Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 17:33:39 -0700
From: B Keeper <silvershimmer@earthlink.net>
Subject: Let's Just All Get Drunk and Fuck Our Ruttin' Brains Out"

	"Let's Just All Get Drunk and Fuck Our Ruttin' Brains Out"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman

Inebriated is a funny word when you come to think of it.
sounds so drunk, like the guy who invented the word was
bombed to the moon and back when he came up
with it. It has tiny little champagne bubbles in it and sways
when you look at it the right way, back and forth. And of
course he was drunk, the student who thought this, me, he
was lovingly roaringly drunk just like Elmer Gantry at the
start of the book and the movie of the same name.


Drunk is good. Drink drinks you and shoves you into itself
and you are safe and sound and on wheels and coasters and
you just want to giggle for no particular reason
other than you can giggle and the sound coming out of your
mouth sounds like sour sick milk bottle tops furling
(furling? little drunk word too there, nice baby) out into the
cold November air with the dark all round cuddly like and I
can't think of anything but why the lamppost I am so cliché
like holding onto does not dispense a seven foot tall rabbit
named

Harvey for me to converse with. Because Harvey is the only
one who would converse with me, because I have told my
ex friends back at Tony's Pizzeria (cliché thy name is life)
that I was once in love with a boy name of Joel and he did
not love me or like me terribly much, but I delighted in the
gainsay of his being irritated when I was around.


And Sassy Sue had leaned over her frosty beer mug, an
anchovy clinging to her prim lip, not that the top lip was not
prim as well, and she asked, "A boy? Did you say a
boy?" And her glasses were steamed up from the steam heat
down at Tony's to the place where Louie dwells or however
it went, and her eyes were hidden behind the fog but I knew
they were like little raisin dots, and I nodded drunkenly, my
head heavy on my suddenly too thin too long stalk neck.
And she grimaced and she tapped one of her long
bloodless fingers on the checkered table cloth, and her face
was a pale cameo that looked like it had sand just under the
skin.


And I nodded, feeling reckless, feeling bold, feeling fed up,
because people had considered me sexless, had always
considered me too sexless to drink or have sex or have
any kind of fun at all, not even leer, not even look at Hustler
magazine, not smoke, get high, get out of the city, get out
of my clothes and let everyone laugh at my hugely
underfed body, for I was ashamed I did not have a penis and
balls, though I do have a penis and balls, no one really
believed I had a penis and balls, and I did not say things like
penis and balls, well, I could say balls as in billiard balls or
dodge balls, but not the kind that did not hang between my
legs though of course I did have them and they did hang
between my legs.


So I smiled, emitted a gassy burp, and looked right at her,
and point blank, said, "That's right, you little stick up the
butt classic books reader you, I loved a boy, and I
loved him to the nth degree, whatever an nth is, and
whatever a degree means when it's stuck on the nth, and I
loved him with all my heart and all my body, and he was
beautiful, and fuck you."

I had never said "fuck you" in my life. I had never even said
"the F word" cause it would have been like saying fuck you,
but I said fuck you to Slinky Sue and she doubled
up like a spider in her black blouse and jeans and her black
sweater on her coat hanger shoulders and I thought she was
going to spit venom out at me, and I stuck my jaw out
prodigiously at her, just like in the Gold Medal paperback
hard boiled detective novels of my youth, and Randy sweet
shy delicate kind Randy sitting next to her looked at me,
and said, "Joel?"

I nodded and took another sip of my beer. We had been to
Ike's Ice House for earlier in the evening, hard liquor mind
you, and I drank and they watched and were amazed
because I had always been so goody two shoes around
them, and in truth, all my word to say when you are drunk,
try it some time) and they had said, is something
wrong?, did someone die?, why are you drinking so much?,
why are you drinking at all?, are you really you?, is this one
of those Candid Camera stunts?, just where is Alan Funt
hiding?, and I was too busy tipping the glass and
occasionally the bottle into my greedy dirty sponge feeling
mouth to answer them.

I felt like a rubber fire plug. Yeah, I can't explain that image
either, but I felt it.

And Randy in his soft almost girlish voice, Mr. Sweetheart
of Sigma Chi, boy of brown hair that was almost in an Afro,
boy of water logged looking finger tips, boy of tall
and boy of poetry writing and drawing beauty, and I said
yes, again, and he said, "The Joel
I know, the Joel we know?" I nodded. And Randy and Sue
who was now turned from me and curled sideways on the
seat in our booth and picking at her front teeth with her left
thumb, my what long clear nails she had, I had never
noticed before, because drink makes one not notice things
and notice pin prick things at the very same time, booze thy
name is enigma, though it's hard to say enigma when you're
drunk, or when I'm drunk, rather, I can say prodigious, but
not enigma, one of those endless questions to which there
are never answers.

"You mean," Scary Sue said to her finger tip as she picked
her nails, and looked over at Randy, her face like a
bloodless meringue pie in the orange lights of the stuffy
pizza restaurant, though of course who would want a
bloody meringue pie to begin with?,
but this is her face I'm talking about, "you mean like, sex?
You mean, like want him?"

So I said "Sure, Sue, what is this suddenly 1948? Just like
you and your boyfriend who is my roommate in the dorm at
this little university in the South where only three males here
have long hair and I'm one of them--I've never been good
at exposition--and I want to throw up now, so I think I shall
step out into the cold."  They went with me. I
was tumbling inside and out. My guts were playing that
song "Kookie, Kookie, Lend MeYour Comb" (man, that'd
make anyone barf, especially  the killer ending--"babe,
you're the ginchiest").

So I went outside and puked into the wind, while Sue and
Randy went the other direction, and I had no doubt that
Randy who was friends with Joel who put up with me
was going to tell Joel who was friends with Randy who did
not like me or not like me, but I always imagined Joel and
Randy getting it on together and that would be the best way
or them to get it on together because getting in on apart
would make no sense and the world must make sense.

Especially to a drunk. And I am this evening in November
unabashedly drunkerreeny, or however it's spelled. So after
I spilled my emotional guts to Sue and Randy in Pepe's or
Tony's or whatever the hell; look, for me to say even I
loved Joel was spilling my guts, and after I spilled more of
my guts out here on the sidewalk, in the picture window, so
everybody eating their pizzas could distinguish what pizzas
look like going into the mouth and what they look like when
they are disengaging from the mouth, I decided to go to
Elllington Hall and tell Joel I loved him, and if he could just
maybe hold me for thirty seconds then the night would not
be full of enamel white that I seemed at the
moment to be pulling off from the dark with my fingernails
which were for some reason getting bloody.

So I lurched back to campus two blocks away and stumbled
and fell cross the quad. And the lights changed into all kinds
of multi hued blops, and the darkness was like sand paper
beneath my skin and the wind howled and I felt like a ship
that had discovered finally there was nothing in me but Joel,
there was only the first time I saw him, and he shirtless, that
Saturday afternoon, he sitting under a summer tree on the
quad on the green green grass, reading a paperback of "An
American Tragedy"  (natch) and his chest was so
pale and his tits were so pale and his ribs were visible and
his golden sun hair came down to and past his naked
shoulder blades and I just stood there transfixed, I stood
there considering the machinery of love and devotion and
what it means to lay your life down for another human
being.

I have always been loyal to people who were never loyal to
me, mostly because I clung to them too much and because I
was too nice to them, and most of them also I can state
objectively were selfish sonsofbitches who took what they
wanted and then moved on, but they never took anything
from me but my trust and belief, and that's taking
everything.


But Joel there on the quad, Joel there with the sun and the
green tree shadows laying on him like a cloak for royalty, oh
God, I almost sank beneath the weight of the sheer terror
and devotion and worship I felt for him right at that
moment, and then the girl came to him, there was always a
girl and he smiled up at her and it was like he was going to
fly to the sun soon that face of smiles he lifted so easily up
to her in his world of kinder gravity, not my world of heavy
chained gravity, and they hugged and then they kissed and
his arms were around her and hers round his as she played
with his backbone, and they tangled their legs round one
another, and I stood there like a straight pencil on end, and
they kissed me because I had need of it.

They kissed me because I was trying so hard for them to do
so, and they let me in the middle of them and we were
clothe less and we were tonguing each other and we were
bronzed by the heavy mid summer sun and the windows of
the world were all inside us and we were looking out at the
world that wanted all three of us so badly, and she was
heavy breasted and Joel put his hands on me and then on
her, and we enveloped each other as though we were
created out of a summer misting, and fevers that diagonally
rushed down our bodies.


Joel and I were hard and our penises clung and clanged to
and with each other, and it was so good seeing this golden
boy with his small amount of pubic hair and his penis
elevated next to mine, while the girl with us wanted to
leaven us with promises of her own delicate caves and we
were all falling like autumn leaves slowly and reverently
toward the green green heavy bee fried grass, and it was as
though at the apex of the sun we had come to be with each
other as Joel kissed her ruby bright lips as I kissed his chest
and held to him and he was a raft of boy, he was a raft of
song that went through my skin and set off all these
wonderful alarums and excursions inside me that I never had
known existed before.

We were arms and legs and bodies and faces and hair and
we explored and we were little children and everything was
giggle making and everything was offering to the gods and I
held him as he held her and I felt the huge heavy
weightlessness of my love name of Joel and he made love to
the girl and I made love to him and we were in the tree
shadows and it was cool and damp and their tongues were
in the other's mouths, and I lay on Joel and felt his naked
buttocks and he was cream in my hands, and he told us he
wanted us with him forever more and he was a farmer boy
and we were his sheep, to lead, to instruct, to obey.

And then he and the girl walked away and I stood there with
my hard on and the day was hot and the night was to be a
long one and masturbation my truest friend would see me
through this one as it had all the others, but from now on it
would be a little bit sadder than it had been before. And I
watched them walk in the heat and the humidity and I saw
the sweat on Joel's swaying curving back, the two dimples
above his buttocks deliciously visible, o pull thy jeans lower,
beloved swain,and I went to class then, because I had to
because there was nothing else to do, but I felt so small and
scared and worthless, even more than I ever had before.

So this night I got drunk and I drifted on heads of beer and
shots of whiskey and I pounded the bar and I said just
where the hell is Sam and Doc and Miss Kitty anyway
dammit to hell and people laughed at me and I thought I'm
going to tell Randy and what's her name that Joel is my
flame and he is my fame and I will never live for another
moment than the moment I first saw Joel with his shirt off
and put my hands on his chest and pulled the sword out of
the stone and said I'm sick to death of being Miss Bygones
Must Be

Bygones, will you for god's sake touch that sucker and get
some speed on please and if you got some speed and what
do they call them in the ads in The Advocate?---poppers,
some of those too please cause I want to have the warm
sweaty with you and would appreciate it if you would have
the warm sweaty with me too, because the night is cold and
the summer sheen is gone and it's not glowy anymore
except in my eyeballs, so I told Sue and Randy, Randy who
I had a crush on, but Joel was the boy of my dreams, read
between the lines of you must.

And now Randy and Suemobile were in Joel's room and
they were saying remember that jerk? the third wheel what's
his name? hangs around us all the time? and Joel would look
at them curiously and Randy would put his hand on Joel's
shoulder for Randy was touchy feely with everyone but me,
and Sue would direct those raisin eyes beams at Joel and she
would say he wants you, he wants to have sex with you, he
wants to

FUCK you.

And Joel would not be scandalized, he would not be
shocked, he would just say in that whispery wonderful
always laugh in the back of his throat voice, "well, of course
I know that. I am not an idiot, I just don't want to hurt his
feelings, but he's like a Brillo pad and he itches me to hell
and back, so, mmmm, I guess this would be the time to get
rid of him, don't you think?" He would be sitting at his desk
in a straight backed chair, that he would be leaning back in
against the wall, the chair up on its two back legs, and he
would be dressed in autumn colors and his hair would be
washed and fluffed and his face would be pale as the moon
looked the first time you fell in love, and he would be shy,
and working his hands into each other, a nervous habit I had
noticed from time to time, and then he would put the chair
down on all legs and sit up and lean over and scratch the
knee of his left leg through his jeans, another nervous habit.

And he would not be the boy I loved and kissed with him
and his girl under the old elm tree, and he would not
remember that we rolled naked on the hot whirry grass, and
he would not remember how he had kissed her down there
and I had felt his tongue down there and how she squirmed
like a bundle of worms, I'm drunk, can't blame me for a
pretty pathetic simile every now and then--

--and she would kiss both of us on the mouth and we would
each go to her breasts, and she would hold us like we were
little babies as we leaned over to each other, lay our cheeks
on her chest and kissed one the other, me and Joel and her, I
don't know

her name, never did, not being sexist, just uninformed, and
that was us on a summer day in a university on the quad on
the Wabash far away.

	To all three of them I would fit in the description of
"junior partner" which term and this particular meaning of  I
would find in Peter Straub's "Ghost Story" some years
later; no matter how old one of the characters, Ricky was,
and he was quite old, to his friend, equally as old Sears,
acquaintance of lo these many years, Ricky (indeed the
name Ricky seems always like a child's, a teenager's name
to me; Rick sounds like an uneasy compromise) was still a
kid, a jerk, a nebbish, and no matter how old I would be
forced to live, this is how I would always be treated, I knew
so even then and long before then, so I giggled and I
blushed and I felt urine strong in my penis and had to hold it
inside and I giggled some more and blushed a little bit more
as I entered the mole hole corridor of Ellington and went
down the pale sick white walls bumping into them careening
off them every now and then to Room 135 which was HIS
room and I heard them in there.

I heard the acid tongue of Sexless Sue, I heard the hapless
girlish voice of Randy, and I heard Joel who did not say a
word but I heard his voice anyway, I heard his
presence, which was like warm comforting butter taste and
smell and feel coming out of the old scarred beat in a bit
wooden door. I heard Sue exclaim. I heard Randy say they
have a right to live too. I heard Joel say nothing and in
saying nothing he said all the words there would ever be to
say.

Chagrined the guts of my booze were running to sobriety
again. Chagrined, I told Seat Cushion Sue and Randy
Sweetheart that I loved Joel so they could tell Joel and he
would say well thank God and fate and the blue moon
above because I love him too so bring the lug in here and let
him tell me to my face which is of course pretty damned
adorable even if I do say so myself, my girlfriend of the
moment thinks he's pretty boss too so she would like to get
it on with the both of us, and now you two tattletales hit the
road and thanks loads.

I leaned against the door to Joel. My pores were leaking out
poison booze sweat in a terrible stench. I had come out of
Tony's or Mama Leone's or whatever it was called
without my coat and now in the hot hall I was shivering and
sweating buckets of blood for my Joel, and I leaned my
head against the door and I pounded my head against the
door and I kept trying to think what The Great Gatsby
would do in a situation like this cause I had read some of
the classics though not as many as Sue, who had read Moby
Dick and War and Peace twice, so she said, and she was so
goddam irritating, she was probably
telling the truth, just read these books to make the rest of us
look bad.

And Joel opened the door. I fell through it, straight on my
face like Sherlock Holmes with his magnifying glass looking
for a clue, and I turned over like a struggling slug turns
over, and looked up at Joel way up there very very tall
indeed and he looked down on me like I was moldy cheese
he had found in someone's refrigerator, cheese he
would be gathering up to throw away shortly. I burped and
laughed an unfunny laugh and I started sluringly telling him
about the time he and his girl of the moment, he had had
three more girls of individual moments since her, had made
love to.

I told him I had sucked his alabaster cock (believe me,
please please believe me)and I knew the taste of it and I
described what it looked like and his balls that were neat
little hen's eggs and how they pulled up tight when he was
having sex with us and how the girl and I liked to feel the
soft downy hair on his legs, (she calling him of course
Bunny because the soft hair felt like a rabbit's fur) I had to
tell him to remind him, to remind him of what we three had
done, and he looked through the blur in my eyes and the
blur in my eyes had gotten worse and I could not see his
reaction and this terrified me that I could not. I had to
know. I was drunk. Been through hell, give me a break,
man, please, just a little break.

And I could hear chairs pushed back and Sue and Randy
walking and I could hear everybody's breathing including
my snoring breath which shamed me but I could not stop
making the sound, and I remembered they don't think I have
a penis and balls, so I told them I have a penis and balls and
I scrimmed my hand to my zipper and after a lot of fumbling
and trying, I pulled out my penis and balls from the opening
of my BVDS, took hours to find it, seemed like, was afraid
I really didn't have a penis and balls anyway at all
at all and wouldn't my face be red?, and I got them out
though they were quite shriveled and unappetizing looking I
knew and I smiled up at Joel and held my trembly arms up
to him and I said see? see? give me a moment and I can get
it hard too, it's a six incher, honest, trust me.

And I closed my eyes which seemed to in some weird way
be laughing at me and I heard footsteps and silent voices
and the door closed and I didn't have to open my eyes to
know I was alone in Joel's room. It was hot in there.
Though it was the chilblains of  winter in there. I was alone
in Joel's room. He left me not in my room, but in his own,
Joel's room. My god. I lay there for a time, quivering, sick.
I threw up on his rug. I threw up a lot. I thought he deserved it.
 I thought the whole fuckin' world deserved it. They better be
glad I'm notGod for even five minutes.

I went to his bed and my poor penis and balls and me lay
where he had lain and I tried to kiss his gentle face in the
long dark air. Then I got up most unsteadily, skirted the
rug where I had left a souvenir, and I opened the door, my
penis and balls I do have them see? still hanging out of my
jeans and I went up the stairs to the third floor where my
narrow bed was, collapsed, mouth full of flannel and not a
little rue, and in the morning I had a hangover that clung to
me for weeks, like my long lost brother. I told it everything,
and it forgave me all. I had made a close friend with it.

Friendships have always hurt. This was nothing new. And
was like all the other friendship pains, worth it. Sorta. `Cept
it killed me some more inside. But that was nothing new
either.

There was no more Sue and Randy after this. There was no
more Joel after this, save when I could glance furtively at
him and he didn't see me. My life will be in this place
in this time with these people forever. I will never move a
moment from this no matter how many moments I
technically move from it. It is everything I am. Sometimes I
think

Joel and his girl of the moment really did make love to me
and it was love not just sex though I surely would have
settled just for sex, I can almost have a sense memory of
them sandwiching me and their heat against my sides.

Almost but not quite. And I guess that's the thing that hurts
the most. I didn't drink after that time. I'm in hell enough,
even with my nimble wits about me. Booze need
not apply.

That night before I went to sleep, I remembered the actor
George Segal on the Tonight Show. He had a ukulele and
he was singing this song which I boozily sang myself to
sleep with, wishing I could meet George Segal `cause he
seems like he's such a nice man and you could talk to him,
really talk to him, and he would be kind and nice about it.
And he could smile at me. Which would make me feel
better. He has a nice smile. And it would be a real one.
Directed at me.

"I'm tired and I want to go home/I'm tired and I want to go
to bed/ Had a little drink about an hour ago/And it went
right to my head."

	'Night, everybody.

 B Keeper
silvershimmer@earthlink.net