Last night I believe I broke double digits in terms of the number of gin and tonics that were filtered through my liver. I blame Marisa, the bartender. That woman makes magical drinks, and honestly, the best gin and tonics I've ever had.

So, around 3:30, I found that I was drunk, bored, and in the company of others who shared that dilemna. What to do? Help me - oh drinking gods! What activity, what mischieve will rescue me from hanging out in a hotel boardroom suite watching dusk till dawn and text-messaging buddies? Am I doomed to a night of drunk boredness? (Which is worse than sober boredness, because when I'm sober, at least I have the option of reading. Have you ever tried to read drunk? Not easy, mate.)

There is a very easy answer to that question in high school and college, and in a moment of complete clarity, the solution presented itself at once: pick on the one friend who left with a girl. So it began. First text messaging: "are you alone?" "do you mind giving a play-by-play" "We can hear you guys all the way up here" Then he quit responding and we had to find another method of harrassment. Hang-up phone calls. For a while, he answered, and we laughed with self-impressed delirium as time and again he answered and we hung up. We are sooooooo clever... But then the bloke turned off his cell phone, which I imagine he thought was soooooo clever, even though it wasn't clever at all. So, we had to call his hotel room. Can you believe he answered the phone there like 5 times?

Well, as drunkards are wont to do, we quickly bored of our game - especialy when he stopped playing... and then a friend had an idea of pure genius. Do you want to know what it was? of course you do.

We began filling up a trash can from my suite with water. Ice. Cold. Water. We snuuuuuuuck downstairs and leaned the trashcan against his room door which opened inward. The totally embarassing picture you have in your head is probably exactly right. There were the three of us - we're literally drunk, giggling, and trying to do the tippy-toe-bunny-hands-cartoon-robber-sneak down hotel halls, while carrying a bloody heavy trashcan of slopping freezing water.

So, we get this trashcan leaned up against his door, I'm waiting with the camera (yes, we wanted documentation of this misdemeanor) everything is ready for this poor fella to answer the door with a washcloth over his wang, and get his mid-coital tootsies soaked with freezing water. There are three things that we'd imagine can mess up great sex: 1. hearing your male partner scream like a 12 girl when he opens his hotel room door, 2. having his wet, arctic toes and come back to bed, after you've worked up a rather pleasant heat / glow, and three, trying to figure out a use for his flaccid wang and empty scrotum, as his balls have actually retreated to pre-descension levels to try to get away from the flood of ice chips and water.

So, bucket in place, we knock really hard and run away. we wait, and wait for 10 or 15 drunk seconds, which feels more like 10 or 15 minutes. And nothing. Apparently he's figured out that we are up to something naughty, and as he can't see anyone actually outside his door, he figures its us, and he's trying to end the game by not responding. Bad mistake.

Clearly we had to up our end of the game. So we had to steal some political materials from his opponents, and hang the 6-foot-banner outside his door so he'd have something to look at through the key-hole. Maybe then he'd open up. Knock knock knock. Run Away. Wait. Nothing.

Dammit!! Now we're really irked, and one guys suggests pullling the fire alarm, and I responded that misdemeanors are one thing, felonies are another, and I don't want to go to jail in this weird F-ing state.

So, after a bunch more calls, a bunch more knocks, we ended up sitting around the living area of my suite, being too tipsy to admit defeat, and too tipsy to know how to get him to open the door.

He finally calls and says, "will you a$$holes cut it out!!!!!" I was fast on my feet. "Dude, we finally left the bottle of wine outside your door. Boss-man wanted to do something nice and this is the thanks we get?"

As he was on speaker phone (on our end), we all leaned in, and waited with baited breath as we heard his door open, the high screaming, and then the long string of explatives. We didn't stop laughing for probably 30 minutes.

I'm now considering a carreer as a professional drunk. I think I'm pretty damn good at that stuff.

Inspired by Aimsky, I've decided to share a babysitting story.

When I was in High School, I used to babysit for all manner of evil offspring. Sometimes they were my siblings. Once it was a family of boys who wanted me dead.

ah, yes. enter swirling fog to indicate a trip back in time...

They wanted to play cowboys and indians. Except, these charming little cherubs who were 5 and 7 years old, wanted to use real arrows. Hunting arrows. With razor sharp tips.

With visions of - let's see - injuries and lawsuits dancing in my head, I tried the "psychologist approved" distraction techniques. 

"Movie?"

"NO!"

"Legos?"

"NO!"

"Camping?" "Build a Fort?" "Paint?"

"NO! NO! NO!"

Out to the garage ran the little f*ckers. They start yelling at me. I start reasoning madly with everything that I've got. Arguing back and forth with the seven year old, I didn't notice the five year old.

While I was distracted, he set up a target. That sneaky little bastard! Using big brother as an argument decoy...

While I'm looking at the five year old, telling him to take it down, the seven year old pushes me, because I was standing between him and the bow and arrows. He is both quick and wiggly. Caught off guard, I realize he has taken the arrows in his possession.  

I then resorted to the "not psychologist approved" action of fighting with big bro for the arrows. I am bigger, so I win. I run into the house with a screaming seven year old and a screaming five year old in close pursuit.

I lock them out.  

Looking for a place to hide the arrows, I start dialing the mother. Bitch doesn't answer.

I hide the arrows in a safe place, out of reach. Over to the door, I let the demon spawn back in the house. They scream and cry. They hate me. I tell them that I don't care, and if they're really allowed to play with real arrows they can wait until their mother comes back.

Then he says it. "I hate you! And I'm going to kill you!"

He runs for his dad's closet. Once there, he digs furiously for the back of the closet. 

I grab the little terror around the waist. His bedroom doesn't lock, and he has one of those connecting bathrooms, so I'm left playing the "human baracade game" while dialing the mother of the beast. I'm back and forth between the two doors that he can get out of. Keeping him in, while yelling at the five year old who's yelling at me for not letting his brother shoot me.

Eventually, they begin to simmer down. They realize that at some point, their parents will get back. 

I begin negotiations: continued good behavior in exchange for a revised story to be given to their parents. The little suckers went along with it.

While they were (finally) watching a movie, I sneak out to check their dad's closet. Sure enough, in the back, there's a gun. A big one.

I felt no remorse for lying to them through my teeth. And when their mother got back, she heard EVERYTHING. I took my pay, her apologies, and an oath to never darken their door again.

Update: The father, mother, and both boys called me later. I entertained apologies from all of them, and was assured that the boys had been severly disciplined with MAJOR timeouts.

Timeouts?!?!?

For this reason - if for no other - I have decided that my children will receive spankings.

11:59:57, 11:59:58, 11:59:59.

The ranchhand standing on the West side of the deserted road lifted a calloused hand away from his holster. Gnarled fingers grip the brim of his worn hat as he slowly removes it and lets it fall to his right side. With his left hand, he pulls down the dirty bandana that covers his face.

What is this? Sorrow showing on the face of the unfeeling? Grief filling the eyes of a killer?

Seconds tick past, leaving the "draw and die" moment forever lost on the gears of Old Father. Each second echoes through the empty rooms, empty roads, and empty hearts of the duelers.

Slowly, the other ranchhand mirrors the gestures, like a shadow in a trance. Hat, bandana, grief, repentence.

The first ranchhand takes two steps forward. The second follows.

The pidgeon and rocking chair have quieted, and seem to lean in, captivated and confused by this unexpected change in the storyline.

With each step toward the center, little changes occur in the ghost town.

Step. The broken glass window in the saloon is now whole again.

Step. Dirty-boarded sidewalks feel a clean glow wash over them.

Step. A store-keeper materializes, and flips the sign on his door from "Closed" to "Open".

Step. From somewhere in an apartment a baby giggles.

Step. A horse-drawn wagon clips down a cross-street.

Step. Step. Step.

The two are almost nose to nose. Each extends a hand slowly, in an awkward gesture of peace and friendship. As their fingers touch and their hands join, the moment is serenaded by MoPed Mel as he resumes his antics at the bar room piano.

The folly and pride of the last few months are melted away by their long-forgotten embrace. The wind washes over the town, removing the last traces of ignorance. For the first time in what seems like a lifetime, the town finds itself loud, bright, clean, and alive.

It's good to have you back, friend. Indeed, my heart is singing.

 

Two leathery ranchhands stand beneath an 11:55 sun. They wear hard, dusty clothes that long ago replaced the stiffness of starch for the stiffness of red desert sand. Even their bandanas don't move with the wind. They stare at each other in silence, waiting like statues, as an antique iron clock "Old Father Time" creaks and grinds his hand up the right ride of his face.

Off the gritty road, in a dark corner of the wooden walking path, a pidgeon flutters nervously in an empty saloon. The echo of his wings is the slow crunching of sand under an abandoned rocking chair.

The ranchhands are unmoved by the subtle worries of this dirty forgotten town.

Once this town was alive. The saloon was filled with gayity. Loose women drank liquor, smoked cigarettes, and flirted with the local sheriff. Men sang in loud, burboun-laced voices of legends and prosperity and soft-legged women. The ranchhands were fast friends.

How the town died, no one really knows. But now the last two ranchhands wait for Old Father to hide his eyes behind the veil of noon-day.  

Some people are secret-misers. The are the trust goblins of the real world.

In their musty, winding, candle-lit halls, they store the bits of information that they've harvested off the naive and unsuspecting. They trade it for more secrets, like currency on the stock market. They gather, stash, and trade. Gather. Stash. Trade. Rarely spending - and certainly not wasting - they become mystified by the scent of their loot.

The scent of abuse. The scent of manipulation. The scent of power.

Their eyes glisten with the metalic happiness of their secret hordes. Enchanting, hypnotizing, the secrets sink golden talens into the minds of the misers and steal their attention. The secrets keep the trust goblins from hearing the small voice of conscience that nags at the back of their minds.

"Once bitten twice shy" it pleads.

But the trust goblins don't hear. They only burn with lust. Lust for the secrets they have yet to add to their stock-piles.  

"