German Beer, Quaaludes and TV Dinners: A Cautionary Tale (1296 hits)
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Submitted by <MirrorManMereMan@DIE_SPAMMERS_DIEusa.com> (View user info) at 2003-11-22 17:16:19 EST
Stupid story, but 25 years past the statute of limitations, I'm in a mood to write a story I've been meaning to get down for a long time, so here goes:
I was about 19 and still living with Mom and Dad. They go to our place at the beach for Memorial Day weekend, and I stay home, hoping for some good parties. Bummer of bummers, most of my friends are gone too, but I find out too late. About the only person around was my long-time friend Lee. He had the same agenda. Phone calls made, we realize the only thing our two pathetic souls have to do is to catch a buzz and play guitar together all weekend.
Well, crap, nothin' to do except hang out together in his parents house or in mine. He comes over around 4:00pm on that Friday afternoon, with his music gear, and—memory be damned—one of us had laid in a stash of 4 Quaaludes. This was back when the real thing was still available to any enterprising kid who wanted to look for them. While he's hauling his stuff down to the basement and wiring it all up, I grab my fake ID and go to the beer store 2 miles away and grab a case of Augustinerbrau darks. They haven't asked for my ID in over a year and a half.
We start drinking like shore leave German U-boat sailors, and as the day turns into night, divvy out the 'lude stash—in half-pill doses— over the course of the evening. We spent hours bending and weaving longer 2 guitar jams out of Dead, Dylan and CSNY tunes than their authors.
Come 2:30am or so, we put down the guitars because, for some reason, our fingers no longer work. Up out of the basement we climb. Lee has a seat in the kitchen, still working on an Augie Dark, and I go into the living room to slap an LP on Mom and Dad's big ol' Zenith console stereo. As I recall, it was Yes's "Tales from Topographic Oceans" or possibly Rick Wakeman's "The Six Wives of Henry VIII". I stretch out on the living room couch for just a few minutes, or so I thought.
Lee comes charging into the Living Room, screaming about how he MUST have a Swanson TV dinner. I tell him we have nothing of the sort, and to make whatever he can find in the kitchen..."Anything you want, ma-a-a-a-a-n, I don't care." He insists it HAS to be a SWANSON turkey TV dinner with mashed potatoes, peas and its too-small puddle of bland apple sauce, and he tries to drag me off the couch, pleading about how quick a drive it'll be to get to the all-night 7-11. A friendly, but EXTREMELY rowdy wrestling match ensues. The last part of it that I remember was pulling my noggin out of one of his many headlocks and relenting...whining something like: "Well, it's probably not a good idea, but after this adrenaline-pumping throw down, I think I can drive OK to the convenience store." In all reality, I'm sure is was shorter and more slurred than that, but you get what I mean.
We hop in my van and I start the 5 mile drive to the store. I soon realize I have to keep one eye closed, because my vision was seriously messed up, but at this point I was commited, and we were on a mission. I make the drive successfully, maintaining speed and course pretty damn accurately, and about a 100 yards from the 7-11 we see that the parking lot is occupied by 3—or is that 6!—local police cruisers, there to check up on things as they always do and to grab coffee and trade their notes for the night shift.
Though I implore Lee to stay in the van, he decides he MUST come in and pick out and pay for his own TV dinner. He, having recovered from a severely broken back 18 months previously and he, who ambulates like he's drunk, even sober- (and still does, 30 years later) silly-walks into the store behind me, and is almost knocked over by the weight and pressure of the heavy glass and steel door and it's hydraulic-closure device. Somehow, miraculously, we are completely ignored by the cops as we get our wee-hours munch materials. We plow back into the front seats of my van and make our way back to my house.
Oven preheated, Lee's Swanson turkey TV dinner with mashed potatoes, peas and pathetic apple sauce puddle go in for the 40 minute recommended cook time. We sit at the kitchen table, incredulously recounting our stupid luck. Schnockered, back-slapping self-congratulations all around, we concluded that we were the suavest wastoids on the planet, the way we were able to navigate to the store, shop in the midst of a bunch of prick local cops and get back home without calling any undue attention to ourselves. I ate my 2 dried out hamencheeze sammiches and potato chips, and Lee drank another Augie, waiting for his pre-fab food to bake up golden.
I head back into the living room to restart the album where I had left off earlier, before I was head-locked off the couch. Deep, forest-cutting-snoring-pass-out-wasted sleep makes it's inevitable visit—rock hard and laser fast. I'm down and I'm not comin' back up.
10:30am the following morning:
My legs throw themselves off the couch, and I'm staggering and weaving into a standing position before I even know why. I wasn't listening to my nose, I was being commanded by the dire needs of my throat and tongue. I fall toward the kitchen for cold water—PLEASE, MY KINGDOM FOR A GLASS OF WATER!—and find Lee curled up on the rug under my kitchen table. Ignoring how sadly funny that is, just by itself, I stick my face into the sink under a full blast, drinking and washing the stone dust out of my eyes, and I start to notice the stink that my nose ignored just 30 seconds earlier. And the fact that the stove-top oven timer had been buzzing in my ears since I woke up. Slowly, I come to realize that I didn't remember seeing any utensils, nor an empty aluminum tray on the table under which Lee was still passed out.
I shut off the water and yank open the oven door. The last wisps of dead-dinner-smoke roll out and float toward the smoke alarm. Poor guy, didn't even know how to properly prepare the bake-o-meal for the oven. He had completely removed the top foil, even though the instructions only require you to peel it back over the apple sauce puddle. The turkey was cremated, the mashed potatoes were flaky like the burnt pages of a book and the previously green peas looked mostly like smoking peppercorns.
Lee wakes up right about then, probably from my streams of "HOLY S**T! proclamations. I kinda give him a little hell about passing out while he had food in the oven. We are at once amused, embarrassed and horrified that we made the trip to the 7-11, but as we laugh about it, we both self-consciously inspect ourselves to make absolutely sure we weren't sitting in a jail cell. A quick look out the window confirms that my van is parked neatly in the driveway with no damage. Whew.
Lee decides he's still hungry, and suggests a breakfast run. I turn out of my kitchen chair, and walk away from him, rolling my eyes, and bring the last two Augies from the refrigerator. I cracked the tops on both and handed him one. We both take a long, eye-opener pull from our beers and he looks across the table at me. I'm expecting the same kind of pleading and cajoling he handed me the night before, trying to convince me that a big bacon and eggs breakfast is just what we need. I'm relieved knowing we're both too spent to get into anothor wrestling match over it.
"How come you only have one lens in your glasses?' he says, looking over the shoulder of the bottle as he takes his second slug.
I pull my plastic-framed aviators off my face and have a look. Sure enough, one of my 20/80 lenses is missing. My braincells start cranking, and I get up and walk into the living room. After a minute or so of one-eyed scanning and feeling around, I found the missing lens under the couch cushion where my head had been resting, just before my best buddy put me in a headlock.
I popped it back in the frame and returned to the kitchen.
"Geez! No wonder I had such a hard time seeing the road last night. It's amazing we didn't get busted!"
"So...you wanna go get breakfast?" Lee says.
I said OK. I only drove as far as the beer store for anther case. We returned to the house, ate leftovers and worked on killing our hangovers.
User Reviews
Submitted by MirrorManMereMan (user info) at 2003-11-23 15:59:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Apparently, Mozilla doesn't wanna keep and honor my Über-cookie.
The MirrorMan takes full credit for the "RandomJoe" post below.
Submitted by Random Joe at 2003-11-23 15:46:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Do all stories require an explosive, shocking, amazing, unbelievable ending?
Real life events usually slide back into obscurity in a slow taper [Über-style metaphor/allegorical reference follows so I can score big points] much like a giant, painful shit log—if it's really kind—will allow one's sphincter to ease back into resting position, leaving the human extruder relieved, and perhaps with only a wee bit of residual pain. The story, written out, is analogous to that time you had your picture taken with the strippper. Only she wasn't hot, she told you to get lost, and your friends laughed ast you for being such a lame ass loser. The fun is in the telling, and in the embellishment. At the end of the stories we tell, we go back to being regular Joes and Jills, going to work and paying our bills..
It's not always about the destination.
The journey's the thing.
It's a rare young pup who truly understands that.
Submitted by coley (user info) at 2003-11-23 02:30:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
well-written, but somewhat anti-climactic.
not bad.
Submitted by MickGinny (user info) at 2003-11-22 21:55:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
MickWhatsHisName wrote:
MickGinny, its MickGinny.
Submitted by MickGinny (user info) at 2003-11-22 21:54:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Hey man, thanks for the explanation of posting/rating and writing i didnt ask for.
i guess you thougt i insulted you or something.
this is the deal, this experience that you consider a wild time may be wild time for some. for others, driving impaired, taking drugs, brushes with the law, and passing out with something in the oven are the kinds of things considered tame regular occurances.
so again, i read the whole thing, which is rare. usually when i begin reading something here it turns into incoherent blather. so, i think that you write well, you had me all the way, again which is rare, then it ends like a partridge family episode.
Submitted by MirrorManMereMan (user info) at 2003-11-22 20:09:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
MickWhatsHisName wrote:
>>>".... The last part of it that I remember was pulling my dick out of Lee's ass"
I'm happy for everyone for whom this comment inspires a semi-witty response. I'll call you all on the carpet to write something that doesn't stoop to anal sex, G.C.'s references to the 7 dirty words, stuff Lenny Bruce dismissed and shat out as being lame..indeed people here that have even half an original thought.
Again...I'm just telling stories around a campfire. True stories by a guy that doesn't have a degree in anything besides hard knocks.
http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1069524755456612072
Submitted by MirrorManMereMan (user info) at 2003-11-22 19:44:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I've read quite a lot here, Mick, during sporadic visits over the past 4 monbths. I've gotten to know the key players and their attitudes and personas through their myriad posts, and I recognise what those folks do for fun. It's just today that I decided to post a couple things.
And, hmm...big Mick decided to comment on one of my first load-dumps.
I've considered why I continued reading, and it wasn't for the florid, sordid, vulgar, taunting, button-pushing, X-TREME-ly crappy-contrived-to-elicit-responses writing—I can find that pretty much anywhere online. BoingBoing and SlashDot and Ars Technica—and associated blogs-n-linx—keep me satiated in that regard. I kept reading because I found it an interesting insight to the lengths that people will go to in order to elevate their [open quote]popularity[close quote] rating in a relatively anonymous venue. That's an odd conundrum, because most of the posts by the regulars here are commenting on other posts, and not on grander issues of the day. That makes it insular, and interesting. I'm a Host on the Forums for a Major software conglomerate, and I find regulars there insular as well, and the parallels I see are that people who dedicate so much time to an issue-specific forum have a tendancy to forget about the rest of meatspace in their writing. Is that a bad thing? It's not for me to determine...
I've submitted stuff I've written to forums dedicated to the —*ahem*—ART of writing. Generally, it was ripped to shreds by people who had overly inflated egos, people who have nothing better to do than explain at length why my typographical errorr is an insight to my entire life.. I tell real stories, and do my best to make them interesting.
This ain't Shakespeare here, scrutinized and edited to be consumed for centuries to come. It's one guy, telling some real stories around a campfire.
Submitted by MickGinny (user info) at 2003-11-22 19:05:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
"A friendly, but EXTREMELY rowdy wrestling match ensues. The last part of it that I remember was pulling my dick out of Lee's ass"
you know, i read the whole thing. which says something about the way you write.
however, i was dissapointed. i was expecting something like you flip on the tv and see your faces on the news wanted for robbing the liquor store. then stumble across the cash register drawer tray on the living room floor and neither of you remember jack shit due to the qualudes and beer.
not that you wake up and realize you have murdered a turkey dinner man!
Submitted by poisonyourkids (user info) at 2003-11-22 18:35:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
excelent fucking story man. i have had many a night like that. i think you hafta go throw something simmilar to really appreciate something like that.