Roger: Chapter One - Vodka Sours

I have always been uncertain as to if I have ever slept in my life. You would think that the fact that I wake up at all would suggest it, but the feeling of complete exhaustion and doom acts as a fairly decent counterpoint in my book (and this is my book, so you might as well just roll with it). The best thoughts of my life have occurred between six and seven in the morning. Unfortunately, the racing of my mind makes it hard to settle down and actually rest. And my parents wondered why I never wanted to get up for the fucking paper route. Since I have begun getting some sort of fucked up for the past six months or so, the hangovers have made it nearly impossible to even get out of bed. Maybe you don’t understand hangovers. Maybe you haven’t had the experience of not being able to eat for days because of a few hours of debauchery. Allow me to explain, you poor lost soul.

We will begin from the end and move back to the beginning. My current disposition is that which I have experienced nearly every morning since the summer between my second and third year of college (I don’t know why I started drinking so heavily. You’re probably smart, you figure it out). A weak night of casual drinking is eight to ten drinks. A good night I have no idea. I’m classified as a moderate to heavy binge drinker. I start at about eight PM on non-work days (I try not to drink until much later at work). I’ll stop around four AM. I’ll eventually pass out, hopefully but not always in my own bed. I wake up too early and just lay around for awhile. Whenever I decide to sit up is when I start getting the “swallows” as I like to call them. I then run to the bathroom and puke twice. I brush my teeth and make a pot of coffee then take one of about four beer shits. On a bad day I won’t be able to eat and any real physical activity will just make me dizzy. Some people talk about their cures for this sickness. These people clearly don’t actually drink that much (my suggestion: slow paced video games and pornography).

(Ravari)

I had to drop Eli off due to his ability to sleep at night (it’s one of his worst qualities). We left Mayne before close for the first time since I can remember due to Preston’s obnoxious tale of some broad he thinks he has a date with. Also, ever since I started working there the place just makes me want to crawl under a table and watch the people through the holes in the shitty wood. Eli can’t stand the women and sometimes I wonder why he comes at all. He’s always been one to hold moral integrity over the wetness of his cock. He slipped back two rock bourbons and was toasted. I throw back free smashies with the Asian bartender with the Spanish name and begin to find everything more annoying. By the fifth shot I’m about to go postal so we slip out the back. Eli fell asleep on the 7 minute drive back home. He might be the worst boyfriend in the world, but I’m sure Laur still loves that he’s a cheap fucking date.

I would have just sat around and geeked for several hours but as it was a Monday I got the inevitable call from Cat. Cat always got drunk on Mondays, as she found it made her week go a bit faster. I once caught her waking up and mixing a G&T at eight in the morning but she gave me some hooplah about it making it easier for her to sleep that night. She called saying she wanted to see me and I bit and crawled over there like the little bitch that I was. I got to Cat’s at or around three. Her roommates were sitting around drinking shit vodka and watching shit TV. Before going upstairs I got the usual rounds from the four cunts.

“So Jude, how’s academic probation going?” asked one of them; she had a terrible nickname I could never remember. Cat had the tendency to tell everyone everything she knew about me. Every time I bitched about it she would just tell me it was because she was so intrigued by me and I should be happy with that.

“Just about as good as it should be,” I replied as nicely as I could muster.

“So Mr. Film Theory Major, what do you think of Aladdin? Or are Disney movies too beneath you to give a shit about?” snottily asked the fat one who always seemed to have some awkward scumbag hanging on them. I would go into the complexities of the development of animation from the 1970s on, specifically the two dimensional department of the Disney Corporation, but what was the fucking point. I just stared at her for a moment, took the shot out of her hand and slow sipped the fucker like I was Thomas fucking Crowne. She called me an asshole and told me to go fuck myself. I smiled and turned around real slow towards the stairs. My swagger was interrupted by a new face. Tall girl with wavy hair and a big smile, a cardigan two sizes too big that I’d bet had sentimental value.

“Funny seein’ you here, deary,” she said to me coyly. Deary? Deary? Who the fuck says deary? More specifically, who do I know that says deary to me like that would go over well? This was a constant problem of mine, people remembering me like I gave them three abortions and me acting as dumbfounded as a Mormon call-girl.

I pretended like I knew who she was and asked her the normal “how’s it goin’s” and what not. I would have tested my interrogation skills but knew my window of opportunity with Cat was closing pretty fast. The vodka on these bitches breath was starting to get stale and I knew how Cat has a tendency to pass out early. I said goodnight and walked up the creeky carpeted stairs to Cat’s room.

Cat was as much of a scumbag as a twenty-year-old girl could be. She was dirt poor and always asking for money, but for no more reason than she couldn’t hold a job and she did too much blow. Her room was a mess of crappy books, photography, and posters. She had a mattress on the floor with a cheap TV at the edge. She was watching a terrible B horror flick with the subtitles on. I hate it when people do that; how is it that people can’t pay enough attention to a fucking movie to hear what the people are saying.

“S’about time asshole,” she slurred at me. I dropped my hat on the ground and sat at the edge of the mattress. She got up and started shoving her tongue in my ear in an attempt at sex appeal. She thinks I like it because it makes me quiver, but for the record, I fucking don’t. I reference Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn for my aversion towards fucking slugs in my ears.

What a terrible fucking moment. I start to take my shirt off and she switches off the light. I know all too well that the only possibility for the rest of the night is terrible sex and an argument. Same shit every time. I could walk just stand up and walk away. I could. But I’m fucking bored so that’s how things will turn. I don’t make excuses or blame other people for why I’m so unhappy with my life; I’m quite aware that it’s my fault. But, I’m simply not that good of a person and there’s nothing else to do in this town.

I crawled away early in the morning before she woke up. I couldn’t get off on account of the liquor and didn’t feel like looking her in the face. I snuck down the stairs and headed for the door. Before I left I opened her fridge and stole a yogurt and her coffee. She would notice the coffee missing and would know it was me. I think this is what people refer to as “spicing up the relationship.” It’s so twisted I couldn’t stop smiling while I ran to my car.

I love it when I start my car in the morning after a long night of partying. It smells like cigarettes and sweat and the music is up so loud it makes me jump. On the drive back I start to piece together everything that happened the night before. I’m the type of person that thinks back on past events and gets embarrassed. It’s one of my most masochistic elements.