–noun
1. a depraved, unprincipled, or wicked person: a drunken reprobate.
2. a person rejected by God and beyond hope of salvation.
I was at a party a while back, drinking a civilized drink, carrying on a civilized conversation with a civilized guy. Our haircuts, short, similar. Slacks, shirts with buttons. The room was festooned with candles, little snacks, linen. Civilized music tinkled gently from a civilized little iPod. The evening meandered slowly past, like a river of molasses, nowhere to go. No one had a sense of urgency. No one looked like they were going to throw up, strip off their top, or do a keg stand.
Fuck, I miss good parties.
What the hell happened to me? When did I start sipping drinks instead of pounding them down voraciously, as if the magic drink fountain was about to run dry and I wanted to suck out every drop of life-giving alcohol? When did fat railroad tracks of sparkling white cocaine being snorted out of tender innocent young cleavage become a nibble at a Trader Joe's mini-quiche?
Somewhere inside me is crouched my old self, long-haired, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, PE shorts and no underwear, a bong in one hand, a bottle of Wild Turkey in the other. There's a hit of LSD in the pocket. I explained to someone a while back that we used to go to concerts with scores of joints taped to our legs to avoid detection while being frisked. What good is a concert if you don't have enough to share with your row? Do they still have laser light shows? Has that been supplanted by something civilized, like a guy in a tuxedo waving flashlights around? Do people still puke at concerts? How you can throw a good concert without someone losing their evening's intake of Boone's Farm? Is there any chance that someone reading this was privileged enough to attend the Blue Oyster Cult tour when they supposedly fried some poor kid's eyeballs with their lasers? Did the kid stick around for "Don't Fear the Reaper" because he was just starting to peak? Did any of this ever happen?
Nostalgia is a dangerous game, best left to people over fifty who still have parts of their memory intact. Left to amateurs, nostalgia kills. The trick is to remember that none of that stuff was probably anywhere near as fun as it seemed. Who else but an old person can look back at barfing and passing out in front of the Lake Tahoe Denny's at 7 AM after a night of debauched drinking and think that it was FUN? Who else can remember a psychedelic mushroom-addled encounter with the local police and think it was funny? And, did my friend really think that the cop said "what are you wearing" and not "what are you doing?" Did he really tell the cop that "my pants are black, my shoes are white, and my shirt is a vivid blue?"
I have good money here that says that that shit HAPPENED. At least, to the best of my recollection.
This was, as you may have guessed, written for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
therealljidol. It's all true, unless you are looking to besmirch my professional standing. In that case, it's all lies.
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determined
annoyed
thankful
exhausted
cheerful