Drunkenness Is Next To Godliness

What if we had to drink to stay sober? And when I say “drink,” I don’t mean treat oneself to an occasional swallow-and-spit of aged Cabernet with a side of room temperature cheese. I’m talking extreme alcohol absorption of the mind melting sort, using a snarling Billy Idol, toothless Eddie Van Halen, or pre-presidential George W. (during his cocaine-addled years) as worthy templates. Suddenly, sneaking a little hooch in the office fire stairwell without the promise of illicit sex would swing from Capricious Binge to Sanity Regulator faster than you can say “three beer funnel.”

For my part, past attempts at keeping hydrated in the workplace were far from exemplary, seeing as how repeated trips to the water cooler can shatter the rhythm of a perfectly placed bond swindle, not to mention interrupt web surfing and personal calls. So it’s a fair guess that I’d have difficulty adhering to this regiment of anti-drunkenness, regardless of open taps offering Mad Dog 20/20 or a soda machine refurbished to hold Colt 45, stocked by Billy Dee Williams himself, bi-weekly. On the other hand, women – diligent as they often are – would surely adhere to the prescribed diet of (fruity flavored) booze, if not for the sanctity of sobriety than for the fear of an unchecked buzz resulting in extracurricular hanky panky. Those innocent broom closet extramurals have a funny way of drawing out paternity expenses or, dare I say, wire coat hangers. But just as maxims touting the inability of males to handle pregnancy (insert pain jokes here) or menstruation (fully turning over one’s wardrobe within the year) have grown exhausting, the same men-are-wusses reasoning applies to a world where imbibing like late ‘80’s Mötley Crüe becomes a responsible act. In other words, men would fail in keeping with this hypothetical mandate. We’d complain, and we’d forget, and we’d thus be perpetually off the reservation like an oversexed army of aroused chimpanzees.

Suddenly, your inhibited Homo Sapien is a sexually riotous Homo Erectus (or riotous Homo, depending on predisposition), drawers dropped to grope, thrust, and defile everything within a whore’s breath of the daily commuting route. How tempting to avoid Billy Dee’s vending wares for evenings of raucous debauchery, where the only thing “working every time” would be random infiltrations of equally impaired soda drinkers. Would I accidentally screw my neighbor’s wife because I spent the weekend rifling cover-to-cover through Barron’s without so much as a mimosa; awakening next door at some ungodly hour, hammered way out of my skull at the tail end of a 48 hour erection with Coolio’s “Fantastic Voyage” blaring from an unknown radio? Or, Lord strike me down, would I wake up next to her husband?

Best to keep in the good graces of the wonderful (toothless?) folks at the Boone's Farm. I prefer my marriage intact and my Coolio at a safe distance.

Confessions of An Amateur Oenophile

The chrome drip-collar for my wine bottle resembles a cock ring. A nice one, shiny and buffed like the buttons on your First Communion blazer or Donald Duck’s sailor suit. In fact, if you saw this thing laying in my underwear pile, tossed off for reasons unknown, you'd think "love dungeon" long before "Pinot Noir." There, I've said it. Uncomfortable as that sounded I’m not above airing my shortcomings from time to time, spending prostrate moments in the oft-neglected web confessional.

The ring comparison is an odd thought, admittedly, from one who prefers his second brain to hang in natural stasis. Yet the lustrous loop haunts me – its overt sexuality a suffocating presence during dinner parties – imparting visions of reverse cowgirl or downward dog when I should be talking geopolitics or biodiesel solutions with learned friends. Nowadays I just loiter near the appetizer trough, waiting in fear to decant plummy Merlots. And there it is, blazing like the wide eye of God, patiently resting atop its bottle until the moment we two reunite; images of engorgement wrenching my head as if the phallus of Thor were slamming upside my temple. Although I pray my mind wanders toward the label, vintage, or cypress-flanked panoramas of Chianti country, it typically wraps up business in the novelty aisles of Romantic Depot. Chalk up the foible to “Things That Cannot Be Explained Without Lobotomizing The Subject,” much like Tim Geithner’s hard-on for tax evasion, or Joaquin Phoenix’s suicidal forays into hip-hop. And things are not going to get better. How can they get better when the object of my suffering is also identified as a “drip dickey”?

Perhaps this off-color assessment derives from childhood, dredged subconsciously from the countless hours logged in my mother’s basement: a porn producer’s ground zero teeming with ersatz wood paneling and orange sofas; always a few dangerous seconds from the infiltration of zebra-print polyester, strobe lights, and walrus moustaches. One “bow chicka bow-wow” away from a twenty man gangbang during Scooby Doo cartoons.

Or maybe, just maybe, the drip-collar is a cock ring, mistakenly placed by my loving wife after having been swapped for the real thing at our last key party. Despite the Saturday night fevers in this suburban love nest, once guests believe that I’m exploiting sex toys for household usage, any modicum of class will be quashed from our social standing, all tinges of gentility stamped from our repute. I might as well drop my pants, find a lampshade, and party with the Neanderthal drifters in the lot behind the beer distributer. Or hump a fire hydrant. Hell, it might feel good to crush Busch cans against my forehead after polishing off a carton of smokes with itinerant rejects. But shamefully, the man using a cock ring to thwart wine stains on his linens is probably using a vibrator as an electric mixer, or as a defibrillator for the next time grandpa conks out. Vicious cycle, indeed.

But we’re veering down a naughty path, you and I, and this forum prefers to operate within a minimal level of decorum. That in mind, I’ll agree to banish these cerebral notions to an isolated cognizance, if you agree not to gaze quizzically the next time I pass you a pestle or hand-held citrus reamer. Of course, you might see these objects for the Protestant utility their inventors intended, laying innocently against the kitchen butcher block, waiting to receive garlic cloves and lemons. Mind and gutter faithfully divorced. Then again, we all view the world through a different lens. And you didn’t spend much time in my mother’s basement.