by tom miller

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1:15 p.m.
june 14, 1999

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5 days of binge drinking.

day and night.

uppers.

cigarettes.

eyes caught in the headlights.

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ron and i decide to go eat lobsters.

i get these cravings now and again, and ron's

always one for spontaneity.

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we go to boston seafood and order two.

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ron deliberates on having his

whole, so he can eat the liver, but decides against it.

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we order them

halved and cleaned.

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we drink boston lagers. they don't pass for tucher or

yebisu, but they're good enough.

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then the lobsters come. we fight the meat out of them.

ron pricks his finger on a spine. the lobsters are fighting

back.

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ron wants another one.

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he tells the waitress to apologize to the lobster before

dropping it into the boil.

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whether she does or not, we don't know.

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about $100 with tip.

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from there, we go to lillian's to meet friends.

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tom is there. the best bartender in the world.

the kind of guy you could order a drink from in

1975, not come back until 1999, and your next

drink will be waiting for you.

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i buy a cigar. so does ron. he never smokes cigars.

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more beers go down. we talk to our friends.

i read the paper. they accuse me of being antisocial.

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we become bored. the rain begins outside. the band

in the plaza has their show ruined by god. good.

if they're like most of the bands in the plaza, they stink.

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we wander into market street pub. other friends are there.

fred, of fred's screaming viking mead company. he makes

mead, a delicious alcoholic beverage made from honey,

water and yeast. the word marriage comes from the word mead.

and thomas (christ, is everybody named tom?) who always

wears sunglasses and greets you with two fingers extended.

if you call him tom instead of thomas, he will have very little

respect for you and won't extend his fingers. and maurice,

who dresses up as the screaming viking mead mascot.

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we order beers and continue drinking.

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fred offers to take us over to the speakeasy. it's a bar with a

combination lock on the door. you have to be special to get

inside. ron and i wouldn't bother going in there and being

"special", but we're with fred. he knows the numbers. he lets

us in. we are the only ones there. they have fancy products.

i know the bartender. he's cute. we say hello and order beers.

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by now, the conversation is beginning to deteriorate. ron begins

to offend with off color comments. but he makes amends by

ordering fancier beer. we begin drinking lambics. fred, a home

brewer, informs us that lambics are aged in open containers and

the bacteria that get in there end up tasting like fruit.

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we are drinking, from what fred tells us, very good bacteria

and yeast shit. who came up with this idea anyway?

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"can i see the bottle with the 20 year port in it?" i ask.

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"sure," says the bartender. he brings it over. "would you like

to taste?"

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"GET�ONE!" shouts ron. "give him a glass."

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$16.99 - one ounce. it tastes glorious. we all share it and

comment on how delicious it is.

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ron orders a double shot of 100 year anniversary grand mariner.

we share that too, between sips of lambics. lambics cost about

$7.50 a piece.

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"ahh this place sucks," says ron. "give us the check."

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must have been over $100.

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"lets get out of here," says ron.

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"let's go to common grounds and drink," i say.

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fred protests, but not very much. "i was going to go home,

have a shower, and go out to see dirty poodle (one of gainesville's

best bands) and now here i am with you two. sure. let's

go to common grounds."

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the rain has subsided. we walk down university avenue

on the wet sidewalk. we stagger and stumble. we make

it there.

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there is music. there are hippies. there is laughter and coffee.

the chess players are there. the fat man is there with his board,

waiting, like a puma, a fat puma, waiting to pounce on the weak.

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we order... beers. more beers.

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ron is handing out $20s to the street people.

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and this is when i learned about

tea bagging.

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"tea bagging?" i asked the young mod wannabe standing next

to me. "what the hell is that?"

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"think about the part of your anatomy that most resembles a

tea bag."

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"okay, but what does it mean? is it putting your balls in someone's

mouth?"

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"it could be," he said. "or you could put your balls in their beer

when they're not looking. you could say they were tea bagged."

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the term amused me. it reminded me of some of the more

off color words for some of the more off color sexual acts,

such as felching, which is ejaculating into someone's ass

or cunt and then sucking it out.

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"have you ever heard of felching?" i asked the bartender?

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"sure. it's like snow balling."

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"snow balling? what the hell is that?"

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"same as felching, only you do it in their mouth."

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"how about that," i said. and then my mind went to work.

i had to ask. "so what if a guy sucks his own dick," i said,

thinking of the ambush club, "and cums in his own mouth?"

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"i don't know about that," said the bartender.

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over the next fifteen minutes, i had managed to present this

question to six or seven people who were all at work

thinking up terms that could mean cumming in your own

mouth.

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they were writing on napkins, match books, people actually

bothered with this. it was a worthy goal; a new word to

offer up to the world. by god, a poet must not only master

words, he must invent them if he hopes to compete with

tea bagging, snow balling, and felching.

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some of the suggestions were:

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the yoga blow

pickling

the "arlo guthrie" (this one i didn't understand)

the fold

scoliosis

cranking

logging

schlorping, or, to schlorp

fooge

eye ballin'

stuffin', as in, do you stuff?

bobbin for nut

autogag

kiss the baby...

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and the list went on and on. people began to feel this was

important. that what we did this night would go down in

american history as the greatest night in the world, second

only to the writing of the national anthem.

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the winner, which i'm proud to say i played a hand in

writing, was creamsickling, or to creamsickle.

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and i asked myself, if creamsickling is to suck your own

penis and cum in your own mouth, what would fudgesickling

be?

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____________________

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i played ron a game of drunken chess, during which time

he knocked over his mug on some young lady's feet. it was

one of 12 mugs personally assigned to the most interesting

people in the bar. of course i had one too.

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i guess ron was out of the club now.

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and the motherfucker beat me. as drunk as he was, he managed a

coordinated attack that wedged me into the corner of the

board, and my king was smothered.

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"goodnight, tom," said ron. "goodnith. see ya tomorralo.

i'm gointh home."

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but he didn't go home. he walked over to see the band that

fred never saw because fred was as plastered as the walls.

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fred had gone off into the night. probably home to bed.

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ten minutes later, the phone rang. "tom! phone!" someone said.

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i went to the counter and answered the phone. it was ron.

"tom. hey. i'm over here at the covered dish and dirty poodle's

about to play. take a cab. i'll pay for it."

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"fudgesickling," i said.

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"huh?"

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the next day began at a barbecue at my bosses house. it was his birthday.

there was beer. i drank and drank and ate ribs that fell off the bone and

chicken and potato salad, and i swam in the pool and lounged in the

jacuzzi, and i thought, "this poet's life is not so bad."

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went to the university club after that and ordered shots of tequila

and whiskey. the android was there. he's a character and a half.

a kinetic mouth of puns and witticisms. "i'm not only the hair club

president, i'm also a client," he says, pointing to his dome of a head

which rests between two long locks of hippy hair hanging to

either side.

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i bought him a beer. i told him about inventing the term creamsickling

which led to a conversation about gerbiling. for those who don't know,

gerbiling is the act of putting a gerbil up your ass when you masturbate.

as far as i'm concerned, it's just an urban legend, but i did have the

idea to explore the internet and see just what truth there is to this deviant

form of stimulation. sounds very painful for both the gerbilee and the

girbiler, not to mention pretty fucking depraved.

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when i mentioned my dilemma with the term fudgesickling, we

came up with a good name for a band; fudge gerbil.

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use it if you want to. it's not copyrighted.

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android and i walked over to common grounds. i had spent

$50 for drinks on top of the beers i had had for free at the

party, and still i felt sober.

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we drank coffee and more beer, and i popped 100

mgs of ephedrine.

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then for thirty minutes, i wrote poetry. mostly awful stuff.

my x-boyfriend came in with his new love, who i recently

discovered is only 17, and no longer permitted in the

university club until his birthday. at least i won't have to

look at him at work for awhile.

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and two other beautiful guys came in who had been with my

x as well. he told me we all were lining up to have him again.

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"not me," i said. and i left them sitting there on the couch

like a row of birds who do nothing but shit on the road and

caw.

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it was a nice walk home. a long walk on wet streets. somebody

threw a bottle at me, but missed by a good fifteen yards. i

didn't blink. didn't need to. i'm protected by god, you see.

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can't have a bible without writers.

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