Wino...Soon you got to choose

I call him three times on the way to the house to find out if we need beer. Three fucking times. I figure that being as he said we could pregame there, he'd have beer, but I just wanted to make sure. Fuck it.

I walk in the house, and see him empty handed at his computer.

"Motherfucker, don't even tell me you don't have beer."

"I thought you were getting it."

"I called you three times to ask you dick, and you didn't pick up."

"Oh. I lost my phone..."

I light a cigarette and pace around the room, because I really don't want to drive back out to get beer, even though the place is only maybe five minutes away.

"Well, I got a lot of wine."

"I hate wine."

"Yea, but it's free...and it's here."

I grimace...but it's free, and it's the only thing that we have. "Alright. Fine. Get a fuckin bottle."

He goes into the garage. "What kind you want?"

"I don't know. Red stuff. Who cares?"

He grabs a bottle, and then goes unpstairs to find a corkscrew. Like the pictures of absolute class that we are, he pops it open and takes a huge swig, then hands it to me. I do the same, and shake my head after it to

"Man, I fucking hate red wine."

"We got white, too."

"I hate that more."

We've got to get a ride to the bar, which is a little over a half hour away, because neither of us will be in any shape to drive later on and we're both cruising for #2 on DWI's if we take the chance. Of course, we've actually got to be already drunk to get any sympathy from anybody. Eventually a girl I know tells me she'll give us a ride in a half hour, and suddenly it dawns on me that we're not drunk like we've been telling everyone.

"Paul, if we're telling her that we're wine drunk, then we better be drunk when she gets here."

"Shit, you're right." He looks at the clock. It's 9. "Damnit, we better get moving."

In between pounding this stuff, somehow James Joyce comes up. We agree that Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man is one of the best books around, and also that though Finnegan's Wake was complete bullshit, we both wish that we were 1) smart enough to write a book in half Latin, half French, and half Gaelic, and 2)famous enough that people would study the book for years trying to decipher our bullshit like scholars do with that fucking book.

By 9:15 the first bottle is gone. He looks at another one on the table, then looks at me.

"Shall we?"

"But of course."

He pops the second bottle, and we're both feeling a little...merry.

The girl gets there with her compatriot, who is having a tough time believing that me and Paul are 1) on our second bottle of wine in fifteen minutes or 2) arguing about literature of the Irish Renaissance period because neither of us look like we're all that educated, and you certainly can't tell from our vocabulary that revolves around the words, "Fuck" and "You".

Paul's eyes are bloodshot when he hands me a medicine bottle. "Take some of these."

"What are they?"

"B12. It'll make you feel better tomorrow when you're hungover." He looks at the empty bottles. "Cause we're gonna have a hell of a hangover."

I take a few and wash them down with wine. Ten minutes later this bottle is gone. As we get up to walk to the car, I light another smoke and feel my stomach twisting into a knot.

"Paul, I think that B12 is bothering my stomach."

"It's probably the wine."

"Nah, it's definitely the B12."



Later on, we will add this bar to the growing list of those that the NJBA is banned from after we almost get into a Braveheart-esque brawl with the bouncers, who threaten immediately to call the cops because they're outnumbered heavily (although the odds are they would have killed us, because I watch my two of my buddies yell at the bouncers, screaming and threatening...and then just fall down because they're hammered).

Anyway, I don't want to get into specifics, but certain people (the bouncers) are fucking cocksuckers at this certain bar in North Jersey (Park City Bar in Rutherford). Don't go there.