My St Patty’s Day experience
18 Mar 10
A friend invited me to the St Patrick’s Day celebrations at a Minneapolis bar. When he asked, the following joke came to mind: “What is green, two blocks long, and has an IQ of 40? The St Patrick’s Day parade!”
But my good nature obliged me to come along. After all, the occasion would offer opportunities for male bonding and the society of ladies. And had not Ireland provided the world with fine whisky and the classic beer Guinness, the serving of which had been elevated to an art form?
Having convinced myself with these happy thoughts I drove to meet my friends, and an assortment of HORRORS greeted me. The human grotesqueries paraded before me as if they were choreographed. Each act seemed to vie with the previous one to outdo it in DEPRAVITY. I write from my desk now, whence I can quickly reach the toilet if necessary. It is only from this position of safety that I risk bringing back my nausea in describing the TOTAL PERVERSIONS I witnessed last night. I advise you to keep some sort of emesis receptacle at hand as I recount what I saw.
First, there was coming across Sean Doneghy. This man, a friend of a friend, emitted a radius of body vapors from his considerable skin surface. In his drunken recognition, he greeted me by bumping me with his stomach, which might have been funny if I were not half his weight, and if I were not gagging inside the bubble of humidity that surrounded him. As I reeled from the impact I reflected (behind a forced smile) that Han Solo could not have selected a more CHOICE TAUNTAUN than Sean to shelter his lost friend Luke for the night. Indeed Sean’s guts could have kept an entire CUB SCOUT TROOP comfortable through a bitter Hoth night, as long as they could bear the smell. Luckily MY sense of smell was impaired by the glass of whisky I had tastefully requested from the bar. Once Sean left I entertained the idea that the Irish people’s predilection for whiskey arose from its knack for overpowering the musk of their own unwashed bodies and shoeless feet. And I had just finished the whisky when the next OBSCENE act was staged.
I realized that the bar full of fellow revelers was in fact an abscess, and the booze had finally lanced it that night and let it run. The “pus,” so to speak, was the other people oozing forth from the entrance along with me, as I stepped outside to put my jacket in my car. As I walked back to the door of the bar I waded through a stream of DEBAUCHED people being extruded from the flesh of the bar. They were UNMOORED FROM DECENCY, bleary-eyed, groping like ZOMBIES for their cigarettes and their cell phones (on which they were no doubt arranging DRUNKEN FORNICATION for later that night). I moved through them, AGHAST, trying not to touch one of them for fear she might lurch at me with vodka-laced vomit erupting from her throat. I finally made it back into the bar and re-joined my companions, only to witness yet another ACT OF VIOLENCE TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT.
For I had, you see, filled my bladder because of the two pints of Guinness that I had (quite tastefully and fittingly) ordered. I announced my intention to urinate to my friend. He warned me, quite accurately, that the men’s room’s walls were wet up to chest height with urine and that it smelled like urine too. I thanked him, knowing I could handle a little piss. But what I encountered in addition to piss was a picturesque mound of vomit. As I knelt to examine it (as anyone would do), I indulged in playful speculation about the sequence of events that had left it there. The vomit was voluminous, a half a stomach-full maybe. The splatter radius was wide and its edges jagged enough to suggest that the depositor was bent over at the waist rather than face-down on the floor. It was both in the urinal and below it, making me think the poor guy sincerely believed he could hold it in, until he finally popped, right there at the urinal. And finally, a wadded length of paper towel lay smeared on the periphery. He had no doubt grabbed it as he staggered in from the dance floor. Now the paper towel was a virtual tie-dye of orange and brown, and it was sopping wet. I stood up and peed in the far urinal, then washed my hands and re-joined my friends. I had wondered as I peed what the next DERANGED SPECTACLE would be.
I did not have to wait long. Soon enough a 40-something man with an acne-scarred face and a tight T-shirt walked by and stared at the CROTCH of a female friend of mine. He nearly spilled his beers on us (he had one plastic cup in each hand) as he slurred, “You frim Iowa or sumthin’?” (“Are you from the sex offender treatment facility down the street?” I wish I had retorted, but I only thought of that later). He was probably from Coon Rapids or Prior Lake or something. Eventually he left to harass other young people.
I turned and awaited the next ACT OF DEPRAVITY, knowing that with each passing hour the man’s drive back to Lino Lakes or whatever was bound to become drunker and sleepier.
But the night petered out uneventfully as great big SLOBS afflicted with NO-EXIT STUPIDITY continued to sputter and collide. They had to get close to hear each other speak over the music. One would put a hand on a damp shoulder and deposit spittle and slurs into the other’s ear. Taken together the sweat, breath and spilt beer raised the room’s humidity considerably. Prime habitat for FUNGUS, I noted. Eventually the Coon Rapids man disappeared. He had probably found some drunk girl and was tailing her, like a hyena after the diseased wildebeest that has wandered from the herd. The dying down of the celebration fit, I suppose, with the LANCED ABSCESS analogy.
And that was my St Patty’s Day experience. Tomorrow I am joining the monkhood and leaving society.
pseudoisaac 