cab had still not arrived. Justin, being a nice-as-shit dude (which turned out to be a very common quality among these Valdosta folks, even to dudes in Hawaiin shirts and tuxedo shirts), offered up the suggestion that one of the employees could drive Aye Aye and I to the bar. So we hopped in a truck with a young stoner student with a lip ring, and he drove us to the happening part of town and dropped us off at a big rockin’ Irish bar. We thanked the kid for the ride and threw him a 20. He was genuinely suprised at that. It’s been quite a while since I was a college student, and I had forgotten how much money a free 20-spot was at the time. Sadly, that’s a mere three beers plus tips here in Atlanta.
Aye Aye and I walked into this bar, flashed our IDs to the bouncer, and took a look around. The place was loud, smokey, and packed with drunken college students. Oh, and tonight just happened to be the night of the “Lingerie Show.” In the back of the bar area was a large wooden catwalk, flanked on all sides by horny redneck students oggling the nearly naked girls strutting up and down. What the hell? The day started out with me not knowing if I’d be drinking alone in some dive all night, and now here I am at some damn Animal House bar watching girls in see-thru pajamas.
We went to the bar and ordered a bucket of Budweisers. This became our staple of the night. And for the rest of the hours there, we were two drunken idiots – one wearing a tuxedo shirt, shitty fake leather, and cut-off gloves, the other wearing a suit with a loud Hawaiin shirt underneath. Both wearing shades, and switching off the responsibility of holding a big white bucket full of cheap beer.
Somehow we found ourselves talking to couple of pretty girls at the side of the bar. Strangely enough, they were closer to our age then the college students in there. Unless they were lying, I guess. I asked the girl I was talking to what made her decide to stay in this town, and she replied, “Well, I got married…”
Damn…
“And then got divorced…”
Yes!
Yeah yeah, I know. You’re a dirtbag, Bones. But give me a break, the girl looked like Jessica Simpson. I’m not kidding. For real.
Ok. Fine. She looked to me like Jessica Simpson. And, or course, I was a couple Budweiser Buckets deep and I was wearing shades in a dark bar. I can tell you in good conscience that she did not look like Jessica Tandy, though.
Finally the girls said goodbye and left. They always do that, you know? And of course, now it was too late in the night to try to be cool to another group of girls, so we figured we’d count our losses and spend the rest of the time there acting like jackasses. We ran into some other girl who seemed to think we were pretty hilarious, and so we recruited her to join us in some bar comedy. I played a couple rounds of The U.C. (Uncomfortably Close), where I’d walk up to a guy and a girl who were dancing all close and romantic, and pretend that I was staring at something behind them. I’d slowly creep closer and closer inward, peering over their shoulders, squinting my eyes, until my chest would be making actual contact with one of them. They’d nonchalantly back away, and I’d cluelessly step back in and continue to invade their space. And, of course, as we had discovered, no one in this town is an asshole, and so they never said a word or even tried to kick my ass. Hell, people were like this all night. We had more than one person say to us, “You guys aren’t from around here, are you?” We’d tell them no, expecting them to reply, “Yeah, no shit,” and spit on us or something. Instead, they’d congenially begin to explain the various bars we should check out while we’re in town. It was weird. These people were offering suggestions to a couple of jerk-offs in shades, holding buckets of beer bottles.
Soon, I realized that I’d annoyed pretty much everyone in my vacinity, looked around for some more victims, and spotted a group of folks dancing up on the stage at the point where the now-vacant catwalk jutted out into the bar area. There’s all kinds of fun to be had over there! Aye Aye, me, and our new lady friend went over there to join the dance.
So we merged into the crowd of dancers up on stage, threw our hands in the air, and shook our shit. I kept glancing over at the catwalk, struggling to keep myself from barrelling down it and doing a kick-ass motown knee slide or possibly a summersault with beer in hand. How the hell do you spell “summersault”? I could barely contain myself. Then I glanced over again to see that Aye Aye had snuck his way to the very end of it, and he was waving his hands and dancing like an Honor Student on his first Spring Break.
A wooden peninsula extending into a sea of drunks, solely inhabitated by the world’s biggest TRL fan.
Then, in case that wasn’t enough to piss of the crowd, he got down on his hands and knees, and crawled back and forth on the catwalk like a well, a cat. Remember that girl crawling up to the camera in the George Micheal “Freedom” video? Yeah, like that… Wait, was there actually a girl crawling like a cat in that video? Now I’m begining to doubt if my visual is accurate at all. I do remember there was a girl who was putting on a sweater in that video. But Aye Aye didn’t have a sweater, so I guess he wasn’t copying her. Once he’d completed his performance and suprisingly had still not yet been attacked by bouncers, Aye Aye began to casually stroll back up the catwalk in the direction where we were all dancing. Unfortunately, he was walking kinda close to the edge of the planks… and, well, it seems these catwalks were designed to hold anorexic girls in nighties, and not drunken beer-filled fools. And, yep, as you were expecting, CRASH! One second Aye Aye is strutting up the catwalk, and the next he’s flat on his ass on the ground, his upper torso still sticking out through the part of the planks that he crashed through. He decided the best thing to do at this point was to play dead, so he lay there, his head leaned back against the floor of the catwalk behind him. It didn’t fool the bouncers, though. A couple of big sons a bitches marched up and looked down at him, eyes blazing…
“Yeah yeah, I know, guys. I’m kicked out.”
They nodded. Politely, though. Believe it or not.
He pulled himself up, brushed himself off, and walked towards the exit. Then continued on past the exit, pushed his way up to the bar, and ordered a beer. Eventually me and our new lady friend made our way back to the bar and were suprised to see Aye Aye there, sipping on a Bud. We laughed about this for a while, and then continued to entertain ourselves by annoying anyone nearby. I believe the bouncers stumbled upon Aye Aye a couple more times throughout the night, asking him to kindly find his way to the fucking exit. Which he would, and then he’d circle back over to the bar to drink with his pals.
Finally, the inevitable happened. Last call. Damnit. Crowds began to filter out of the place. Aye Aye and I jumped out of the way of the avalanche of quitters and huddled by the bar for safety. We knew it was hopeless. Eventually, we’d be swept up in the current and carried to the unfriendly streets outside, but we held our ground as long as possible. Finally, we noticed that our new lady friend was sitting at the bar, and no one was asking her to leave. Apparently she had an “in”, and just might be planning to stay there to drink after hours! Oh, what luck! What glorious luck! When the bouncers came up and told us it was time to get the hell out, we confidently announced that, “We’re with her” and pointed to our friend. The bouncers looked at the two strangers with suspicion, then turned to our friend to get a confirmation…
“These guys with you?” They asked.
“Uh… what?…” she leaned her head down and looked at the bar. “I’m drunk… I don’t… I don’t know what’s going on… I’m drunk…”
What??? This girl was stone sober like 15 minutes ago! The bouncers turned back to us. “Alright guys, time to go…”
But… but… Our friend wasn’t even drunk! What happened??
And then it struck me as we stepped outside…
We’d just been bamboozled!!!
Hilarious! We just got completely taken! This girl, our “friend”, had used us for hours of entertainment and free laughs, and then when it was time to ditch the dorks for free booze, she had tossed us aside like we were wet Camel Cash stuck to her cigarette box. We got used! Completely used!
Fucking awesome!
And so the night was over. The bars closed. The buckets empty. The adventure complete. What had started out, and could very well have ended up as, an afternoon of two weirdos wandering alone through a strange and unfamiliar town, became a night of racuous bar comedy between two old pals and a pair of cut-off gloves.
And thus concluded the trial run of DRINKING BUDDY – THE GAME.
Diagnosis: Smash.
EPILOGUE
…There’s many towns out there in this wonderful country of ours. And even more bars. And with an insatiable thirst for beer and a tuxedo t-shirt on my back, I plan to explore them all…
..and as I begin my next journey into unknown drinking territory, I may find myself alone and nervous, sucking down beers and cigarettes with the rest of the lost souls at the bar. But I shall drink heartily, drink with a strong peace of mind, knowing that somewhere out there, somewhere behind that curtain of smoke and neon lights and the dancing beauties, I might just find a drinking buddy doing the exact same thing…
To be continued…
