alcohol

Fishkind’s Unretraction

It is a beautiful Saturday. Granted, it could be a little warmer, but I can’t really complain. I mean, I can complain, and I will, but that’s my prerogative, n’est-ce pas? I feel like shit. Am I allowed to feel like shit? I don’t feel like shit anymore. I can deduce that this shit-feeling came from my use of French, meant to be a quip. I can’t do that without apology. Consider this my retraction. I must retract a lot of things if I’m ever going to get back to baseline. I don’t know what that means.

I was awoken by my girlfriend’s cell phone at 5am, buzzing in the first email of the rest of her life. Her mother nervous about her brother getting stitches in a racquetball accident around 11pm last night. My girlfriend proceeded to text her brother, who also, inexplicably, was up and aware of this email, a chain of events stemming from his own personal world of hurt, literally, as he claims to have been hit by a racquet at such speed and flection as to have caused serious damage to his… skin? I don’t know why people get stitches. What I want to know is at what level of intensity of a wound does one leave the Band-Aids and peroxide at the wayside and shuffle down to the hospital on a Friday night. Maybe I’ve needed stitches in the past, maybe I haven’t. There’s a story my mother used to tell about my slicing my hand on some glass as a baby and getting “butterfly stitches.” And to me, that sounds worse than real stitches—perhaps implemented only to doctor the lacerations inflicted by a butterfly knife.

Awoken again, about 45 minutes later, her mother was calling, asking about details of the injury. My girlfriend says on the phone she has been asleep, a questionable remark, but what do I know being subject to that very plea. Her mother spoke softly about something I had lost, drifting away again into submission. The phone was placed again on the beside table, to go off again in a few hours.

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Random / 21 Comments
February 25th, 2012 / 12:30 pm

It is Friday: Go dye a sled

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

Try a smirk that is not a smirk.

Nothing shall turn me.

What will happen to our odd photos now? We delete them. We delete them. We delete ourselves.

Drunk like house keys handed over to a youngest son.

Of word-play it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

The nose of a mob is its imagination.

Golden bells! Brass rings!

There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm.

Sleep is a slice of death. I hate it.

Drunk as a famous photo.

Look. Convince yourself not to convince.

Author Spotlight & Random / 2 Comments
November 19th, 2010 / 10:20 pm

It is Friday: Go Write Ahead

previous generations of American writers pointed the way

and why would he be murdered when everyone in town knew he had terminal cancer?

i wanted to be “a pure mathematician” more than anything else (the mathematician as artist)

and for a while I even lived in a tree house

i was still drinking in the minor leagues at the time

bees don’t stop drinking

excuses to go to the store

warm beers in the attic again

a flag flew, lit by a spotlight, indicating the man was in residence

three reasons why alcohol and the writer go so well together.

1. Trance-like states

2. Nothing is free on planet E

Author Spotlight & Random / Comments Off on It is Friday: Go Write Ahead
August 20th, 2010 / 5:39 pm

It is Friday: Go Right Ahead

At the table inquire, “Anyone not for beer?”

Throw yourself about, do imitations, maybe even fight a little

x drinks drunk in y moments are more potent than x drinks drunk in 2y moments

He resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again

At least a hangover is the truth

Put a broad hand on the beer-engine!

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing

Have some bitter and go to the prom

Being drunk is one big ellipsis

Mayonnaise will remove stains

Some of Poe’s tales convey perfectly the idea of a hangover

I am a flashy dresser and I shout a lot!

I should stop, but it is OK to get drunk if a certain thing goes wrong. It has. So here I go

Author Spotlight & Random / 14 Comments
August 6th, 2010 / 3:55 pm

It is Friday: Go Right Ahead

Damn the men with careful smiles

My head is a jug

Alcoholic philanthropy is still philanthropy

OK I got drunk and forgot I was giving a party

Killed 9 bottles


She got drunk and turned on me like a fish-wife

Summer is not a season, it’s an occupation

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile

Drink is a rebellion

I’m just happy to be here

Go ahead, talk out your hat

Mussed again, your hair

Agile tongue, thickened

Random / 28 Comments
July 30th, 2010 / 5:24 pm

It is Friday: Go Right Ahead

Civilization ends at the waterline

Floating horror of a 35 mph red-light

Your pelvis aches in your hands, too?

You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when it’s waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye


Get drunk. Get naked. Fall

Despite your refusal

Who can control themselves around so much “rough trade”?

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge

It was embarrassing

When black-dog down, get your tires changed. It will make you glow 2 hours

Gobble

Sloppy drunk and starting to sink into the winged chair

Electric monkey

Fly

Random / 14 Comments
July 23rd, 2010 / 7:41 am

Go Right Ahead: It is Friday

A mind too active is no mind at all.

Drink at any dance.

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

A glass of beer first thing in the morning.


Grew wild, broke furniture, beat out windows.

His favorite bar: The Corner Unusual.

I may look like a beer salesman but I am a poet.

The garden is a river flowing south.

Racing the devil for Rainbow, a beer joint.

You smell like television.

Author Spotlight & Random / 6 Comments
June 18th, 2010 / 1:08 pm

It is Friday: Go Right Ahead

She claimed he was my type, which I took to mean a little bit twisted.

A massive hollow swallowed.

Too drunk to stop.

I’m nihilistic, antagonistic, violent, horrible – but not obliterated, yet.

Room 453 smelled of beer, barbecue, and old leather.

The party was a bust, full of Valley chicks, jocks, and rockabillies.

Pig Mountain Valley in the middle of the South.

I prepared by swallowing a couple of quaaludes washed down with Jack Daniels.

Stirring the fiery liquid.

One drink away.

Light leeches out.

Author Spotlight & Random / 11 Comments
June 11th, 2010 / 11:29 am

It is Fry-day: Go Right Ahead

Teenagers, drunk, disheveled, excited…they ruined our party.

What is the feeling when you’re driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?

Like you haven’t slept in the kitchen.

And now listen now old buck old wild sunombitch don’t you get drunk today.

I’ll walk across the damn prairie by myself.

Always staying late, freeloading, shouting, foolish.

There will be no music, just dancing.

I am hightingled on the beer.

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.

Disorderly, lost.

Dude, don’t go halfway.

That’s being blackened, from the inside.

Author Spotlight / 6 Comments
June 4th, 2010 / 4:32 pm

It is Friday: Go Right Ahead

Please keep her always drunk.

I don’t do anything, not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more.

I’m through with the whole works.

An unbroken night of sleep is rare.

Oh, misty-minded.

Four be the things I’d have been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.

Sobriety? A basis for jokes.

Ballin in the library.

She’s probably on her way to get a bottle of bad gin.

I’m not down to my last two bits.

A deep human need to complain.

All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

And down a beer.

Author Spotlight & Random / 2 Comments
May 28th, 2010 / 9:45 am