Beer and Pot

 

I’ve been drinking in public just about every night for the last 15 years.  I don’t have an apartment and I’m too claustrophobic to drink in bars so thats what I do.  Drink under the stars as the gods of alcohol intended.  I like to pound a few at the end of the day to relax and unwind and/or get some kind of demented buzz going.   Usually I like to drink about 96 ounces of malt liquor every night over a five hour period.  Thats four 24 ounce cans of  Olde English malt liquor, 7.5% alcohol content so its about twice as strong as regular beer.  “More bang for the buck,” as they say.  And I often like to smoke a couple of joints in between beers to add a touch of surreality to the proceedings.

I don’t know if this makes me an alcoholic.  My line is: “I’m a drunk not an alcoholic.”  Because that sounds less clinical and definitive.  I consider myself pretty much of a functional drunk. Or, at the least, a semi-fuctional drunk.   I’m usually a quiet, happy drunk.  And I like people more when I’m drunk so that really helps.  But lately I’ve been beginning to wonder.

I got a little retarded last night. I was sitting on a dark, secluded bench on the Berkeley campus pursuing that chemically-induced state of happiness. Hoping to reach that coveted “I-don’t-give-a-flying-fuck” state as I call it.   Now to keep from getting drinking-in-public tickets I’m pretty discreet.  I pour some of the beer into a coffee cup and then hide the rest of the can inside my backpack.  This ploy usually works, but not last night.  For some reason I put the can of beer into my pack up-side down.  Something I realized shortly after when I reached into my pack and everything inside was soaked with beer, as well as my pack reeking of beer.  A tragic waste of malt liquor.

So I take that as a sign to get the hell out of there.  I walk up to the end of the campus to this lighted spot where I can survey the damage, dry off my shit, and pound my last beer of the night.  So I take all my soggy stuff out of my pack and reach for the last can of beer, only to realize I had left it back at the bench along with my bag of cat food.  So I quickly pack up my stuff and rush back to the bench to get it before somebody grabs it.  Fortunately its still there.  So I go from being a complete idiot to a guy who’s still on top of things and has his act together.  So I pour the beer into the cup, reach into my pack to take out my Sony Walkman so I can listen to some tunes, only to realize I had left my radio at the other spot.  So now I’ve got to quickly pack up my stuff AGAIN and rush back up to that spot to get my radio before somebody grabs it.  But when I get there the radio is already gone.  Fuck!  I’m starting to feel like a ping pong ball rushing back and forth from one mess up to another.

I’m sure there’s a moral to this story, but I’m not sure I want to know what it is.