The return of Rumpelstiltskin
A few years ago, Conrad and I spent an unremarkable evening in our favorite bar, drinking what I recall to be an unremarkable amount of alcohol. Somehow, though, a confluence of factors led to my remarkable intoxication, a wholly unexpected outcome from a relatively chilled-out evening. We were to meet another couple later that night at a dance club, but due to my inebriation, Conrad and I decided to go back to his house (at the time, he was living on Grady Avenue, not far from downtown) and rest before returning to boogieland.
By the time we got to his place, I am told, I was incomprehensible and listless, but soon after we got inside I approached Conrad, overwrought. "I'm Rumpelstiltskin!" I ejaculated, then turned toward the bed, and with a straight leap into the air, swan-dived into the pillow and wasn't heard from until the next morning.
Why I claimed to be Rumpelstiltskin, I'm not sure. Maybe I mixed up my fairy tales and meant I was Rip Van Winkle, which, considering my narcoleptic episode, would be more appropriate. Maybe I was making a veiled warning about the folly of bragging. Maybe I wanted to announce my ability to turn straw to gold. Numerous interpretations have been offered, but none has yet satisfied the mystery of my alcohol-induced insanity.
Last night I made a reprise of that drinking-career-defining role. AthFest was in full effect, and our good friends and irrepressible revelers Amos and Sue-anna were in town from Jackson, Miss. We enjoyed cocktails at our condo, cocktails at Speakeasy, cocktails at 283, at Uncle Ottos, at Georgia Theatre, at 40 Watt. By the time we were watching Cinemechanica perform at 2 a.m., I was pretty pickled. The crowd was packing out 40 Watt, and I was lucky enough to be standing beside some dipshit hippie in a moe. t-shirt, flipping out and spraying his PBR all over the people around him. Now I'm a happy drunk, and unless provoked, am inclined to giggle a lot and avoid drama. But Mr. Patchouli's guitar-fueled fervor reached a fever pitch and he started punching me in the arm, deliberately, over and over. He'd gotten in about four hits while my inner monologue, expectedly altered, went something like this: "Hippie is hitting me. Must kill hippie." Disturbingly, there wasn't a moment of critical thought when I considered not responding to the violence with violence. I just started hitting back, punching the bleachy-haired retard in the head, over and over. Conrad immediately intervened, and as moshers are wont to do, the hippie continued his flipping out elsewhere, seemingly oblivious to the onslaught of punches I had delivered to his skull.
While this sounds fairly dramatic, it was really just a blip on the party radar. Things faded pretty fast after that, and we spent some time talking with friends outside the club before getting a ride home with Floyd. Perhaps misguidedly, I wore my 5-inch platforms for an evening of heavy drinking, and the natural offspring of those factors is a (probably) broken toe I sustained on the walk to Floyd's car.
After we got home safely to the condo, Conrad said I wobbled into the kitchen where he was getting a glass of water with my pants around my ankles and proceeded to remove my chewing gum from my mouth and stick it to the kitchen counter. Conrad helped me out of my clothes and up to bed, where he asked me if I wanted any Aleve for my swollen toe. "No," I answered. "I don't want to get kidney stones."
April
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Sue-anna: don't ever stop coming to town. It was the greatest night! We had such a good time.
Candy: I'm practically an RN when I'm drunk. Would you like me to do your yearly pap?
Angie: LOVE that story about Sweatshirt. That's totally classic. One thing you can say about him is that he's got the most hilariously self-deprecating sense of humor.