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 ^{(it's beta!)}

It was Monday night, the first good night of a true trainwreck of a weekend. I'd felt good enough Fryday evening to make a booze run for a bottle of vodka minute before store closed, made it but forgot to buy something to mix the stuff with... So when my brother called to see if he could come over (I was alone for some reason), I let him if he brought me some coke or whatever.

So we started wokring on the vodka, each our own bottle, something to mix, and a glass. Vodka is my demon, let me tell you...

Other folks started pouring in, and at some point we left for the bar where yet more friends were celebrating the rise of the holy weekend. Firmly buzzed on the vodka already, I went for beer after beer because I felt like the real deal - like I could get away with it.

It fell apart pretty much when I lost my balance and almost my glasses even. I must've looked a terrible scene: this depraved, lunging freak thrashing into people, the real deal no more.

Staggering and stumbling home, I snagged some security tape off a burnt-dwn building, badly bruised my left hip (for whatever reason I was always falling over to the left - every five or so steps. and was down and out when a police truck came up by my side, its owners screaming at me ... Very confusing matters for a helpless drunk, but somehow they left me, which added to the confusion.

I guess it takes a whole new dimension of sadness to not be arrested in the depths of alcohol hell, in the middle of the street in the middle of the nifht. They just didn't bother . I made it home, dragged my sore body to my room, and slept.

Saturday was harsh. Sleeping hadn't sobered me up much at all; I just sort of lingered on the couch with a beer or two.

Then a friend came by and we visited another friend in town, and we joked around an such for a while.

Then I had the luminous idea to try and lift this guy's dumbbell above my head: I failed miserably due to my inebriation, my sore hip, and my nonexisted upper body strenght. The fucker fell down, took me down with it, grazed my right foot and sent an earthquake through the house. I think we left right after, but I'm not too sure about the details. I do remember shame.

The rest of the evening, I spent wallowing in my shame, and I went to bed early and left the drunks downstairs to fend for themselves.

I went to visit my mother on Sunday, figuring she could help me with my sore foot - I had trouble moving it. It looked nasty dark purple where the dumbbell had grazed it. Still, I could move my toes somewhat, so I figured nothing was broken.

Lucky me.

At my mother's house, I nursed the foot back to health, slowly, with an ointment for wounds of that sort.

My sleep that night was troubled.

But Monday, that wasn't too bad. The foot was better, I could easily walk around. I felt unbreakable, but wasted the day anyway. At night, I read some Post Office by Bukowski, and came across a bit about how he - or his alter ego Chinaski - met a twentysomething with writing ambitions that gave him a novel he was working on, for Chinaski to review.

Chinaski gave the young manthe advice to quit his job and stay indoors to keep working on the novel. The young man says that that won't work because he's no wino like Chinaski who will get a job everywhere because everywhere they'll figure he'll stay because he can't to better, while the young man figures of himself that he's intelligent enough to be figured not to hang around because he can do better.

I could relate to the whole part. But I'm still not sure with what character - the old wino or the intelligent youngster...

---

Written in one session, Tuesday morning between one thirty and two thirty - it won't make sense at any given point but I felt compelled to do it.

Bukowski would appreciate it. Well, I think. He should.