The idea of a pub crawl is ridiculous, the act itself superfluous and fantastic. Its like going shopping for ingredients to make dinner, but instead of just going to one store where you could easily get all the items you need, you spend three hours driving to Target, Hy-Vee, Trader Joe's, and even your local dirty-ass gas station because they have 99 cent slushies this week and how the hell you gonna make dinner without a fuckin' cherry/bluerazzberry mixed slushy may I briskly enquire!? [Take note, Walmart should never, under any circumstances, EVER be patronized because it is both the epitome and the manifestation of all the is wrong with America. I will now dismount from my soapbox because I don't have health insurance and do not want to injure myself in the fall sure to come from my wildly passionate gesticulations.]
Example of a pub-crawl conversations still using the grocery store/dinner making metaphor:
"Hey, I know this place has eggs, but I heard this other place also has eggs, so we should check out their eggs here in a minute."
"What's wrong with the eggs here? The game is on and I don't wanna miss the end..."
"Nothing is wrong with the eggs here. But the vegetables here suck, I mean, look around. I'd really like to try and score with a hot vegetable tonight and these vegetables have clearly seen better days..."
etc.
Yet, whenever someone says "hey, would you like to pay $35 (the beneficiary of this money is never quite clear) to engage in the alcoholic equivalent of speed dating?" the answer is always an emphatic, "hell yes! Just in time, too, my wounds from the last round of binge-drinking are newly healed!" And off you go, spending no more than 30 minutes at each location, furiously soaking in each new environment while imbibing the required amount of alcohol needed to tiptoe the line between functioning and walking disaster, between remembering and wishing you didn't.
My latest pub crawl adventure was no different in form, just in content. First, it was billed as a "Derby Day/Deliverance" crawl by Steph ("Derby Day" because it was the day of the Kentucky Derby and "Deliverance" because all the bars were in rural Illinois where silly things like eco-friendly automobiles and racial diversity don't exist). Unfortunately, I looked neither "Derby-esque" nor "I own a gun-like" in my v-neck and tight jeans; I conceded to the possibility that, in all likelihood, I was going to be dragged to death behind someone's truck before the night's end. Take me swiftly, Land of Lincoln.
Some of the highlights of the evening:
- Being transported in - can you guess it? - that's right...a stretch Hummer limo. I have never felt classier than when falling out of a 30 foot-long Sport Utility Vehicle that gets 4 miles to the gallon. Nascar Nation's collective wet dream.
- Going to bars which were mostly named "Hank's" or "Dave's" and realizing that the bartender actually was Hank or Dave, and furthermore, Hank or Dave actually lived here because the bar was actually just the back of Hank or Dave's house.
- Hearing the Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel" no less than 16 times. Still a great goddam song, I don't care how many times you play it.
And the highlight of the night:
Whilst at out final stop - a bar called "Big Styx" or "Big Stiks" or "Big Stix" or some other awful mistreatment of the English language - I noticed a large group of guys, maybe 6 or 7 of them, boxing up their leftovers, which consisted of half an enormous pizza and about 30 wings, prepared in both the "hot" and "barbeque" style. They stacked their boxes up neatly, seemed ready to divvy up the spoils, then suddenly...they were gone.
15 minutes passed. The boxes beckoned.
A member of our group came by. "Load em' up!" he yelled to me over the loud country music. It was time to make a judgement call. I had to act. Smoothly, confidently, I strolled over to the boxes and rescued them from abandonment, annexing them from their lonely corner-table orphanage. Walk quickly, don't look back, don't look suspicious, everything will be...all...right. Out into the cool night that smelled of summer, I knew I had pulled off the heist. I was a magician, cool liquid in my veins. I was invisible to the naked eye. I was Steve McQueen.
And the best part:
Me [getting into the stretch Hummer]: Who wants FOOD!?
Ravenous, drunken pub-crawlers: Holy shit! You bought pizza and wings for us?!?!?
Me: Nope! Here ya go!!! (Perhaps everyone took this as a joke, or were too drunk to care. Either way, no further questions were asked.)
Steph threatened to expose me, for she knew the truth. But I was untouchable, the unspoken hero of the pub-crawl, the vanquisher of hunger from alcohol-filled stomachs. Nothing was so beautiful as watching the glassy-eyed dipsomaniacs rip the leftovers to shreds, fingers covered in sauce, happy in their satisfied ignorance.
[Author's Note: Of course, I had some too. If we go down, we go down together. And, for those of you who think this disgusting...well, that is a post for another day. The illusion of cleanliness, the illusion of saftey; don't buy in. (Why do I keep finding myself up on this damn soapbox? It's so dangerous up here.)]
No comments:
Post a Comment