Posts tagged with "intoxication"

This Is Why You're Not Allowed (Save It)

This is the rit­u­al.

We meet. Usually by Greyhound.

We get stoned. In the car, in the park, or in the apart­ment.

This is what we’ve been sav­ing for. What we’ve cho­sen to deny our­selves of, until the present com­pa­ny, so that the expe­ri­ence is more intense. The rea­son why we’ve with­held for so long.

We intro­duce to each oth­er what we’ve dis­cov­ered on our own. Songs. Videos. Experiences.

There is no pride. No bias. No judg­ment.

We cher­ish these times. These week­ends. These mem­o­ries.

When we can grow from one anoth­er.

Because we’ve grown from our­selves.

Self-Restraint: Tensility

Some peo­ple turn to pills and things
To help them through the day
To take them up or down or just
To ease the blues away
But me I real­ly want to feel
The ups and downs of life so real
Happy or sad emo­tions reign
My tears flow just the same

—Lamb, I Cry

I had been try­ing to write this for near­ly a month, but could­n’t get it down until I real­ly lis­tened to the lyrics of I Cry on the walk home past the pow­er lines. I decid­ed to split this up into two sep­a­rate entries, after real­iz­ing that I have two sim­i­lar ideas in my head, but two very dis­tinct issues. Perhaps it just took a few extra rough days of work to force me to think about this. All the things falling apart that I have to fix, respon­si­bil­i­ties, dead­lines, and tons of oth­er mis­cel­la­neous things are def­i­nite­ly mak­ing me think of ways to get the ten­sion out of my arms and shoul­ders.

Sometimes, when I come home, all I want to do is get piss drunk or mind­less­ly stoned. Maybe go reck­less­ly buy a bunch of things I don’t need, to make myself feel bet­ter for that lit­tle amount of time. Sometimes I just feel like doing some­thing irra­tional, even though I have no idea what or why, sim­ply because I believe it would get my mind of things. And yet I don’t do any of this, espe­cial­ly when I’m hav­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad day, because I don’t want to be depen­dent on any­thing.

I don’t want to rely on nar­cotics, or mate­r­i­al goods, or self-muti­la­tion, or any­thing at all to make myself feel bet­ter. I want to be sure that I can han­dle things, no mat­ter what, on my own. I force myself to feel every stress­ful, mis­er­able, for­lorn emo­tion, so that I know that I can get through them.

Sometimes, every day can be a test. Music and writ­ing are the only things that I allow myself.

And some­times I have to tell myself that it’s enough.

Halloween '04

Thumbnail: Halloween Super Troopers

Last year, I went to a Halloween par­ty dressed as a Super Trooper with Aaron and Wheaties (I have only recent­ly acquired the image), and wound up being drunk out of my skull. I tried not to make the same mis­take this year, and see­ing as how I don’t real­ly drink any­more, it was­n’t much of a prob­lem.

Thumbnail: Place settings at Aaron's and Karen's

Instead, Aaron and Karen host­ed a small gath­er­ing, which I attend­ed, where home­made chick­en pot pie was served, and no one dressed in cos­tume.

Thumbnail: Halloween doughnuts with bat sprinkles

Tim Hortons is doing its sea­son­al dough­nut, which is a funky look­ing dough­nut with bat and pump­kin sprin­kles.

Thumbnail: Cheat pumpkin carving

Unfortunately, I had to miss out on a pump­kin carv­ing par­ty, due to a fair­ly stress­ful week caus­ing a lack of desire to social­ize. Trolley did the Cheat from Homestar Runner, and it turned out pret­ty well.

Home For Bubble Tea

Thumbnail: Bubble tea shop

Went home for the week­end, spent it with Darren. It was a gloomy few days; cloudy, humid, and gen­er­al­ly uncom­fort­able.

At one point, Darren asked me if it felt like home, or whether my apart­ment here has tak­en the role. I could­n’t real­ly answer him at the time. I just knew that they feel dif­fer­ent. We lit up in a park that I used to play in while I was still in ele­men­tary school, and it felt odd to be stoned in a beau­ti­ful­ly emp­ty play­ground in the mid­dle of Saturday, sur­round­ed by all these upper-mid­dle class hous­es with their pools and patios. Places that aren’t com­fort­able, but famil­iar.

Summer Days Are Finally Here

A week­end of relax­ation and intox­i­ca­tion.

The first time that I’ve known Pat to be Jen-less, he calls me up, wants to hang out. Fucking cool. We go for the break­fast spe­cial at a Greek Souvlaki house, he takes the sausage, I take the bacon. After, we head to the table ten­nis club (some­thing I hoped he’d do for a while now) for a few match­es. He beats me 5–1, and I find out that he’s run­ning on three hours of sleep. He goes home to run some errands, I go home to sleep. He comes back here to meet up with me and Trolley, after cook­ing some burg­ers on his grill and putting togeth­er fix­ings, corn-on-the-cob, and pas­ta sal­ad. We eat, watch some Harvey Birdman, play games for eight hours. Part and crash.

Today, wake up with my cat stretched out on my pil­low. Trolley and I head to the table ten­nis club, play for an hour, head down­town to buy a few albums. The weath­er being so nice, we go to the Highlander with their dis­tract­ing uni­forms, and sit down for a pint on the patio. Clink. Come back, and I get to orga­nize while lis­ten­ing to my new Modest Mouse album.

Don’t want to lose this feel­ing.