The Sea of Intoxica

My name is Andy and I am an alcoholic. Well, I was. Let's talk about drink. After you recover you have all the time in the world to talk about the thrill of the slow kill.

When I took a drink of Irish whisky it was like drinking pure liquid gold. I could even taste the goldness of the fluid as well as savor the aroma of the aged wood from the barrel it was aged in. It would caress my throat and fill my body with a lusty warmth.

You know it's love, no addiction, when you drink not for the high but for the taste, the flavor and how it bursts all the pleasure centers of your body.

Your fingers tingle and legs relax, all your muscles untense in a comfort no one else can give you. As I drank more and more I knew how to regulate my moods according to what I drank.

Wine kept me hyper and social, scotch made me mellow, rum & coke for the obvious sugar rush, which could also be obtained from Jagermeister, Goldschlager and the other liqueurs.

Bourbon killed my fears and inhibitions. I never would have been able to front a band if not for my bourbon buddies nudging me towards the microphone. Half pints in the parking lot before the show, that's all you need. There was always something about rye that always mellowed me out.

Vodka was stealthy in the way it would go invisible after mixing with just about anything; it would hide behind any juice or sweet beverage. I'd never realized how progressively pissed I got from the way it hid behind those sweet drinks. Positively lethal.

I'm not going to tell you any funny stories about things I did when I was drunk. Things seemed funny at the time, but now they're not. I never drank during office hours but there was no shortage of tempters and temptations.

I was a good drunk, maybe too good. A friend of mine who was a recovered alcoholic saw me putting it away one night at the club and decided to drive behind me when I drove home. He said I drove as if I was stone cold sober, never weaving or running red lights.

I should have been somewhat flattered, but instead I set too good an example of what a professional drunk is capable of. It made me feel guilty a few years later when I heard he lapsed back into alcoholism and died from alcoholic poisoning.

I didn't quit cold turkey - that's for suckers. I quit drink the same way I quit smoking, tapering off day by day. A little less each day until you realize you don't really need that junk to get through the day. You do less and less until it dwindles down to almost nothing at all.

I won't lie to you. I still have a bottle of Jameson's in the pantry, but it doesn't get much play these days. If you've really conquered your poisons never let them completely disappear. Always have them on hand to let them know they're gone, but not forgotten.

Artwork by Derek Yaniger.

America Drinks And Goes Home

Dizzy Dean played guitar in a Guns & Roses tribute band and my wife Ruthie made stage wear for him, so he put us on the guest list for an all-tribute band show at the House of Blues. Ruthie plus one; I was the plus one. We were going to see three tribute bands, curious to see who would look the most and sound the most like the real thing. There was a Poison tribute band, the other was a Judas Priest tribute band, and then there was the aforementioned Guns & Roses tribute band.

We were going slowly down the Strip towards the club, the traffic sludgy being that it was Friday night. All seemed to trudge along well until we had to stop at a red light across the street from The Star Strip, a notorious strip club.

In a vain effort to entice potential patrons to drop what they were doing and go across the street, a big-assed stripper in a halter top and ass-baring shorts in sky-high heels strutted onto the crosswalk. Lucky for her she still had the green light.

She went into a little dance, no a twitch, the kind an antelope does when stuck in a bear trap. Then she began twerking, pumping her big bubble butt ass up and down faster than a Dupont paint can mixer. The light changed to green for me, red for her. Still, she twerked in our faces.

“TURN IT LOOSE, WHORE!” I yelled.
“She’s not going to get out of the street”, Ruthie groaned.
“Oh yeah?”

I slammed my size 11 on the accelerator headed straight for Little Twerk. With absolute terror in her cheap blue contact lenses she jumped out of the way from my Murder Chariot. I missed her by that much.

It was a good thing we got to get on the guest list because we didn’t have enough to get in, not enough to drink anything, and just enough to pay for parking on an expensive Sunset Strip parking lot. The House of Blues sat on the Sunset Strip, with an old Mississippi Delta wooden shack frame house and old country porch sitting atop the massive concert hall. There was nothing country about the building – most of the customers were the same old gaggle of coke sniffing Porsche riding cosmos haunting the Strip since time began.

When we entered the club Thorny Rose, the Poison tribute band, were already up and playing loud enough to make an airport jealous. I nudged Ruthie and pointed up.
"Let's go upstairs!"
"Yeah!"

We walked up the stairs to the balcony with a few chunky girls dressed to the nines falling into us running downstairs.
"JESSICA, WAIT FOR ME!"
"Excuse you!" Ruthie yelled. "Bitch".

We pushed through the crowd in the balcony only to find an Olympic sized bar with patrons waiting three deep for their drinks. I looked above me and smiled.
"Hey, check it out!" I yelled. "There's a higher level and it's pretty empty!"

There was a higher level practically kissing the rafters of the barn-roofed club and there were a few scattered night clubbers here and there. Not crowded at all, so we made a bee-line to that level.

"I wish I had a drink", Ruthie complained. "It might make this place a little more bearable".
"Yeah, I know".
I looked below me at the ground floor of the club and there was a dense crowd of fans rocking out to the placebo looks and sounds of Thorny Rose. The guitarist was short and fat, looking more like Buddy Hackett with a wig than like C.C. Deville.

"I've heard of Unskinny Bop but this is ridiculous", I yelled into Ruthie's ear. Ruthie turned to me with some chewing gum.
"As long as we can't have anything to drink let's have some gum. Maybe it'll make things better!" she said. I guess it did.

We hung from the railing enjoying the show, and it was alright. Well, alright until more people began racing up to our level with their drinks in tow. Thorny Rose played their big Cat Dragged In song or whatever the hell it was and after a failed attempt at wringing an encore, got the boot from the sound man, who burbled over the PA, "THORNY ROSE, EVERYBODY....THORNY ROSE. NEXT UP, APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION!"

A big howl from the crowd and I looked down at the lower level to see the bar now five man deep.

A blonde girl with a drink in each hand snuck in next to us with someone who didn't look like a boyfriend. Her hair stuck up from sweat and her skin looked clammy. Her glasses were fogged up like a midnight harbor.
"HEY!!! IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" she yelled, her eyes rolling up in her head. "WASN'T POISON GREAT? THOSE GUYS CAN REALLY ROCK THE HOUSE WHHHOOOOOOOO!!!!"

We both smiled with her and at her. Her male friend grabbed at one of her drinks.
"Let me have some of your drink, Marcy!" he yelled.
"NO, RANDY! YOU BOUGHT THIS JUST FOR ME! IT'S...MY BIRTHDAY!"
"Just a sip!"
"SHIT! ALL-RIGHT!"

Randy practically tore the plastic cup out of her cold, nearly dead fingers and took a rather long, generous sip from her drink.
"HEY, ASSHOLE! THAT WAS MORE THAN JUST A SIP! GIMME THAT!"
"Oh, okay! What the hell!" Randy was getting kind of drunk clammy himself.
"DON'T BOGART MY BIRTHDAY DRINK, DUDE! GET YOUR OWN!"
"You got two drinks, girl!"
"I - SAID!" Her eyes began closing down like she was ready to go to sleep. "GET YOUR OWN COCKTAIL, RAN-DEEEE!"

Finally the lights turned down again and the crowd cheered. The Wizard of Oz voice from the PA wryly yelled, "GIVE A WARM HOUSE OF BLUES WELCOME TO....APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION!"
"WOOOOO-HOOOOOOO!" Marcy hooted loud enough to split my already broken ear drums.

Appetite For Destruction came out to low, cold blue lights as the band cranked up the highly dramatic beginning to "Welcome To The Jungle". Dizzy Dean wore a top hat, black curly wig, dark sunglasses with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.

They slammed into that perennial metal classic when the fake Axl Rose went into his patented Jimmy Cagney soft shoe shuffle, swaying back and forth with the mike stand. Marcy lifted up her drink in the air and one-sixth of it sloshed on us.

"WOOOO-HOOOO! AXLLLLLLL!!!! HEY, I'M SORRY GUYS! IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" Marcy yelled.
"It's no problem", Ruthie smiled. "We have to freshen up!"
"Let's get the fuck out of here!" I yelled in her ear.

Illustration by Derek Yaniger.

We quickly went down one level, the one by the bar, but the steps to the ground level was jammed with people and took a lot longer. For one thing one guy was pushing and shoving his girlfriend on the staircase.
"DAMMIT, MISSY, WHAT'S IT GOING TO TAKE TO MAKE YOU BELIEVE I LOVE YOU????" He then shoved her so hard I thought she was going to fall on me.

Ruthie was about to step down to the ground floor until I saw something grotty and yanked her by the arm back up on the stair case. "LOOK OUT!!!!"

We both looked down at a deep puddle of bubbly orange vomit with spiky white speckles sticking up from the mush. As soon as anybody stuck their foot in that sickness they would surely slip across the floor with their pants painted in that puke.

"YUCK!" Ruthie grabbed her nose and mouth. We traversed around the vomit puddle and walked around the heavily packed ground floor.

In the dark all over the club we could see overweight men in their thirties and forties wearing their best black tees bearing the emblem of their favorite band. Aging groupie faces were marching around in fishnet stockings and short skirts, sized too small for most of them.

We found a small area by the sound board and club goers jealous of our discovery kept trying to stand in our spot. The room stank of stale beer and the floor was sticky of not so dry drinks. There was even a faint stench of wee in the club, which greatly enhanced the drama of "Paradise City".

Because of our unintentional sobriety everything appeared clearer and sounded more vivid than ever. We processed people with disabled motor skills, pissed to the gills, and it crackled with a disturbing electricity. I took a look around and saw grotesques worthy of a George Grosz caricature.

Above the noise and smell of Clubland I started thinking: When I drank, did I ever act like this? Was I really that bad? I must have been the most unbearable asshole in the world. This is so bad I just want to call up everybody on the planet and apologize for ever getting drunk and obnoxious. This is the hardest wake-up call I've ever been handed.

The topper to the show was the acapella section of "Sweet Child O' Mine" WHERE WILL WE GO? WHERE WILL WE GO-OH-OH???? AYE-AYE-AYE! when a few club-going commandos began swinging at each other and the bouncers dove in like a pair of firefighters putting out a blazing skyscraper.

"I think I've heard enough", I yelled over the loud music. "How about you?"
"Yeah, let's go", Ruthie agreed. We spat out our gum in the bin, done with the show. As we exited the club I took one last look and swore I saw a cloud of steam rising in the air around the room.

When we got outside the stars popped from the dark might blue sky with harsh punctuations of glaring street lamps every few feet. The air was comparatively fresh and clean from the night club's olfactory cocktail of stale beer, urine and vomit. We got to the car, I pulled out of the lot and looked at Ruthie.
"So that's the House of Blues. I not only heard everything, I smelled it, too".
"Yeah, we got a lot of bang for our non-buck. Well, Dizzy was great!"
"Yes, he was". I drove down Sunset Boulevard thinking about club soda on ice with a splash of lime juice. Straight, no chaser.

The Cannery Bear

There’s a bar by the docks where all the torn up toys go, the ones you don’t want to run into in a dark alley. Discarded and long-forgotten toys like The Street Sharks go there for a few shots of rotgut, but this story isn’t about them. It’s about a mean, vicious teddy bear with most of the stuffing knocked out of him and one of his cute button eyes practically hanging out of its socket, and his name is Mister Butch. Mister Butch worked at the cannery down by the darkest corner in the pier, where most men fear to tread. If there’s one thing most bears love it’s fish, but Mr. Butch loved to eat the by-products of the fish instead, like the dead fish faces, the fish turds, the rotten roe and its birth sacs, their marine entrails, the slimier and skankier the more he loved it.

It was well after quitting time from work and as work days go it went pretty slowly, i.e. only three punch-ups with his co-workers. Not a satisfying way to make a living. He did manage to put food on the table for his loved ones, a decaying Topper doll named “Salty” with a dated Fifties beehive and her two twin daughters, the Barbie Bowling Tramps.

Mr. Butch was getting a buzz on after his fifth boilermaker. “This shit’s supposed to put fur on your chest, god-dammit”,he growled.

“Butch, you got the furriest puss in town”, Buzz the bartender whined. Buzz was the ugliest vulture on the docks. He had only three feathers, all sprouting from his crown.
“You’re damned straight. Honey ain’t for bears, that piss is strictly for jellyfish”.

He scanned the room with a sneer. A fat hyena was passed out in a puddle of his drool at a nearby table. Furtively picking the wallet out of his pocket was a cheap ferret with a lip ring and an ill-fitting party dress.

“Jeez!” whistled Butch. “Who’s the tomato? She looks like a distressed goddess”.
Buzz frowned. “That’s Skrinkle. She’s crazy”.
Butch turned to her. “Hey, baby! Drop your cocks and grab your socks!”

Skrinkle quickly jammed the hyena’s wallet down her flat bra, which gave her the appearance of having an ample bosom. She walked up to the bar with the kind of smile that wouldn’t fool a priest. “Hiya, stud muffin!”

“Pick your poison and I’ll shower ya with piss”.
“An offer like that, how can a girl can resist?”
“Pre-zackly!”
“What’s your handle? Mine’s Skrinkle, as in qwzrk, qutwee”.
“Sounds like fucking poetry. My name’s Mister Butch, Butch von Butch, a bastard so nice they named me twice”.
Skrinkle giggled. “I’ll have an Old-Fashioned, innkeeper”.
Buzz bristled. “I ain’t no innkeeper, I’m a fucking bartender”. He stormed off to fix her drink.
“Don’t mind him”, Butch’s one good eye got all misty, due to his glaucoma. “Did anybody ever tell you that you’ve got that movie star kinda look? You got that 'come on' kinda look".

Skrinkle giggled and bit her thumb, eying him fetchingly. She turned on her best baby voice. “You big, tough, hunk of stuff. Careful or I’ll steal your heart!” She wiggled nervously because the purloined wallet slipped down from her bra to her stomach. She now looked like a pregnant weasel.

“I believe ya. You look like you could steal anything! Those lips, those eyes. Are you a rock star?”
“I play bass. Tee hee”, she giggled in her weasely best. She picked up her drink.
“A girl who plays bass. I knew you were talented!”
“And I’m formally trained, too”, she sipped her Old-Fashioned and ripped out a loud belch.
“Imagine that, Toots, you’ve more than won my heart. Stick with me, baby, and you’ll be fartin’ through silk!” His head weaved, getting woozy from his boilermakers finally kicking in. “Drink up, Kiddo, there’s more where that come from…”
Skrinkle’s eyes bugged at his wallet. “You don’t know the half of it”.

Just as he was about to pass out a rusty clown toy, all thin and dented, stomped in, slamming the door and rousing Mr. Butch from his crash.

“Zingo!” Skrinkle plastered her brightest fake smile, feeling nervous.
“There you are, you bitch!” He raced over to her. “I tried to make a respectable woman out of you but you’ll never be nothing but a hoor!” He back handed her making her reel by a few feet.
“Now just a second, bitch”, Mr. Butch roared, “That’s my future fiancée you just decked, sucker”.
Zingo squinted his teeny painted clown eyes at him. “And who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Mister Butch, you clowny motherfucker, and don’t you forget it!”
Buzz slammed a baseball bat on the bar. “There’ll be no rough housing in my establishment, fellas. Take it somewhere else”.
“I’d rather take this”, Zingo grabbed the bat and bashed it into Mr. Butch’s face, the bat cracking in half. Butch just shook his head and roared. “Now it’s my turn!”

Butch grabbed Zingo by the throat and lifting his paw clawed open Zingo’s face, half the innards of his face sticking out of his tin head. He ripped off Zingo’s right leg, and not happy with enough of that damage, did what all angry men love to do. He pulled out his pierced bear penis and sodomized the poor tin clown.
“Nooooooo!” Zingo wailed with the half of his face that was still working.
“Take it, bitch!” Butchie growled. “Take it all, take it like a clown!” Jamming his scarred teddy bear member into the wailing tin toy. “Hah! Jailhouse justice!”

Buzz shook his head. “I knew you were gonna get lucky tonight, Butch, but not like this”.
“Look, Prince Albert in a clown’s can”, Butch’s flat back pushing his love gristle missile in.
“Awwwwww, Butch!”

When The Devil Rides

Great news, Angelenos. On Christmas Day and New Year’s Day all MTA bus rides are absolutely free, free, free! There’s only one catch:

The bus drivers are drunk as fuck and they don’t care.

Before I raised enough scratch to buy a car I had to take the bus on Christmas Day. After waiting an eternity for the bus to show up, I ascended the steps to be stared down by the driver, who silently mouthed “fuck you” at me. I may not have heard it, but I sure as Sam smelled it: the fumes rushed at me like a Johnny Walker fart cloud punching me in the face. The driver did this to just about everyone who boarded.

And how about the driving? Narrowly side-swiping parked cars, running two red lights and braking on a dime to avoid the third raced light sending us flying out of our seats! The ABM (Angry Black Man) in the back yelled, “Yo! Quit bullshittin’ aroun’ man!”
The bus driver glared in his rear view mirror at this remark. In defiance the ABM lit a Kool cigarette.
The driver turned around and shouted, “There will be no smoking in the coach!” (English translation: “If I can’t smoke, you can’t.”)

All this would be screamingly funny if it was out of a Bukowski novel, America’s most lovably zany alcoholic, but no, when the devil rides and you’re in the “coach”: Run, Motherfucker, Run.

New Year’s Day was almost as bad: our driver was pissed he had to work on New Year’s and dealt with it by snubbing the riders.

“Sir, how many stops until Sherbourne?”
Silence from the driver.
“Uh, sir?”
Dead silence.
“Sir, could you tell me-“
“SHERBOURNE, NEXT STOP, COMING UP!” he finally yelled.

After tiring of the silent treatment he relied on sarcasm.
“Yo, driver. Sunset Boulevard cross Fairfax?”
“Well, Sunset Boulevard crosses a lot of streets. I suppose it crosses Fairfax?”
“SHEE-IT!”

I think you know where I’m going with this. I don’t know of any other service industry that shows more contempt to their customers on the holidays as the Bus Co. To which I offer this: the next time these guys go on strike, pull up to the picket line, put your car in PARK, and rev your engine up, over and over, and then step on it. Let the smoke choke them and the revving noise blast out their protests. They won’t mind, they’ll be dead drunk.