As some think of god, I think of the lack of god.
posted by jeremy on August 29, 2002
There is enough awe to be found here. Keep your god. I've got the stars to dazzle me, a girl to be my angel, an empire for a devil and alcohol as my sin....
It's a steaming summer evening as far as that goes in Portland. All day these streets have been bustling with the vixen crowds excited by the blue skies, the absence of rain. Everyone is falling in love all over again. Pheromones permeate the air. It is good to be a young animal on a day like this.
The sun's edging west, sinking below the coast range. My bike carries me miles and miles. I'm restless. Moving. Moving. Scoping out the extent of my territory. If one of my teeth weren't rotting out, I'd feel like a rock star or at least a local indie math-rock hero....
The long winter has apparently left many of us sun blind. That's what I ascertain from the number of idiot drivers who've almost run me over in the last hour alone. I keep far to the right, occasionally utilizing the sidewalks, the parking lots, the parks, the median strips, whatever flows beneath my wheels. The squat mossy houses slip by. The yards filled with flowers. The trees slowly rolling out leaves to catch the sunlight. The entire city sloughing off the perpetual damp of these last few months.
I stop at the corner of 3rd & Harrison & recline against the wall of a weathered brick warehouse; I'm just taking a moment to allow the last of the sun to annihilate the darkness in me.
I'm just watching the clouds lumber, like huge beasts, thru the evening sky.
It all seems perfect enough, sweet enough, honest enough.... & I realize that a celebration in the name of the month of May is needed before even another evening should go by & so, with a deep surety of another's willing involvement, I swing off at the next payphone. I insert my calling card & instantaneously, the telephone spits it out & informs me in a scolding voice that this particular card is not accepted:
I'm suddenly desperately trying to imagine my parents younger years when most machines probably didn't correct you on their proper use.
I insert two quarters and dial Nate...
"Hellooooo?" croons Nate's voice from sixty blocks north.
"-ello, Nathan. I think that getting thrashed is absolutely..."
"...second that...where should..."
"....Angel...?"
"....the normal."
Angelos, below the west side of Mt. Tabor. Angel-o's. Angel-lows. A shoddy dive on Hawthorne that's wedged between a liquor store and a sapphic Mexican restaurant. An adored dive where the beer is cheap and the billiards are free. It's all I ever wanted in a tavern. It's the Vern's twin sister. It's where I'm going & it's where I'm at.
Nathan's already waiting for me out front. I lock up my bike and we step from the fading sunlight into the dim light of the pub. Faded blue-collar lifers sit at the bar tossing comments back & slurredly forth. The televisions are simultaneously showing an old Chevy Chase movie, the evening news and a basketball game. ÂSweet Home Alabama' is blaring from the umpteen speakers scattered thru out the place & my eyes are already stinging from the smoke as we toss our bags back by the pool tables.
"Pitcher?" I ask.
"Pitcher." says Nate.
"Pabst?" ask I.
"Pabst." Nate says.
I go and order from the slight and beautiful red-haired tender whose name, after nearly 4 years of coming here, I still do not know. She gives me beer. I give her money. Its a functional relationship. We understand each other well. It's a system that works.
I walk back to where Nathan is already busily sketching the patrons. I pour two glasses of beer & light a cigarette & Nathan & I, we stand on a sober shore but the ocean, this ocean of mental slippage, resides not far from here....
Ethyl alcohol: Just one form of a vast group of organic chemical compounds, all of which are derivatives of hydrocarbons in which one or more of the hydrogen atoms have been replaced by a hydroxyl functional group, which in the case of ethyl alcohol is usually by the fermentation of glucose.... Here, look...
C6 h12o6(in the presence of yeast) ->2ch3ch2oh + 2co2
...Equals beer, baby.
Nathan chalks and snaps the cue into the cue-ball and therefore the cue-ball into the tidy triangle of fifteen balls and our game of interactive geometry is commenced. It is a love of the nature of randomness that drags me back to this game again and again. To eventually be able to see the angles, the exact points, the paths on the table so that you can, just maybe, make the shots, three times out of five: A uncertain grasping of acquired luck.... This is all that you can ask.
Ethyl alcohol is a low molecular weight aliphatic compound which is completely miscible with water. Think shaken not stirred.... Meaning that a certain component of this Pabst is readily distributed thru out my wonderfully aqueous bloodstream because of its water solubility which, in turn, allows it to easily cross very important biological membranes such as the blood brain barrier....
I destroy Nathan for several games before he, rather weakly I have to say, wins one. We keep playing, drinking. The games roll on in their confined complexity until 10 PM rolls around at which point the pub begins to fill up. A changing of the guards begins to occur around this time every day.
The old alcoholics filter out while the younger sexier ones trickle in & we move easily thru both circles....
...Even as certain molecules are punching their way into my brain thru a process of simple passive diffusion along concentration gradients in accordance with Ficks Law (where "c" denotes the area-permeability coefficient)....
Flux (Molecules per unit time)=(c1ƒ c2)
Thickness
In other words, we're starting out from this sober shore....
Its amazing the amount of biochemistry it takes to get us here & we never even notice. We're doing it & we're not doing it. We have no more control over our bodies than we've over the stars. What is this strange uncaring autopilot of nature? & who cares? Who? Well, shit...
I do. What is this? This slippage? These tenets of biological existence? This cause & these effects?
Nate shoots the eight-ball in & I laugh & curse & I'm wondering, I'm curious as hell: What is this need, half the fucking species has, to escape? To change the way the mind works & the way it senses our very existence. It seems an obvious question but its not.... & so what, exactly, are we running from?
Nate buys another pitcher. I smoke another cigarette &...
At this very moment I know that 4 complex neurotransmitters are engaging in a nervous dance with the alcohol molecules that have invaded the complex kingdom of my brain.
Gamma aminobutyric acid, a major inhibitory nt, is being coaxed, bit by bit, swallow by swallow, into action & thus creating... enhanced disinhibition.
Suddenly Nathan's juggling pool balls, creating a somewhat hazardous environment for the other patrons but really, no-one cares....
The ever-interesting temporary miniature society of the tavern is unfolding before us in all its inebriated splendor.
Alliances form & infight & dissolve. Empires are built & live out their hedonistic empiric lives & decline into nothing more than some empty pint glasses. Fair maidens are threatened or saved or kick someone's ass. Vast new religions; Entire radically divergent systems of thought arise & flourish & are forgotten by morning.
Two grown men engage in an argument that would shame second graders. Two girls dance with each other in a manner that eventually draws the gaze of every male in the bar & not just a few women. A crippled & obese woman in an electric cart furiously plugs dollars into a video-poker machine. The new tender ejects, to much screaming, a too drunk drunk from the premises. A crazy young man erases & rewrites his name on the pool sign up board, each time sketching it in ever smaller script. All of this to a soundtrack composed of Slayer, Metallica & Megadeath...
Dopamine & serotonin are also running a bit more freely within my skull, creating somewhat of a reward process, the same process that takes effect when you eat after being hungry or fuck after being horny... A literal biochemical satisfaction.
Nor can we forget about glutamate, a major excitatory nt. The alcohol is inhibiting certain gluta-receptors & that is diminishing the excitatory actions it usually performs.
A mishap in urination occurs:
I've just pissed on my shoe. Its funny. I laugh. I exit the restroom & immediately explain what has happened to a small flock of total strangers. They too, think its funny.
This tangle of alcohol's semi-sinister effects begins in the ventral tegmental area of the brain, which is nestled close to the brain stem. From there the effects filter up into the nucleus accumbens & then it's a smooth leap to my cerebral cortex....
& I'm arguing economic politics, the politics surrounding certain African nations & the IMF, with a friend of mine. He's saying that the IMF fills a certain role & even tho reform is needed, that role is still necessary. I'm disagreeing. I'm not too certain of my argument here: I've lost some of my facts between my first & last beers but I'm just saying, in a vague sense, that the IMF is twisted beyond hope; It seems only to be a way of making corrupt regimes richer while allowing forced extraction of resources from nations whose citizens desperately need said resources far more than European & American corporations. Can't you see? Or something like that....
But suddenly Jon Bon Jovi's face is on one of the television screens. Why? Can't tell. The closed captioning is off but someone else at the table starts singing the chorus to something from  Slippery When Wet  & we all join in for a moment...
& then someone ask me if I've seen Spider-Man. Spider-Man? Of course! Mary Jane's a hotty. Toby, that nerd, was perfect for the role & yeah, Sam Raimi retained the feel of the comic so fucking well. Don't you love that scene where Peter's perched on the edge of the building just getting ready to swing off to avenge his uncle's death & that exact point seems the hinge where Spider-Man comes into existence. Sam stalls that scene just long enough for the realization to sink into the viewer. There's something so dark about it... Man, I wish I was Spider-Man. Who doesn't? Oh & Ang Lee's doing the Incredible Hulk movie. That'll be something fucking interesting. Shit, have you seen The Ice Storm? Eat Drink Man Woman?
...But fuck, I'm rambling on now even...
As the level of concentrated alcohol in my bloodstream slowly increases, taking me thru the inescapable stages of this ancient form of ritual poisoning.
Decreased alertness. Reduced social inhibitions. Clumsiness.
Exaggerated emotions. Unsteadiness. Hostile behavior &....
...As Nathan stumbles off towards the bar after mystifying me with something that sounded like "Ohm gaunt tak too hot chuckee poo at da bear"...
....slurred speech. Of course there's always coma and organ failure but that's a bit farther than we'll be going tonite.
1:45 rolls up with a sound like the evening's death toll, like the sound of madly bearded John Wray screaming "Last call! You mangy fuckers! C'mon & get Âem if you're gonna get Âem!"
It's been a successful evening: Nathan & I are beyond hope & we have to face the facts. We're well into the fifth, hell, sixth level of idiocy. Its go-time & as easily as that, delirious & happy, we're on our simple machines & cruising, shakily, thru the empty streets.
& I'm thinking, thinking, as the dark streets blur by, what do we lose in these endless slipping nights of toxicity? Our minds? Our selves? Our health? & what do we gain? Simple fun? Tiny riots? A certain variation of awareness? A necessary, if ridiculous, component of human sanity?
All I know is that alcohol humbles me: That suddenly there is nothing to prove to this world or maybe, maybe there is everything to prove.
For a moment, I'm also considering this... That we are Americans & this is an empire of decadence, thus this cult of decadence, this declination point of society, this rusty pseudo-utopia: Soaking sodden portland, all work & much play...
Our Budweiser-driven ideals. What?
OK. My logic is drunken. This isn't a matter of empires or cultural destiny but of biology....
Most humans desire somewhere different: A separate shore; A chemical form of a different life, if only for this particular evening or maybe a lifetime. As the history of us explains, the love of drunkenness has ridden our lives since the beginnings of civilization, since the very beginnings of human-ness.....
& so I ask you again, what is it that we are running from? What is it? What does it mean? & what can we learn from it? What? What? Or whatever....
The stars are glorious in the dim orange sky & I'm heading home where, if I'm lucky, I've a girl waiting for me, waiting to remind me, to revive me...
...Waiting to forgive me my sins.
