“The body is a temple and I have defiled it.” -P.W. Long

Wine and cheese party with a few friends, a few strangers, a lot of wine and food but I can’t drink the wine without serious and dire repercussions. Coincidentally, or unfortunately, or a little bit of both, I have been looking for an excuse to drink Night Train. I saw it in a beer store a week or three ago and it has been quietly egging me on in uneventful moments since then. Should I do it? If I do it’ll be the first time since roughly 1989 that I have drank the stuff. Junior year in high school? We had a friend whose parents were perpetually out of town. His friend worked at a liquor store and for some reason all he would let us buy was Night Train. We didn’t care, we were young and the price guaranteed that we could always have some whenever we wanted it. This devil brew was the catalyst for the first and last time I drank and drove. How we got from point A to B and eventually point Q still confounds me and is one of the few things that I have done in this life that I still mildly loathe myself for.
But I don’t have a car these days, therefore the danger of that happening again is virtually nil so I grab a bottle of the noxious concoction (“Vinted in Modesto”! More of a warning in my book than a boasting point) and head over. We eat and laugh and say terrible things and vow to play hopscotch in Hell together. Every strata of our meandering world is attacked with much glee and ferocity. The sides hurt as the 3 of us who are on this high-velocity Train ride are totally ruined, quite quickly, and jammed up into a corner of the room in hysterics. It is as if we have head-fulls of acid in a roomful of alcoholics. Technically we are all torqued within the same biological/chemical parameters but our behavior hints that we are someplace far less grounded than the other people who are in the room.
A tongue tattoo is brought out and we hypothesize as to whether or not it is some new form of acid so we ache to pass it around, absorb a bit to the tongue, give it to the person on your left. At our ages, and with the experiences we have under our collective belts, all we really want is a little taste... ABC LSD. Turns out to be, thankfully, only a fruit flavored decal for the tongue. Innocence prevails... in that area. But we roll on, faces covered, cracking up, teeth aching from the unholy amounts of sugar that goes into the making of this stuff, only mildly wondering about the price that will be paid in the morning.
And then I yawn at midnight-ish and need to get home cuz it’s a long-ish walk.
“Will you be OK?” and it is a valid question as I have been conducting this Train at quite a clip and with less than stellar amounts of reserve and dignity and it is a long walk through neighborhoods that some parents would find sketchy.
“No, I’ve got a digital camera, a cell phone, $16 and an iPOD on me... I’ll totally be fine.”
“You’re a dead man.”
And I smile and am off. The iPOD dies 2 minutes into a 40-minute walk but I keep the head phones on cuz it is cold as hell outside. I field a few texts concerning alcohol snobbery and the carcinogenic properties of milk and take one short phone call where a dear friend throws 2 perfect punches at my head and then leaves me pickled and wondering what it is in me that adores abuse. All I can do is laugh at it.
I pass a few wandering souls in the night and I fear nothing, regardless of my blood alcohol level. There are dangers out, for sure, but they are about at any time of the day or night. All I see on this particular evening are similar beings, solitary, cast aside, wanting more than they have, needing certain things that are currently unattainable... we are all in this thing together, they pose no danger... well, they pose about as much danger as I do. Of course, considering the shit that is flooding through my system one could become incredibly violent at the drop of a hat and for no good reason. One could also collapse behind a dumpster in a sweeping and unexpected fit of heart-breaking nostalgia for a childhood pet that has been dead for 25 years.

I cut down through a well-manicured North Portland neighborhood and it is quiet and calm and save for a few pines, the trees are ancient and without leaves, skeletons looming overhead all black but not threatening. I come up on a large dumpster full of treasures, more than the standard fare of 2x4's and busted up sheet rock, intertwined tubes and wires and cast-away lighting fixtures that accompany a standard remodeling job, but I have no desire, energy, or curiosity for a dumpster dive ... then I notice, well, I step on one and slip about a foot and half flailing wildly in a desperate attempt to not break my back in the middle of the street, the middle of the night. I regain my composure and all around me are 7-inch records. A closer look redefines them as mere 45's. 7-inches are more for the indy/punk/metal/eastern European noise set... 45's are more of these things, RCA Victor Christmas hymns that no one ever cared about to begin with. I pick up a few on this wide and seemingly endless street, all bare of cars and wide enough for a 4-lane highway, giant, potentially haunted houses stretching off into the darkness, an old, monied neighborhood.


The shape and weight of the discs are reassuring in my hands... they are already garbage and them being on colored vinyl don’t up their intrinsic value... Christmas records rarely accumulate value, well some do, but they don’t deserve it (yes, I hate Christmas music) and regardless they are all over the street and I am drunk and alone and they feel so good as they fly from my hands and into the sky, some catching in those ancient trees that intersect over the middle yellow and faded line, reaching from opposite sides of the road to touch their thousands of bare fingers together in patient acts of love and lust. Other records sail gracefully and without incident off into the distance only to explode on the asphalt with a reassuring thud, like a baby being dropped off of a building (not really an accurate representation of the sound, I just wanted to use that line).
And I look to the sky on this cold clear night, the moon is full and proud and the sky is crisp, a somber indigo and against it streaks a pale grey contrail and a white light flashing at its head as a jet heads off for other places, me wanting to be on it to go no where in particular, looking for nothing, just relishing the momentum... this night is perfect.
And I stop by the 7-11 and get a sixer of tall Pabst because the distance and the cold and the Zen have taken away my high and I long to pass out in a haze, not able to remember the exact moment I let go of the now and fade off into alcohol sweats and dreams that may be blood-soaked and horrible, may be full of hope with a beautiful creature all legs and arms and warm breath in close quarters at the end of a rainbow...
Either way I will be happy, content, ready to accept any and all possibilities as this is life and through the beauty, through the terror, this is what we have to work with and all of it makes us who we are. It all hinges, the outcome, the sum total of who we are, on how we assemble the components and regard them.

EPILOGUE...no–AFTERMATH...yes, totally, this is an AFTERMATH

I wake up to a pain that is strangely familiar, like a face you see in a crowd and know, but not sure why exactly. Oh this is wretched. Is this 1988? There appears to be a vice clenched unnecessarily around my gigantic and throbbing head...the pressure in my skull...needles jammed into my eyes... it feels as if some wicked bastard has injected 300cc’s of molten lead into my brain, coating it, weighing it down, ruining it, I’ll never be able to spell “Misisssisppiissii” again. There is no ibuprofen in this house, one of the rare times when I would take the stuff... this is so wrong.
What happened? Why this terrible pain, this misery, this shit-stained gym sock jammed into my mouth, this puckered, ruined feeling?
...
...
Oh, that’s right.
Something about a train conductor.
Night Train, Express.
...
I need biscuits and gravy, or chicken fried steak. Something heavy and sponge-like to absorb this hell that is in me.
17.5% alcohol content. What was I thinking? Why do I do this to myself? Thank God no one wanted to go with me to get a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 when the Train was finished (we kept it in the freezer, it turned to a murderous Slurpee, a Slush Puppie with a mean streak). I remember this small blessing that seemed a curse at the time. Me trying to get someone to go with me so we could “get as fucking ghetto as hunanly [sic] possible, you püzzies [also sic]!” This is why I hang out with people smarter than myself. Not a difficult feat as you can all gather by now. I could hang out with a box of nose hair and still be the dumb one.
Jesus, this Night Train is like Kool Aid. I remember wanting to brush and floss after every swig, it was so sweet. Spiked Kool Aid. Damn, that was how Jonestown went down... this is how I’m gonna go down... Jim was right,
“Those who don’t remember history are condemned to repeat it.”
Loose translation:
Pay attention or else you are fucked.
I have to get to a diner, stat. Coffee, gravy, starch... oh God.