Sublimation Is A Virtue

The previous post came at the end of a long night of exercising my Delete key.

I just had just learned of a coffee house on Southern and Mclintock called The Xtreme Bean. That sounds like a very appropriate place for me, I thought. My thought was correct. On weekends, the place is open 24 hours.

I wasn't very concerned with all 24 hours, just the ones between midnight and dawn. After spending some time there with the boys (and Jessica), everyone decided to go. I had not yet begun to nocturne, so I went home, packed up my laptop, some notes, a box of Crackerjack, and a Capri Sun. I returned to the coffee shop, purchased a mug of coffee, plugged in my laptop, and went to work.

The light of the rising sun found a very frustrated Guillermo.

I had started four separate stories. Despite my most frenzied efforts, each one had died on the page. It was sad. The poor bastards never had a chance.

But I learned quite a bit. I learned that I don't have too much trouble thinking up scenarios or things for the characters to say. I just can't figure out how to get them into the next room, so to speak.

It's like trying to move a stubborn mule. Or a very fat ass.

You know, frustrating.

Around seven o'clock, I gathered my belongings and drove home. I didn't need to eat my snack. I don't drink coffee very often, so when I do it keeps me very awake and not very hungry.

At home, the computer was on and the screen wasn't completely covered in the pop-up ads that have been waging guerrilla warfare on it lately. I sat down, logged in to blogger, tried to imagine what kind of conversation the sun and I would have in my current state of mind, wrote "Internal Sunshine Of The Plotless Mind", realized that was a terrible title, and then decided to leave the bit untitled.

I think I made the right choice.

This morning, Donaldo wanted to go running. When he woke me, I did not even want to acknowledge that it was morning, much less go running. I almost didn't go, but then I tried to remember the last time I had gone running. The last time I went running was...hmm...the night before I started drinking again.

I slurmed out of bed and put on my running shoes.

This night, we went to a bar called Rogue, which is sort of a punk bar but mostly a dive. I fit right in. Some guy even asked me if I wanted to go beat up some skinheads. I politely declined, citing my own shaved head as the reason.

Not that I was in any way affiliated with them (which in itself would have been a good trick; myself being of Mexican ancestry), but because in a poorly-lit bar where my skin color isn't as obvious, a drunken brawler-for-equality might easily mistake me for the bad guys.

So I avoided a fight. It's good, because I haven't ever been in a fight. I was roughed up a few times when I was little, but once I had grown my peers seemed to lose that inclination.

I didn't drink tonight, either. It had also occurred to me that I had been drinking every night for the past week. Not getting obliterated every night, but certainly cutting loose.

So the moral of the story is: Running prevents drinking.

Not counting all those times I used to get drunk and then go running, of course.

Oh, and if I don't post tomorrow, it'll be because I'm at Lake Roosevelt rappelling down into secret ravines.

I have to decide soon if I'm going, since we'll be leaving in five hours.

Decisions, decisions.