One of the most underrated skills one could eek out of this brief lifetime is the ability to manipulate one's environment to one's advantage*; to turn an otherwise negative atmosphere into a positive one.
For me, these moments generally occur in the middle of what I like to call the Downhill Slide (to borrow liberally and shamelessly from Craig Stecyk, who would probably throw chunks of concrete at me for my transgression). The Slide is something like Wabi Sabi with a modernity more closely related to Gleaming the Cube than Zen Buddhism, but still occupies the same unconventional niche in human interaction. It's the slope just beyond the edge of "polite" and "socially responsible" where most of us tread only under the guilt-free defense of intoxication, yet it's a dangerously intoxicating place to be on its own. A little velocity goes a long way in explaining the Downhill Slide as well, dodging cars / trees / pilings etc. at speeds just beyond what prudence dictates. But you hang on, and you make it through the ride. Sometimes you pay in flesh, most times you don't.
Basically, the Downhill Slide is allowing our human beast just a little room to prove how unexpectedly it can, and often does, behave. It's true, indeed, that 'he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.' Such is the nature of adventure.
I'm only explaining this because it felt like a good time to bring it up, though the following story may have less to do with the above than I originally intended.
There's no clearer way to characterize my Friday than simply stating that I, for no reason whatsoever, attended a houseparty for Applied Physics graduate students. (I cannot explain why this seemed like a good idea; why do we slow down to look at car accidents?) As expected, the revelers fell into neatly packaged stereotypes, constituting what could be described as a 'fine little hotdog cart' of a party. Still, determined to see the experience out to its potentially illogical conclusion, I scanned the crowd for bright stars against an otherwise-dim sky.
The few women that came through the door showed classic signs of sexual-intellectual repression: party clothes but not 'couture,' flirty short skirts but not 'two hairdos' short, one or two elements of a makeup ensemble but not the full 'look,' etc. These are women willing to become gloriously entangled sexually, yet too intelligent to be affected by it as a hobby. (Previously I have referred to such creatures as 'smart girl box,' with all the sincere admiration one could muster). Yet, to my chagrin, the gentlemen in the room seemed more inclined to discuss the programs they had written to mix audio and video than the platitudes that might, despite the long odds, get them laid. Fortunately for me, one who uses alcohol as one might use fine oil paints or clay, I had laid out before me a fine compliment of liquor in abundant quantity. For better or worse, I view such elements as the tools of my trade, flipping ice cups bottles corks caps with a surgeon's dexterity and precision. (One very special reader might hearken back to the eponymous 'Langer Banger' with kind affirmation upon consideration of this claim).
In the span of an hour I had transformed an awkward phalanx of intellectuals into a writhing hedonistic mass of half-naked, sweating real-people whipping each other with glowing necklaces and Marti-Gras beads. The skeptic would say they would have found the booze as easily as if I had not been there, that the potential for revelry was independent of my skills as a bartender. But I say to you, oh skeptics, the velocity with which alcohol make its journey from hand to hand to mouth (or hand to chest / bellybutton / collarbone to mouth), had as much to do with my dominating personality as latent hormonal influence. Put simply, nearly half the people who came to my bar had never heard of, done, or intended to ever do a 'body shot.' This would/could not fly in my universe. Luckily, they were an experimental bunch; quite scientific in their curiosity and thirst for new experience.
At the end of the night, sweating and exhausted myself, I had managed to garner a full $22 in unexpected tips, and the attention of one slender and affectionate creature who I would later learn was a Project Runway model.
Such is the nature of adventure. Shake hands with the beast and slide, baby.
*I started down the indefinite pronoun road and just had to keep rolling. It's grammatically correct, but sounds like shit, I know. I apologize.
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Alan D. Eames, who cultivated his reputation as “the Indiana Jones of beer” by crawling into Egyptian tombs to read hieroglyphics about beer and voyaging along the Amazon in search of a mysterious lost black brew, died on Feb. 10 at his home in Dummerston, Vt. He was 59.
beer advertisement, dating to roughly 4000 B.C.
