There is a very intriguing girl here and she is trying to get me drunk.

There was a very intriguing girl here and she was trying to get me drunk.

This is Day Five.

But barely.

I guess I showed her.

Right?

Many years have long since passed since one of the most important milestones in my days as a young pizza-parlor-frequenting boy. I know everyone never forgets their first time, and I am no exception. But how many remember how many quarters they had to save up for it?

I am of course referring to the first arcade game I ever beat. It was Capcom's Altered Beast. It was a sweet game. The goal was to fight your way through moonlit graveyards, treacherous caverns, and twisted evil dimensions to rescue the love of your life. (You could play alone or with two players, and I was old enough to realize that certain romantic obstacles might arise from two male heroes rescuing the damsel. I made up my own back story for the game, deciding that in any two-player game, whatever player I wasn't was the fair maiden's brother.)

So you would go around fighting zombies*, giant ants, and evil unicorns. The best part was that you could get magic orbs that would power you up until you turned into some kind of mythical creature, like a werewolf or a dragon. There was also the more obscure bear-that-turned-people-into-stone and high-jumping tiger. (Not as cool, but they got the job done.)

Well, I had beaten the final boss (as the Golden Werewolf) and sat back, unsure of what to expect. Then I watched amazed as the end of the story began to unfold...

There was me rescuing the princess! There she was turning back into a human! (She had been turned into a dove on my way to rescue her.) She runs into my werewolf arms and gazes deeply into my werewolf eyes!

CUT!

My character unzips his werewolf costume. A couple of gargoyles in the background hang from their strings. The cameramen grin and the sound guys gratefully lower their boom mikes. The director gathers the cast and crew together and they raise HUGE mugs of beer** triumphantly into the air to toast their achievement.

Roll credits.

I laughed and scampered off excitedly to tell my friends. A game where the characters are just actors? They would never believe it.

I got to relive that moment again last night at Brian Young's house. He has one of those video game emulators on his computer. All those games may very well be the death of me...
I guess I should add that to the list.

*I guess I wasn't afraid of zombies yet.

**Probably my earliest association ever of happiness with alcohol.

I'm talking to Brian Goldstein on the phone and he is trying to convince me to have a drink with him. He is in another state, so I would still consider it drinking alone. And drinking alone is alcoholic behavior. I do not wish to check off another warning sign. Hell, I'm already through most of the standard ones such as the aforementioned lone drinking. I'm getting to the really obscure ones, like sitting in a cold shower throwing-up sushi.

I vaguely recall deciding not to drink that much anymore after my birthday. It is possible that someone else might have suggested it. Either way, it was a good idea then and it is a great idea now.

But how I do love to drink.

And it doesn't help that one of my best friends calls me up just to drink over the phone! And Instant Messenger:

AlwaysEphemeral: Here is a deal!
AlwaysEphemeral: I don't get drunk until I come over and visit you.
AlwaysEphemeral: No more than three beers at a time until Cali.
AlwaysEphemeral: Deal?

AZ Film Guy: dude
AZ Film Guy: if you want to steal from yourself i guess
AZ Film Guy: :-P

AlwaysEphemeral: It will motivate me.

AZ Film Guy: i hear someone every day saying 'i gotta take it easy' or 'i gotta stop drinkin'

AlwaysEphemeral: And I said three beers a time.

AZ Film Guy: but they stop and realize...wtf from what we know, we only live once, so fuck it!

AlwaysEphemeral: Shit.
AlwaysEphemeral: Dammit, you're absolutely right.

AZ Film Guy: we don't know for sure if we have an afterlife
AZ Film Guy: so why act like we do
AZ Film Guy: live life like it's your last fuckin day

AlwaysEphemeral: I agree.
AlwaysEphemeral: But perhaps I should try to find other ways to enjoy life...

The time is about 5:30 am.

Drinks drunk: Quite a few.

Cigarettes smoked: Too many.

Sunrises watched: Just the one.

Lessons learned: Several, the most relevant at the moment being: Do Not Remove Contact Lenses With The Hand You Have Been Smoking With.

Congratulations to all my friends that are moving on from high school to the rest of their lives. I envy and pity you all.

The third time is the charm for me when it comes to posting. I have not been drinking. I did have a beer with lunch, but I don't think that counts at all. How can you really enjoy sushi without a glass of Asahi, Japan's favorite beer? Okay, so they are a bit larger than your typical bottle of beer. But Matt Summerfield was working across the little courtyard in his coffee shop, so technically I wasn't drinking alone.

I have been running around Kiwanis Park trying to reverse some of the damage I have done to my body over the past week. I used to run there all the time, back when I had an apartment down the street from there. Indeed, there was a time when it would not have been unusual to see an angry drunken Guillermo running up and down the hills until he would vomit into the closest trashcan. And the ducks loved him too. I actually rescued a duck once. The wretched creature had a water bottle cap stuck over the tip of it's bill so it couldn't open it at all. The duck refused to move when I got close to it. Either it was too weak from being unable to eat or it was just one bad-ass water fowl. I got within arm's-length and then tried to snatch the bottle top off of it's beak. I was rewarded with angry hissing and a few pecks of the bottle-topped beak. It didn't hurt, but it was a bit unnerving. A few more tries and a few more pecks and I succeeded in getting it off. The duck didn't seem to care at all. That was fine with me, I had just done it for the experience.

I was running last night too. A police officer on a quad had been cruising around chasing people out of the park. What a sweet gig that must be. I must have been too fast for him or something, because he didn't say anything to me.

The park was very nice at 2:00 am this morning. If you had been there you would have seen a sober and not-angry Guillermo running up and down the hills. Life is so hard...

I want you to notice....
when I'm not around

-Radiohead's Creep (If you don't know, I'm not linking you)

Yes, yes, drunk again. I wonder if anyone was up between the hours of 5am and 9am yesterday morning to see the quaintly embarassing post I made? No? Well, too bad it's gone forever. Fifth day I have been up till sunrise drinking? Some would consider that a warning sign. But, as I often quip, "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it."

I was perusing through the blog of a certain Donald Pierson when I came across someone�s lament concerning Sweet Don P�s deletion of Communist Agenda, his Open Diary. It appeared odd, at first. I had assumed that my slug-slow laptop had been at fault for my previous failure to utilize Pierson�s link, but no. It almost appears as if we are no longer meant to have an all-access pass into the boy�s head. But why? He has been so generous before�

Then it struck me. The unrivaled elegance of a private thought. What great weariness must come with constantly being pressured to enlighten, astound, appall, or entertain a vast and ever-growing audience? The joy of writing simply for writing; the chase and capture of something as abstract and fleeting as a thought and rendering it as concrete and as permanent as possible.

�Like�singing in your car. Unless you�re trying to annoy your passengers, you are probably singing just for you. And would I be wrong in saying that you have never sounded better?

Capturing is perhaps the wrong word. To have a bit of your own mind to examine at a later time is not a gain per se, but more of a prevention of loss.

The idea of an Open Diary did not particularly appeal to me when I first heard of it. �How can one be open,� I wondered, �When everyone is hovering over your shoulder waiting to dissect you?�

The previous overtones were a bit ominous, I see now. I do not mean to slip in Freudian-style an underlying paranoia of people. I just mean�

�that it may not be as much fun to sing when others are within earshot.

* * * *
Ha ha, it is now an hour later and I�m not nearly as drunk.

I can find solace in the belief that unabashed free expression is only a few drinks away.

I guess it is a bit sad, too.